In a little more than 2 days, I’ll officially be a Duke MBA grad!!! I looked back at my previous blog posts and noticed that I haven’t posted anything related to the WEMBA program since Term 4! Well, the simple reason is that Term 5 was action packed and didn’t include the usual break. Along […]

What happened? My plan to blog each class weekend seriously fell apart this term. I think there just wasn’t enough time….or I didn’t *make* time. At any rate, here’s the scoop… Term 4 Courses: Corporate Strategy Organizational Design (Leadership) Operations Management This is by far the most interesting term for me personally. The Leadership course […]

In case you’re wondering…yes, I’m still alive (barely)! I survived the most difficult term of the MBA program for me personally and have definitely taken full advantage of the break following Term 3 final exams. At this point, all I’d like to say about the term is that it’s over. I learned a lot and […]

What can I say? The fact that I’ve been unable to blog about any of these weekends individually speaks for itself. This has without a doubt been the most difficult term of the program so far. It’s especially tough since it coincides with the holidays (I’m *so* far behind)! Throughout the past couple of months, […]

The 3 week break between terms went by WAY too fast! This weekend started on Thursday (a bonus day) with a great guest lecture by Martha Rogers, co-author of Return on Customer. The lecture was optional but I’m definitely glad I attended. It provided valuable insights into understanding the value of a customer and using […]

Final exams for Term 2 are now a thing of the past! Decision Models featured a take home final that took me over 30 hours to complete, but was very interesting (one problem each – decision trees, Monte Carlo simulation, and optimization). I learned a lot while working on these exam problems and I would […]

This was the big “wrap-up” weekend before Term 2 final exams! New material was still presented on Friday and Saturday, but the dominant theme (at least from my perspective) was course completion. Our team handed in its remaining official assignments (a Decision Models optimization case and a Marketing case focused on market research). We then […]

Friday Today started off gloomy as the remnants of Tropical Storm Ernesto swept through the area (light rain/wind). The morning began with a discussion of optimization in Decision Models (using an Excel add-in called Solver). We then discussed pricing strategies in Economics before lunch and finished the day with an introduction to pricing from a […]

Duke’s Fuqua School of Business (where I am a WEMBA student) recently established a partnership with Habitat for Humanity of Durham called “At Bat for Habitat”. The main fundraising event for this initiative took place last night at the final home game of the Durham Bulls. Once $50,000 is raised, Fuqua students will work together […]

Friday: I was already somewhat sleep deprived after a long night of studying for today’s Managerial Economics mid term. Little did I know that my definition of sleep deprived was about to radically change! The mid term began at 8 AM and was scheduled for the duration of the class (2 hours, 45 minutes). Once […]