Search Yale School of Management
  1. MBA
  2. Reflection

Reflection

Paul Ip | May 27, 2008

I'm here in my apartment sorting through all the stuff that has accumulated over the two years I've been here. The worst part of this exercise is going through the "pile" of random things that invariably grows. Right now I'm sorting through that pile, and I'm finding some interesting things. The most interesting curiousities are in the Welcome Weekend stuff that I still have for some reason. Yup... Welcome Weekend 2006, where this journey began. Included is a list of all the people that were at Welcome Weekend two years ago, which upon closer examination has quite a few c/o 2009 students on it. (And just so Bruce and Linda don't have a heart attack, let me also point out that no, we don't allow deferrals.) It was also interesting seeing the names that I ticked off as people that I met that I thought were good people. Some were wrong, but included were the names of Patrick Ma and Mamoun Elbashir, two of my study group counterparts that I've spent a ton of time with over the past two years. I also found some notes that I wrote down about people that I met. Yes, I know all of you now, but I also knew that meeting 100+ people at once usually doesn't work too well for me. The notes were mostly accurate, which is surprising considering how much we've developed over the past two years. Also included are all the club things that I picked up - artifacts of my asipirations when I was coming in. Included are a Ski and Snowboard club flyer (done!), a YCCI flyer (sigh... done...), info about the Global Social Enterprise trip to Madagascar (applied for, but alas went to Morocco instead), a Marketing Club flyer (done!), and a printout of career roadmaps with Business Development, General Management, International Development, Marketing, and Sustainable Finance highlighted. Gleefully crossed out were Hedge Funds, International Development (yes... after highlighting), and Investment Banking. I also had some company names already listed out on a notepad in my folder. My target companies at Welcome Weekend:

  • Google

  • Microsoft

  • Pepsi

  • P&G

  • Washington Mutual

  • Fidelity?

  • Canon

  • Adobe?

  • Yahoo

So I think the mystery of when I started thinking about Microsoft still hasn't been solved, but I've already clearly developed a Seattle bias (as well as a consumer-facing product bias). Pepsi and P&G? That was before I discovered my scorn for CPG. (-: Also in the pile - 12 Yale nametags accumulated after various events, ranging from Admissions Visitor, career panelist, to just plain old Paul Ip '08.