IMBA Day 2 and halfway through Day 3

Yesterday was filled with administrivia (a word that the IT Director kept using): we had a brief tour of the one building that we have all of our classes in and took our pics (I’ll link to it when they post it online) for our ID’s, then we spent the afternoon with our laptops (Dell Latitude D610) and the intranet. Chief complaint: I can’t believe our laptops aren’t DVD-RW’s. C’mon. They gave us some neat software tools: Centra for VoIP teleconferencing and presentations, dedicated instant messenging software, and Camtasia Studio to create recorded presentations.

There was a reception in the evening where we were supposed to meet the professors and faculty. One of the faculty was a “poetry and religion” major so he and I had a short discussion on that. Essentially, he was a philosophy major who split into a more focused subject area. I encouraged him to start a blog and begin writing again. Most of the professors did not attend; the one that did, our economics professor, was mauled as everyone sought to shake his hand. Sometimes this class feels a little bit like the Apprentice. Everyone is open and friendly, but you can feel that undercurrent of sizing everyone up and the competitive gears starting to spin up-- too many Type-A personalities with the self-esteem burden of attending a Tier-2 MBA program. A few of us (cliques are forming already) went out to dinner afterward. The wait was supposed to be an hour, but I buttered up a waiter and got us a table in less than 5. I joked that I must have a way with men that I don’t with women because the hostess didn’t take the bait. My little group was particularly keen on hearing my personal life stories; for some odd reason, this has been a topic of interest for the past day or two. Our ringleader, a young PR rep from Lockheed, complimented me on my stories this morning.

This morning has been filled with classes: economics and professional writing. In fact, I’m writing this during my writing class. The professors are very engaging (it’s not the writing professor’s fault I’m not paying full attention) and the material looks good. All in all, so far, so good. It’s neat being on a campus, particularly since I missed this sort of experience at West Point and then doing distance work at the Universities of Texas and Maryland.