Shopping for classes

We second years are in the process of choosing classes for our last semester at Haas. Where did the time go? There's a lot of good stuff being offered. The classes that seem to be creating the most buzz are: Pricing, Creativity and Innovation in Marketing, Creativity and Personal Mastery, Negotiations and Conflict Resolution, and Game Theory.

If there's one common thread running through each of these courses, it is the quality and reputation of each professor teaching each class. Seeking out the best faculty in business school is so important - sometimes I wonder whether it's even more important than the content we're learning in class.

This semester, I seemed to have stumbled onto a neat mix of courses. After shopping around for classes during the first two weeks of the semester (something I never did in college because, as an athlete, free time was so hard to come by), I finally settled on my current schedule.

My classes have fallen into two clusters. Microfinance, Social Enterprise and Socially-Responsible Investing is the first cluster --- the orientation is toward the social and non-profit sectors in some way. The second cluster is Negotiations and Conflict Resolution, and Power and Politics. These are oriented toward the organizational behavior elements of a business education. I'm really glad I chose to combine the latter two into one semester. Not a week goes by that I don't apply the learnings in one to the assignments in the other.

The key is shopping for classes. You're only in business school for two years, and you only have so much time within those two years to take electives. Be picky!