Whirl of events and a flurry of homework while my family waits

Pursuing an MBA is a fascinating experience, the Thursday night pub sessions particularly so, writes Gareth Keane

TUESDAYS AND Thursdays have become the highlights of my week. They feature, among other things, one of the classes which is rapidly becoming my favourite this quarter. Known as Manpaw (the official title is "Managing People at Work"), it concentrates on less tangible leadership skills and brings in concepts of organisational behaviour and design.

Our professor, Michael Useem, orchestrates the class like a conductor, bringing out experiences and anecdotes from everyone in my cohort that he uses to illustrate the lesson of the day. Each week we have also had a guest speaker who shares their experiences with us and helps to frame the class discussion. Some of these have been pre-announced, but sometimes Prof Useem uses his contacts and network to bring in a surprise guest.

Last week, for instance, as we filed into the class, there was a stranger sitting at the front of the room. He turned out to be William Lauder, the chief executive of the Estée Lauder companies, who spoke to us for the best part of an hour about how he manages a company with annual sales that exceed $7 billion (€5.45 billion) and over 32,000 employees.

Hearing first-hand from him about how he both motivates and communicates with his organisation was fascinating.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are also when I have my corporate finance class, taught by Franklin Allen. As someone with no background in finance I am finding the subject challenging but very interesting. Prof Allen spends the first 10 minutes of most classes discussing market conditions and developments, and his observations on the financial crisis are always very insightful.

Later on Thursday afternoons we are often given the chance to attend various lectures organised by some of Wharton's different departments and programmes. Last Thursday, Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola, spoke to a packed lecture hall on leadership, providing some insights into how his company has survived for so many years as a global market leader.

For most students though, the most exciting event of the week starts at about 5.30pm every Thursday afternoon. We don't have any class on Fridays, so, come Thursday evening, many of us make our way to the long-running tradition that is Wharton's weekly MBA pub. Held in one of the conference spaces in Wharton's many buildings, the pub offers an opportunity to unwind after the week and catch up with old friends along with meeting new ones.

Students pay the princely sum of $145 at the start of the year for year-long access, and are provided with all the beer they can drink every Thursday evening. There is also supposed to be free pizza, but this always seems to be hard to find - a classic example of scarce resources and high demand.

The pub is often sponsored by one of Wharton's student clubs, usually to promote an upcoming event. Two recent pub sponsors were the Wharton Net Impact club and the Wharton Energy club, both of which have held conferences in the last week.

Net Impact is a non-profit organisation that aims to make a positive impact on society by growing and strengthening a community of leaders who use business to improve the world. Wharton hosted the North American Net Impact conference this year, bring more than 2,000 attendees to the school for a weekend spent discussing ideas intended to create social and environmental value.

As volunteer assistant at this event, it was interesting to see so many talented MBA students from many of the top US business schools searching for careers that allow them to incorporate social responsibility into their professional lives. I was also able to catch up with a friend at Stanford's Graduate School of Business who was attending the event, and swap war stories about our business school experiences.

The Wharton Energy Club conference was a much smaller affair, held off-campus. Even events on this smaller scale are usually interesting, with panels at this conference that ranged from venture capitalists discussing renewable energy investment to a keynote address featuring the chief operating officer of a large petroleum company.

On most Fridays I find myself attending an event like this. Weekends fly by in a flurry of homework. My long-suffering family is patiently waiting for the Christmas break so they can get to know me again.

Gareth Keane, from Moycullen, Co Galway, is studying for an MBA at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

gkeane@wharton.upenn.edu