Hello World!

I’m Sonny and I’m new.

I’m going to walk you through the week I just had which was eventful to say the least.

It began with an invitation from Molly Kihanya (Senior Associate Director for EWMBA admissions) to join the Blog Squad which I obviously jumped on immediately. The first thing I did after joining the team is start reading blog posts all the way from the first one dated September 2007. I’m about half way through now and what really amazes me is how different each person’s experience is even though we are all going through the same program. That’s EWMBA for you – it is what you make of it. So that was Monday.

On Wednesday, Molly set up an information session for Berkeley Part-time MBA programs at Microsoft campus in Redmond (oh btw – I live in Seattle, work at Microsoft and commute on weekends to Berkeley for classes). I was on the student panel. Lots of people (around 30-40) – which means there is a lot of interest in the Haas programs – which meant lots of questions. Last year I was one of the people asking the questions – so it felt really good to be on the other side. I wish I hadn’t forgotten to take pictures which I was planning to post here.

Then came Thursday when I found out that I’m going to move into a people management role at work. The only reason I don’t want to say I’m super-excited is because of how overused that word is at Microsoft. So let’s just say I’m super-duper excited. And could the timing be more perfect? I just finished the Leading People class also known as Org Behavior.

Speaking of the Leading People class, we had our final project presentations in class on Saturday. For the project we were asked to audit an organization (any organization), analyze a problem they are currently facing and then come up with recommendations to address the problem. The best part of the project for me was working with my team. It was amazing how well we got to know and adjust to each other’s working styles given that we were all strangers when we first started seven weeks ago. Also – I completely agree with Aaron that the first term went by way too fast. You are probably tired of hearing how quickly the time flies when you are juggling work and school – so I won’t say it (but it really does!)

Sunday was spent falling in and out of sleep in front of the TV – which helped me become human again.

I hope your week was as fun as mine was.

Until next time…
-S

This post was written while listening to ‘I Gotta Feeling’ by Black Eyed Peas.