AdmitMBA360 Blog formerly Journey to my MBA

Journey to my MBA

Monday, August 23, 2004

Finished my Test and now back to GMAT

The last 4 days have been pretty killer. I thought my last class was moderatly hard. This one is 3-4 times more work. Well see how I did. x <-- crossing fingers.

Last week, I found out that the school offered tutoring for $60 for the whole session. I didn't think I would get much out of it, but thought it might be a good opportunity to meet some new people and find some study partners. We had a review on Friday and it went so badly that I thought I was going to cry. I had A LOT of areas that I wanted to go over because the teacher in my opinion had done such a horrible job on them and the book didn't cover them. I went to the prof's office hours a couple of times and never found him there. Realizing how aloof he was, I knew that I had to take matters into my own hands.

I literally grabbed his butt after class on Friday and went over material with him for 2 hours. I leaned into him really hard about him not being there for office hours. Thankfully, he felt bad enough that he gave me his time. I know it was risky to do that, but.... I thought he deserved it. I guess others saw what I was doing and followed us to an onsite Cafeteria to go over questions. There were 30 of us! That's what he gets for not being available. The guy never returns any of my e-mails either. Both my e-mails were to let him know that he had wrong info on the class web site.

As I can't write much on my GMAT or MBA progress.. I'll share what else surprised me about my study prep. Friday, I studied pretty hard. But felt a bit helpless on taking in all the info. So Friday night, I sent out a late e-mail to the entire tutor group of 20 people and invited them to a review session on Sunday from noon to 5pm. Just to make it seem more interesting, I wrote that I would provide free food and drinks. I created an agenda, made some notes on how the review might be handled and prepared review material. I recieved 2-3 e-mails from people saying they would attend and said that they would bring desserts or other food items. I thought I might get a response from about that many so I was pleased.

I spent Saturday digging in and moved my understanding of the material to about 80% readiness. Sunday came. When I went to the designated review location, I was surprised to find 6 people waiting for me. Within 10 minutes 4 more people showed up. Soon 6 more showed up. Apparently, they invited people from outside the tutor group to join.

I wasn't sure how people would receive my review invite because nobody knew me. I found out later that many of the students had noticed how I ask many questions during class and seem to follow the lecture with the prof well. They thought, I might be one of those "smart people". Uh, I guess that's why so many came. Despite that, I was glad to be studying with people I could discuss the material with.

So I sat there staring at these 16 faces wondering how we might have a productive review session with so many people. I had thought we might start from the beginning and go over each area and have various people explain on a whiteboard the bullet points and nuances of the material and then go over some sample tests the prof had provided. I decided to start it off so as to model what I was thinking it might look like to go through the material. Long story short, I stood in front of the white board for 9 hrs going over 4 weeks worth of lecture material. The group kept asking me to continue.

For about 20% of the material, I asked other students to take over who knew the material better because I needed the help in learning some material. Some students volunteered and did their best to explain the material. It was helpful and it moved my prep readiness to 90%. Alone, I know I couldn't have got my prep that high.

1/2 way through, another 1/2 dozen people strolled in and sat in with us. During some of our breaks, some of the students invited others they knew in the class and told them that they had better get their butts into the review because according to the group... it was going incredibly well. I guess they liked the way I was presenting the material and identifying bullet points of information and asking everyone to answer made-up on the spot questions I thought we sould know the answer to. For example, how does this idea in lecture 1 relate to lecture 6 material. It was fun, but oh so draining.

A huge plus was that several of the students had laptops and when a nuance of a topic that I thought we should know wasn't clear, several students would search the internet for the info while a few others would look through the class textbook and various other books. 3-4 of the students had also brought some old tests from the class that I didn't know about from various connections. I lead us through the test material and was really getting excited by all the resources that were brought together to help one another increase our prep for the test.

During the day, some of the students pulled me aside and asked me why I was holding the review. They couldn't believe somebody would take such an intiative to help others and affect the grading curve by helping people. I told them that the challenge should not really be the other students, but the material. Later, they all pitched in and bought me dinner, candy and drinks as we progressed.

I knew that sharing the depth of my study prep to a group of people potentially putting me in a position of being taken advantage of. However, I was totally rewarded with resources I didn't even know existed. Having 1/2 a dozen people research the answers of topics we needed to understand better was like having my own office full of research clerks. It felt so good to be able to tell 3 or 4 people to look up a topic on the internet, bookA, bookB and the notes. We had answers to our questions really quick.

It was a good feeling to walk into the test and see 20 or so faces just so happy to see me. I had made some new friends. After the test, many of the students thanked me profusely because so much of the material and specific questions I had asked us to understand had been on the test. Many of the students have already asked me when my Final Review session would be.

On a side note, one the students who joined us was a student taking a summer class with us who actually attend Harvard undergraduate. She was incredibly bright and I could clearly see that she was a notch above the most of the group. It made me excited to think I could go to school with her level of sharpness and smarts.

So now, I'm going to be hitting the GMAT test prep again. I had rewarded myself today with a good lunch with some of the students from my review session and a movie. Now for a good night rest.

Another note about Dirty_martini and wakechick. All I can say is WOW! They got it together. What I noticed about both of them is that they are mature beyond their years and love to be challenged. I can easily see them both leading a company.

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