A Quarter of Booth, Told in Photos

Rather than compose a traditional blog post, Chris Hauck has shared the story of his first quarter of Booth through photographs. I hope you'll have as much fun as I did following what seems to have been a very busy and exciting quarter!

Dana
***

In my initial blog, I wrote a long post about the constant challenges you face in business school. However, now that you are working on another round of applications and probably reading and writing constantly, I wanted to do something lighter and actually show you my first quarter in pictures. This is an abbreviated list, but for even more pictures and updates from my first quarter, you can visit the photo album on the Booth Experience Facebook page.

With that said, let me take you through a very busy first quarter:

Uniquely Chicago
Understanding my first quarter at Booth means knowing the city I have called home for the last five months. The city you get your degree in will have a big effect on your overall experience. Does this mean Chicago is perfect for your experience? No. Each person thrives in different settings. However, it has been perfect for me. Let me show you...

My first week in the city, I met some of my new friends and headed down to the pier where they have a fireworks show every week during summer. This was one of the first moments it really clicked for me that I was actually going to Booth and kicking off a new adventure.

In October we took a trip out to a Cider Farm. For the record, I had very low expectations, but acquiesced to my friends. After eating a big meal, watching pig racing, driving Go Karts, navigating a corn maze and playing with farm animals, I was happy to admit I had been wrong.

Chicago’s annual Color Run. I normally hate waking up before 9:00am on a Sunday, but this was worth it. This “race” (some people run it, some people dance it) – is a corlorful trip through Chicago culminating in a DJed dance party at the finish line.

There’s perks to being a student. We secured $10 tickets from the University to see Les Misérables at the Cadillac Theater in Downtown Chicago.

And this is the view from my roof. After a long day of studying or recruiting, there are few better ways to unwind than having a glass of wine with my roommies up here.

LEAD
For those of you not familiar with LEAD, it is Booth’s leadership class. While I don’t have any pictures of the classroom portion, an important part of LEAD is the Leadership Retreat that happens during orientation.

Unlike the other sections, I can’t get into many details with LEAD. You just have to experience it. But I will tell you this is a “victory” picture after a heated competition. Ok, so maybe no one else would describe it as heated. I am just way too competitive. I’m working on it. In fact, I will be the best at not being too competitive.

And no retreat would be complete without an end of the weekend social. This is my roomies and me in our themed costumes preparing to head to the event.

The Booth Experience
If you are reading this, it’s probably no surprise that Booth has a lot of unique social, business and academic events. Here’s a few of them.

This is the Booth formal held early in the quarter. It’s a chance to dress up and socialize with your new classmates.

Booth holds an annual Leadership Challenge involving students and many of our prestigious alumni. Like LEAD, I can’t give details about the event. But it was undoubtedly one of the quintessential moments of my first quarter and helped me to network and grow as a person.

Booth brought in the CEO of Burger King to discuss the evolving concept of intrapreneurship and how it has helped spur growth in their organization.

Socializing with Boothies
Business school is also a great opportunity to network and make lifelong friends. And it’s a very unique setting. Similar to college, you’ll find yourself feeling very close to people here after the first couple of months. Having a great community is a key part of business school and has been a wonderful part of my Booth experience.

This is my first night hanging out in Chicago with my new roomies. Finding new roommates, thought mechanisms provided by Booth, and coordinating your move to Chicago are the first big business school challenges.

Of course everyone gets dressed up for Halloween. Zombies, fairy tale characters and business bunnies everywhere.

We had an unofficial Canadian culture night with some of the people in the Canadian Business Club. We started off by eating poutine at a local Canadian restaurant. Afterwards we drank Molson beer and watched episodes of Corner Gas.

For Thanksgiving, we hosted a big potluck for everyone who wasn’t flying home to enjoy the holiday with their families. Here, I made everyone smile and take an embarrassing picture for the blog before I would give them any Pumpkin Pie. I can be kind of evil like that.

The Startup Trek
The Startup Trek is a Booth tradition organized by the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Group, where students travel to various parts of San Francisco and Silicon Valley to meet with entrepreneurs running both brand new and relatively established startups. We also visited a firm that does legal work for starts ups and a VC firm. The following pictures are two of the highlight collages from specific days on the trek.

Day 2 Highlights:
Upper left: Sitting in the offices of Fenwick & West getting a lesson from a former University of Chicago MBA/JD on important structural considerations for new ventures.
Middle left: Riding the BART back to San Francisco at the end of the day to meet the rest of the group for dinner.
Lower left: Speaking with the CEO of Agile Diagnosis, a medical information startup run by multiple Boothies. It was also a winner of the New Venture Challenge, which helped them get into the prestigious Y Combinator.
Right rail: Group dinner at an Italian restaurant in the city with some executives from Tinyco.

