And the MBA begins

Last week I began my two pre-program courses: Quantitative Analysis and Financial Accounting. Both of these courses lasted one week total, 3 hours per day each.

Schedule:
12pm - 3:00pm - Quantitative Analysis
4.30pm-7:30pm - Financial Accounting
minimum 3 hours studying every night including weekend

The 3pm to 4pm break is my lunch break, as usually in Spain you have lunch around 2pm or so. Since this schedule is so odd, most of the students are chomping on some crackers or have a coffee during the break, and then at lunch we just have enough time to go grab a sandwich somewhere (if we don't have to study for the next class).

I'm really glad that I went to the pre-program class because if I didn't, I would be in tears when I start the MBA. To give you an idea of what we have covered in 5 days, I'll list out some of the basic topics.

Quantitative Analysis: Imagine that you have learned the concepts and all formulas for:
numerical calculus, probability and conditional probability, descriptive and inferential statistics..and then after you learn these you finally learn its application in excel. This does NOT mean, of course, that you can skip memorizing the formulas. Grr. This is stuff that I learned in high school and even then I didn't care for it that much. I feel like we have crammed a year's worth of math into 5 days. In fact, the professor mentioned that the descriptive and inferential statistics would usually be a 6-month class in the university, but since we are MBAs we get it in one class. Lucky us.

Financial Accounting: Much of this is a blur because there was so much, but the end result is that we know how to do accounting from ground up. Basically I became my own Quicken software, balancing the books from each account, then accruing and depreciating whatever was needed, then writing up all financial statements that a company should have: Income Statement, Statement of Retained Earnings, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement. You excited yet? Yeah, me too.

Every day at school was different but the stress was high just because you go through so much information in such little time that you feel it's impossible for anyone to absorb the material. In fact, I barely could sleep that week. I kept having nightmares and tossing/turning due to the stress I guess. (o quizas por comer el embutido por la noche) So even though I feel good about finishing the pre-program course, it also makes me quite worried to find out what the rythm will be during the real courses. I'm preparing myself for barely having a life. Maybe that way I'll be pleasantly surprised!