TMMBA Week in the Life: Radu Mocanita, Day 1

 Radu Mocanita, TMMBA Student, Class of 2015

Hello everyone

My name is Radu and I am a TMMBA student here at Foster School of Business. For the next 7 posts I’ll be your host, trying to bring insights into a week of a TMMBA student. Hopefully this will answer at least some of your questions about what it really means to be a part time MBA student, while dealing with a full time job. I am in class 14, with an expected graduation date of June ’15., which means that I basically just started. To be precise, I started exactly two months ago, so you’ll get a pretty fresh perspective on the topic. Sure, there was Immersion Week in December but that was so fun that it doesn’t count as studying.

However, let’s not diverge too much and get back to our topic. So how does a week in the life of a TMMBA student go? Let me tell you. Today is Monday, I love Mondays. Actually, I used to love Mondays, now I am not that sure anymore. Monday is my school day, so I wake up at 8 am and go to work. I work fast, as I can’t really afford the luxury of doing overtime – yes, in case you didn’t know, working overtime can become a luxury when time is your most important asset. I figured these things out in the first couple of weeks in the program.

Don’t get me wrong. The time management and workload is all according to expectations. When you make a decision to do this kind of thing, you do your due diligence and chat with as many people as you can, in order to get an insight into what’s it going to be like – read blog posts, talk to alumni, visit a class, ask questions to staff members and so forth. If it doesn’t surprise you, it’s quite manageable. What you need to do is to get some time management best practices in place to help you optimize your schedule.

Coming back to our topic, it’s 4:30 pm already, so I am getting ready to head out. Today I’ll head down there earlier than usual as we have a great talk scheduled from 5 to 6. It’s the Tech @ The Top series, and today we’ll have Mr. Michael Schutzler, Chief Executive Officer at the Washington Technology Industry Association to share his stories as an Internet entrepreneur and angel investor – I wouldn’t want to miss that!

Six o’clock comes, so we all get ready for a new class. Today we have Accounting, or Financial Reporting and Analysis on its fancy name. But before that, we got some student presentations going on for about 15 minutes, for the Professional Communication class. It’s a good opportunity to improve your communication and presentation skills as you get peer feedback and a personal coaching session with the teacher, so we all pay close attention to tonight’s speakers. 6 15, class starts. I am already feeling a bit tired but luckily, in anticipation of tonight’s class, I already had a second coffee at about 4 so I’m hanging in pretty good. The Accounting teacher is great but my mind starts slipping towards the free ice cream that I’ll get at break time. Ok, back to the slides, how are we doing those T-accounts again?

Finally 7 45, break time. Ice cream, more chit chat. We laugh, we laugh good. There’s a general feeling of sympathy for the folks who struggle next to you. We make fun of our energy… or lack of it. 15 minutes later, back to class with fresh energy for the next 90 minutes. At 9 30 we’re done and I reach home at about 10. What’s left of the evening is my night off. Tonight I won’t study, won’t worry and won’t stress. Tonight I accomplished my duties and is now time to relax. I grab my wife and watch a movie. Tonight is all good. More, tomorrow.

Radu