SELEDA Finance Issue

By: L. Demmissie

For all my trekies out there...Quote of the Day: "Justice cannot exist if the law is unyielding. It is an exercise of exceptions throughout our lives." Said by Captain Jean-Luc Piccard of the Starship Enterprise as he apologized for breaking the laws of another species in order to save a child prisoner from execution.

Diary of an MBA (to be)

I worked...no, I was a grunt on Wall Street for three years after college. Getting my acceptance letter to business school was a great day for me. I finally could escape from corporate America for two years. The last three years were a valuable professional experience, but the politicking was exhausting! So exhausting that I began to long for academia.

Come December of 1999 (deep in my first semester of graduate school) I prayed for my workdays to return. This was hell. It was humbling, exhilarating and exhausting all at the same time. I had never seen so many intelligent people in one place. I had never had so many projects to do and events to attend. To top it all off my classmates were all Type A personalities. Never mind the million or so group and individual assignments I had. Sleep was a luxury. I now say to my friends that I have discovered that there are actually 40 hours in a day if you use them wisely. There are those who boast that the MBA is a breeze, and to them I say "F* you!"..." I mean more power to them?! All I know is that my first semester of graduate school was a challenge, a boot camp of sorts.

You may be wondering why I am being so forthright with my testimony. There are several reasons, but the primary one is that I hate lies. The second is to tell you sincerely that I would do it again. The experience has affirmed my strengths/weaknesses and afforded me the skills to put any idea to work. It's a constant source of inspiration (and competitive pressure!) to see so many of my classmates pursuing incredible ambitions. It's so refreshing to be surrounded by doers! For example, one of my classmates was an artist and over one semester he had transformed himself into a smooth talking consultant. Another was a banker and by mid-semester had won prizes and potential start-up funding for a B2B Internet business. Another was a film production designer who by second semester had incorporated a partnership to start a major real estate project in Harlem. It was not for their pursuit of money that I admired them but for their hunger to achieve great things. I know very well that achievers are not found only in business schools. To assume that would be foolish on my part. In fact, I have met a large number of status quo loving bores in my MBA experience. What is true is that there is a high probability of finding a large majority of ambitious people here. So, if you are thinking about business school and you think it would add value to what you are doing, do it. If you think you cannot afford it, debt should be your new best friend. Trust me, you'll be able to pay it back.¹ Besides, I want to see more Ethiopians in my classes!

I know this is a rather abstract piece that is of no professional value. But you see the other thing I detest is boring articles about "How to Achieve XYZ. Step one: Get good grades..." Like the many people I have met in b-school, I too am trying to better my skills in finance and business.

Lesson number one: Calculated risks are a necessary element of success.