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Diary of an MBA

Date: 10 Feb 2010

Published: The Sunday Times

Author: Siobhan O'Dowd

So I made it through the first term. After hitting the ground running, I limped across the finish line delightedly after jumping the hurdles of Strategy, Ethics, Marketing and Decision Making. Or admittedly tripping a little on the latter. In my defence, while I have a good grasp on sorting names alphabetically for a guest list, the notion of Microsoft Excel being a breeding ground for shapes, probabilities and calculations was entirely new. As a learning curve, it was more along the gradient of the cliffs of Moher than the Sugar Loaf.

To explain, the first semester was broken into two six-week sections. In the first half, the classes were Financial Reporting & Accountancy and Strategy. The second half consisted of Ethics, Decision Making & Data Analysis, and Performance Driven Marketing. Due to my “fashionably late” entrance, that first half is a blur. I holed up in Bellinter House (a gorgeous - and distraction free - country house hotel in Navan) for a 24-hour study marathon to get to grips with Porter and Mintzberg, and that was the Strategy exam covered. For Financial Reporting, I had to call in the big guns. My recently retired mum taught accountancy, and between her and my newly qualified Cousin Orla, they effectively saved my life. I wouldn’t say I cruised it, but I could now make a stab at what IAS 16 relates to, and what a Statement of Changes in Equity should or shouldn’t show. The week between the two six week blocks was amazing – it felt like a holiday to “only” be working full time.

The rest of the semester kicked off with a crash course in Ethics. I heard people described as “assets to be sweated” and had to do an essay on marketing cigarettes to children. I began with a critique of the evidence and energetically debated the possible pros and cons of their strategy, and then had a reality check and conceded that I was subconsciously an Ethical vacuum, and that marketing tobacco to kids is just plain wrong on every level. Ethics 1: Siobhan 0.

As for Performance Driven Marketing? Loved it. If you can imagine feeling slightly out of your depth, and then being thrown a life belt decorated with the five C’s and the four P’s?! Being at least “conversational” in segmentation and positioning was a serious confidence boost, and the group project was – at the risk of sounding like a complete geek – fun. We chose a Pod event in the planning stages for next spring, and having a “real life” scenario to work with really helped build our enthusiasm (as well as providing some market research I probably wouldn’t have had time to do otherwise). Win-win really.

I think I probably expected too much from Decision Making. Imagine if you actually learnt the error of your ways, and never, ever made a bad decision ever again? At the very least it would curb my “Food Envy” (I always want what the other person at the table is eating). At most I would become an invincible force in the office, continually making the right call at the right time. This didn’t exactly transpire. And typically, although I only missed two classes the entire semester, they were both in Decision Making, the ones I really couldn’t afford not to attend. One no-show was so frustrating because I was only ten minutes up the road at the O2 with Backstreet Boys, The second was because I was at the UK Festival Awards, which I managed to put my guilt aside for and thoroughly enjoy.

Having seen my pathetic efforts at two-way risk analysis, tornado diagrams and basic Decision Trees, a kindly classmate offered to dedicate a Saturday afternoon to the cause. We met in the Odessa Club, and at one stage I did wonder if we looked a bit strange. There we were, spread out over two sofas with laptops and calculators and files and reams of paper and furrowed brows muttering things like “ahhh the EMV not the NP’ amidst the December shoppers in for a fortifying lunch. A quick glance in the corner to where a knitting circle had magically formed for a “stitch and bitch” confirmed that we were the second-least obscure of the Odessa Club residents. If it wasn’t for Fionnuala and that Saturday afternoon… to quote a class mate, certain death by hanging from the branches of a Decision Tree…

From December 13th (the last exam) to January 16th (back for “Professional Development”) stretched out like a never-ending window of opportunity. Aside from Christmas and New Year, those four precious weeks were my chance to catch up with and get a head start on work, tidy desk (more accurately try to find desk under sea of post-its and junk), visit relations, see friends, spring clean house, read Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series, tax the car, go to Ikea, over indulge for December and detox for January.

When doing the MBA – or anything that takes up about 20 hours a week when you didn’t have that time available to begin with – it’s interesting how your perspective shifts. Going from having absolutely no free time to having even a little bit means that the possibilities become endless. Every evening becomes a blank canvas for doing something. There was going for a walk on Sandymount Strand with Atchoo (the dog) and to buying a caravan for one hundred euro (the project: via a book on DIY upholstery and some nice lighting it will be five-star for Electric Picnic). There was also putting twenty on Barney at ten to one to win the darts and being devastated (the pints helped) to see him knocked out in the semis, as well as afternoon tea and Namorama (a snakes and laddersish board game with the aim of advancement to the Nirvana of Nama via dodging tribunals, keeping an inflated paper value on holdings, while desperately trying to set opponents back). The last week or two has been super.

I had great plans of using the Christmas break to get a head start on next semester, but I’ll be lucky if I get enough time to print off the notes. Work needs as much attention as I can give it at the moment so the mysteries of Financial Valuations & Markets and Business Economics will have to wait a little longer to be unraveled. Perhaps I’ll be able to up my game at Namorama by the end of it, if nothing else.

Siobhan O’Dowd is a student on the executive MBA course at UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School and will be writing a monthly column for the Education page on her experiences. For further information on the Smurfit MBA programmes visit smurfitschool.ie

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