Upper left: Talking with Booth graduate and Gen 110 co-founder inside of their offices in downtown San Francisco
Bottom left: Two trekkers checking directions between companies after leaving 42Floors
Upper right: Beautiful Christmas tree erected in the middle of the city we saw while walking to dinner
Bottom right: We joined a Booth alumni event for fine food and cocktails at the end of a fun day.

This was my first quarter. Obviously, this doesn’t include class or recruiting where you can’t walk around taking pictures. For even more pictures and updates from my first quarter, you can visit the photo album on the Booth Experience Facebook page.

Getting Comfortable with Being Vulnerable

When Chris Hauck first approached me to be a DSAC Blogger, I immediately knew he would be a perfect fit for the team. Although it's only his first quarter at Booth, he is extremely involved and his photographs always capture the energy of the Booth community. In his introductory post, Chris truly lives up to expression "nothing ventured, nothing gained".

-Dana
***

I remember my hands sweating. My heart racing. Laying awake at night trying to quiet my mind as it raced to think of possible solutions to whatever hurdle was ahead. GMAT, applications, interviews – every step left me feeling exposed and forced me to examine every nuance of my life. And while getting into my dream school was a great feeling, it wasn’t the end of the process of opening myself up to critique and letting myself feel vulnerable. Every moment at Booth thus far has centered around stepping outside of my comfort zone and learning how to be a better person and professional than the day before.

For me, the first big adjustment was leaving California. I’ve spent my whole life there. I grew up in Sacramento and moved to Los Angeles to attend UCLA. I loved LA; the city was filled with great friends, great opportunities and so many beautiful people. It’s a wonderful place to be young and explore the world. I spent the next few years there doing recruitment and then transitioned into strategy for an agency that specialized in online marketing and digital products. But I was also a little too comfortable and I realized that growing as a person would mean leaving California and getting outside of my bubble. Selling everything, leaving all of my friends behind and moving halfway across the country was harder than it may sound. However, learning to live with two new roomates coming from divergent backgrounds and meeting new friends who were previously living all over the world has been a tremendous experience, even if I still find myself thinking longingly of LA weather every time I see snow falling outside my window. Still, I have loved growing as a person and adapting to Chicago, my new home.





When LEAD started, suddenly I had to become vulnerable again. LEAD is Booth’s leadership development program. It’s a fantastic class which will help you grow as a leader both personally and professionally. However, it’s not a theoretical class where you read about great leaders from history. It’s experiential. It involves receiving constant feedback from facilitators, peers, past coworkers and even having to watch yourself on video. I have rarely experienced so many moments as simultaneously exciting and frightening as receiving detailed feedback on every word, interaction and non-verbal cue I have exuded in real-life situations. However, it’s not just sitting in a chair that constitutes vulnerability. It was letting my defenses down and hearing that I don’t always listen well enough or seeing a video where I clearly touch my face too often as a physical crutch that was difficult, but these instances spurred real growth for me in a short amount of time. And receiving positive feedback on that growth and seeing it for myself as the class progressed was a transformational experience.





And then my classes began. I came to Booth with a strong background in marketing and strategy. While my job entailed doing regular analysis, none of it was very complex. One of my big motivations for coming to Booth was the school’s strong reputation for rigorous academics and its focus on analyzing data and questioning assumptions. As great as my professors have been, this isn’t like "The Matrix". They haven’t quite mastered a way to download advanced regressions and econometrics into my brain. So stepping foot in the classroom for the first time and actually learning these concepts was a challenge. It would have been easy for me to take marketing and strategy classes aligned with my work experience, but that isn’t why I came here. Committing to hours of studying and the highs and lows of significantly upgrading my quantitative skills meant leaving behind what was comfortable, and challenging myself to grow as a person each and every day. Fortunately, I’ve found that I am not alone in this process. I have great friends, study groups, peer groups, second years, faculty and school advisors there to push me and support me even on the days where I am exhausted trying to overcome another plateau.



It’s not easy. And it’s not something I will be finished with this quarter. Recruiting. Co-organizing the Reaching Out MBA conference for next fall. Interning in a new city and in a new industry this summer. Even submitting this blog to my peers for review and no doubt, some tough editing. Becoming vulnerable and stepping outside of your comfort zone is a quintessential part of the Booth experience. It’s how you grow as a person. It’s how you become a better professional. And it will continue well beyond school and into your career. But despite the challenges, it’s been an energizing and amazing experience. And it’s why I encourage you to make yourself vulnerable and learn to embrace this process as you finish your applications for all of your dream schools. Even as your hands are sweating, your heart is racing, and you are lying awake at night trying to quiet your mind as it races to think of possible solutions to whatever hurdle is ahead of you now. Take a risk and learn to be comfortable outside of your comfort zone.