Roast chicken and other things

I dunno what triggered this line of thought, but I suddenly realised this morning that I feel I'm becoming less personal on my blog than I feel I've been before. It's somehow become less about me and how I experience the MBA than about the MBA itself. As of now, I'll try and better my life and write more about what this whole MBA-sha-bang is doing to me.... ;-) (now, don't all run away at once!).

On the top left a picture of the lemon and thyme roast chicken and potatoes I cooked on Sunday. My housemate and myself (grammar??) were having a classmate and his girlfriend over for dinner and it was so lovely sitting down and enjoying good company, good wine and good food. One of the most overwhelming experiences for me so far is meeting a whole horde of nice, interesting, friendly, helpful people who've become housemates, studygroup mates, stream buddies and friends. I hadn't really thought about this when I was doing my applications, but for me that's been one of the best sides of London Business School so far.

Another aspect of school which has been very helpful is Career Services. We've had sessions on CV writing, an overview of the job market, an opportunity to get a half hour CV surgery (which I had yesterday and it was extremely helpful in trying to reanimate my ailing CV to a lively and healthy one!), a one-on-one session with a career coach and of course the Telling and Selling your Story workshop a few days ago. There's more to come, which I'll report back about in due course, but already I've got the feeling like I'm well prepared to take on this career-search-followed-by-job-search thing!

My one-on-one session with a career coach was really interesting. One of the coaches here at London Business School is Mohan Mohan, who used to work for Proctor and Gamble, is now retired and as a hobby comes in and talks to students. For me, I went in with the idea of talking to someone about my career who doesn't know me personally to get an objective view and when I stumbled out an hour later, I was overwhelmed and it gave me so much food for thought that my head is still spinning. I'm not quite sure if I want to go public with the details yet since I'm unsure about what this all means to me and how to make sense of my feelings, but I will at some point in the future.

I have to run off now, we're supporting our stream's football team (ie soccer for the Americans amongst the readers) followed by some last minute practice for the Indian dance some of my fellow classmates and me will perform at the talent show tonight. It just occured to me: my MBA is full of firsts: first time cheering on a football squad, first time roasting chicken, first time doing indian dance... and I *love* my first times!

[edit 1: RsR has put up some information on the upcoming Media Summit and a request for help on his blog, please check it out if you're interested/can help]