By 
“During his frantic first year at Stanford Business School, Peter Robinson kept a journal of his day-to-day impressions that became this book, the writing of which he came to see as a “simple act of decency, like going back to school.” last quiet bend in the river and nailing up a sign that says ‘Waterfall Ahead'”.
I got this book from my uncle as a graduation present, to push me to the next level!
In the solitude of my rented room, I giggled reading this joke written by the former speechwriter for Presidents Reagan and Bush. Robinson also writes about business and politics as a fellow at the Hoover Institute.
I instantly connected with Robinson from his first words:
My friend Steven warned me before I came here that most of my classmates would be former engineers, consultants, and financial analysts, people who knew how to work with numbers.
“Then there will be some students with flaky backgrounds like yours,” he said. “Poets. You know, people who have never done anything real for a living.”
Every time I tell someone I work in corporate communications, images of cameras clicking, glamorous celebrities, sumptuous buffets, and fantastic giveaways come to mind.
Along with this also came comments that I had the BEST job in the world as I didn’t have to do anything but dress up, smile at people and take pictures. Like!
No one except those in the public relations/media industry will understand the pains of
- send press releases to the media,
- endless follow-up calls with busy (and sometimes grumpy) Editors,
- have your speech or draft press releases edited for the tenth time,
- miss that opportunity to take a split-second photo of the president of the organization or
- the drudgery of stuffing media packages with press releases and other collateral.
In the same vein, Robinson puts up with his smart and cocky classmates like twenty-six-year-old Joe Toscana, who majored in economics at Rutgers University and later worked as a financial analyst at Salomon Brothers, a large investment bank. Joe rushes through business classes and shows promise of being a teacher’s favorite.
Robinson sticks with Connor O’Flaherty, an Irish philosophy major who made him feel better because:
“The commute to business school is an hour there and an hour back. And since we have a little boy, when I get home at night, I have to spend time being a parent.”
I myself am a minor in Administration, I empathize with him when he writes,
I have already attended the first session of each of my five basic courses. I don’t understand Trees (Decision Making under Uncertainty). I don’t understand computers. I don’t understand Micro (economics). I don’t understand Accounting. I understand organizational behavior as it is about words rather than numbers. But I don’t like it. So what am I doing in business school?
It also made me wonder if he would fail midway since his “Trees” class is taught by the 20-year-old genius from Lebanon, Omar Kemal, while Micro (economics) has the menacing, monochromatic Yeager who reminds me of my super-intelligent and relentless Extra math teacher who sped through lessons so fast they nicknamed her “The Night Express”…
You’ll need to read the book to find out if Robinson graduates. Workers thinking of doing their MBA part-time will get a sense of the homework load, group discussions, group projects, and hectic final exams that a full-time graduate student encounters.
Even if Robinson is shaken like a fish out of water, I think he appreciated the great mathematical and managerial minds he had the chance to mingle with at this top American business school. Exposure in a truly international university community also helped this outgoing and open-minded student.