Got "oriented" and getting "ready"

After 3 weeks in Austra, last week I was back in Seattle for a weekend and then off again to San Francisco for orientation. Pretty interesting.

First off, I got my laptop - a sweet HP with a Duo Core Centrino, 2GB of RAM, 128MB ATI graphics card, and a 100GB HDD.

Secondly, I enrolled in all this HR stuff. The benefits aren't bad, but it's hard for me to be content since my previous benefits were supposed to be the best of the best. Compared to that, these benefits are alright... I think I'll need to work at an average company to know the difference.

Thirdly, I got to meet all these summer folks who are in the middle of business school. I think there were 3 people from HBS and 3 from Sloan - I think these schools ended earlier so they started earlier? It was pretty interesting talking to them and hearing their perspectives. All of them made it very clear that they thought business school was worth it, although I must say a few of them would probably have had a hard time working at a consulting firm if they didn't go to b-school given their previous careers. Naturally, none of them thought that they would be consultants since I'm sure that does NOT make a good career aspiration essay, but somehow they ended up in the same place as me... haha.... the true test is to see how many of them actually come back full time next year.


This week, I'm down in Silicon Valley for consulting readiness training. That's right, one more week of training before they let me out in the wild. It really does say a lot about a company who's willing to train you for 5 weeks before you do anything. Also, I found out that I'm actually free to the client for the first few projects. Boy those guys have a steal ;)