WP Carey Orientation, Prelude

This is a chronicle of my experiences in Arizona. For those of you who don't know, or have forgotten, I have decided to persue my MBA at Arizona State through the WP Carey school of business's online program. There are a lot of reasons why I chose ASU over some of the other options, including cost (WP Carey is cheaper than most other similar options, and they don't nickle and dime you to death), schedule (you only take 1 class at a time so you can really focus down on one subject), vacation schedule (four 1-week breaks and two 6-week breaks, as compared to four 1-week breaks at Indiana), responsiveness of their support staff, rigor of the program (they use the same faculty to do their classroom and online programs, and the program is the same level of difficulty), etc...

At the beginning of ASU's online program, you are required to attend a 1 week orientation where they show you the ropes and you get to meet the people you'll be going to virtual school with. WP Carey admits 50 students per half-year, and all 50 students (who are called a cohort) take the same classes in the same order. A big part of orientation is getting to know your fellow classmates, and especially the 5 of them that make up the team you'll be working with for the next two years. As you might imagine, there's always a little bit of apprehension about who your teammates are going to be, and whether they will pull their weight...

Arizona is awesome in the winter -- 73 degrees and sunny every day. As Ivy (the orientation coordinator) said, "The Winter cohorts are smarter because they know not to come to Arizona in the summer". So true. As mentioned in the previous entry, we stayed in the embassy suites, which were about 3 miles south of the campus in Tempe, AZ.

Okay, enough prelude. Let's get to the good stuff.