Finally

Wow, what can I say?  I'm finally here.  It's been 20 months since I first mailed my application to London Business School for the MBA Class of 2009.  I spent two months waiting for an interview decision, a month waiting for an admissions decision, five months on the waitlist, and then another month waiting for a deferred admissions decision.  Once I received an offer for the MBA Class of 2010, I had another eleven months to wait for classes to actually begin.  Those were perhaps the longest months of my life, during which time I tried to distract myself with a month-long trip backpacking though Indonesia and another month visiting friends and family back in the States. Needless to say, I had an incredible summer.

Now that I've arrived  in London, moved into my flat, met my classmates, and begun orientation, I'm finding it difficult to express everything I've been feeling lately.  I'm continuously amazed at the variety of my classmates; MBA2010 is represented by 60 different countries and 45 different languages. The level of achievement that some of my classmates have already accomplished is impressive, as well as the mix of different careers.   My classes are filled with surgeons, lawyers, helicopter pilots, bankers, theoretical nuclear physicists, ex-politicians, entrepreneurs, and a famous concert pianist.  I have truly never been surrounded by this many highly accomplished, successful people... and it feels great!

To say I've been busy would be an understatement;  even prior to orientation everyone was busy partying networking, usually in the form of housewarming parties, pub crawling in Marylebone, or clubbing in Piccadilly.  Now that orientation has started, we're spending our days at Lord's Cricket Ground (its like baseball... sorta... but it lasts days) listening to school administrators and alumni talk about what the next 21 months will hold in store for us, and our evenings doing more... erhm... networking.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I've had to find time to go food shopping (for your own sanity, do not do the dollar/pound conversion in your head if you ever come to London... and especially don't do the RMB/pound conversion); set up internet in my apartment flat; register myself with the 1,000 groups, clubs, and activities I'm interested in; and answer the 1.5 billions emails received each day from the school's Portal.  To say I've been busy would be a vast understatement, and I get the feeling that our level of activity now with pale in comparison to how busy we'll be once classes begin next week.