FEMBA Speaks

Preparing for FEMBA

Hi Everyone,

Here is a fun and useful post from Terry Shea, a FEMBA 2016 student. It is very well written and contains useful tips as you start this new journey of the FEMBA program. I recommend to connect with Terry on LinkedIn too. Here is his LinkedIn profile URL - https://www.linkedin.com/pub/terry-shea/13/27/a85

  

Preparing for FEMBA

By Terry Shea

Every FEMBA remembers getting accepted to UCLA Anderson. You get that mid-day phonecall from the admissions office congratulating you. Then you do your victory dance – you know the one where you pump your fists and swing your hips in the middle of your office. Then you sign your Letter of Intent. Here is what to expect next: 

1. Paperwork. There are many forms to complete simply because there is so much to experience at UCLA Anderson. I found the best way to keep track of these is to create an ongoing checklist as you receive new forms from the school. 

2. Invitations to School and Alumni Events. On the following weekend after I was accepted, the UCLA Anderson Alumni Association held an event at Arrowhead Pond for a Ducks game. We met their CFO in their executive reception room and enjoyed the game from the luxury boxes. You want to attend these alumni events when invited because it gives you an early snapshot of what your future holds as a Bruin. I also met some of my future classmates here. Other school events include: class visits, orientations, All-Anderson Networking Event, Career Management Workshop, and various Happy Hours. You want to take advantage of these. 

3. Meet Lots of New Friends and Arrange Meetups. Join the FEMBA 2017 Facebook group, attended meetups arranged by classmates, and set up your own meetups. One of my meetups was a hike up to the Hollywood Sign:

 

I cannot emphasis enough the value of arranging many meetups with your classmates before Leadership Foundations start. Also, get a big UCLA flag. 

4. Back-to-School Shopping. Get a nice point-and-shoot camera and start taking lots of pictures. You need a good laptop that will last you 3 years, but you may want to hold off on buying until UCLA Anderson’s STS (Student Technology Services) start telling you to configure your laptop to the school’s software requirements. That way you can buy the laptop with the latest and greatest features and battery life. iPads have been very useful because there is a very good App for our course reader, Study.net, and you will eventually need to take your reading with you to make the best out of small segments of downtime. Tidy up a small corner in your home for studying. 

5. Buying UCLA Anderson and UCLA Bruins Gear. www.uclastore.com is the official site for the UCLA Store. UCLA Anderson-specific gear is hard to find elsewhere, so look to buy these items first. If you are on campus, most of the UCLA Anderson gear is sold at Lu Valle Commons (by the Law School in North Campus) and not in the main Ackerman Student Union. During football season, there might be a promotion where the UCLA Store gives you up to a 25% discount on UCLA gear when UCLA football demolishes their opponents on certain games. Coach Jim Mora and QB Brett Hundley are coming back next year, so the one-sided victories and student store discounts will be plentiful and glorious. 

6. Learn the 8-Clap. This is not easy to learn because there are actually 20 claps, timing the “L” part is tricky, and some groups of Bruins can do this really fast. FEMBA VP of Social Affairs David Duong posted an instructional video for us -- http://youtu.be/h7BOUO4PlAs Make sure you practice because 8-Clapping is way more elaborate than the fobby peace sign done across town. 

7. Attend FEMBApalooza on July 13, 2014. This is our summertime fête champêtre where current FEMBAs and alumni attend to enjoy an entire day full of activities and networking. Bring your significant others and children. For details and RSVP, goto -- http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/fembapalooza

Get ready for the biggest positive transformation of your adult life! While I am still less than 1 year into the FEMBA program, I already perform my work more efficiently and thoughtfully and I see the world in a significantly different way. My friends have noticed a big change in my confidence and capabilities. During the first quarter, you may not get to see many of the 3^rd year FEMBAs because they are engaged in GAP. Once they return from GAP in second quarter, you will notice an obvious professional polish to them. That is going to be you soon.

 Welcome to Westwood.

 

 

International Studies - Hong Kong, Day 3

Hi everyone!  Hope you are all doing well.  I'm really looking forward to meeting all the new 2017s on campus soon.  

2016s are just finishing up our final quarter of our first year (!) and it certainly has flown by.  I can't believe finals are coming up in 3 weeks!  As Sandeep mentioned, we have Anderprom coming up this Saturday.  It's a chance for all Anderson (full time, FEMBAs, & EMBAs) to hang out--and a bit of a farewell to the 2014s what are graduating in less than a month!  It should be a good time.  Definitely something for the 2017s to look forward to next year. 

Now we have day 3 of Alex's trip to Hong Kong.

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Day 3

We had two more lectures from CUHK professors, these covered international and internal political affairs. Mark Sheldon, was a Chinese politics expert. He covered a wide range of topics and listening to him was like drinking from a fire hose. That said, it was one of the most useful and engaging lectures we had.

Sheldon discussed important trends in urbanization, in political reforms over the last 3-4 decades and the political and nationalistic outlook of the Chinese people and government. According to Sheldon, Westerners often think of China as a uniform block of culture and political ideology. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is that China is controlled chaos. As long as the government is able to sustain >7% GDP growth people seem pretty contented. However, if that should dip too dramatically, a lot of underlying cultural or regional tensions will emerge.

On the foreign relations front, China is trying to assert itself by flexing military muscle in the region and has abutted the US, Japan and other major regional powers.

North Korea and Taiwan were interesting issues. China seems to like having N. Korea in place to buffer it from S. Korea. It has tried to develop an economy using a growth model like its own in N. Korea, but does not seem to be succeeding.

For Taiwan, China has been in the process of signing trade deals that will give it greater access. While we were in Hong Kong, Taiwanese students were on the streets of Taipei protesting the deal because it is perceived to give too much control to China.

Prof Stephen Frost – covered the environment in China. Environmental sustainability is a critical issue for the Chinese. The incredible economic growth in China has come at a great environmental cost. While the central government is trying to change regulations to clean up the Chinese environment, enforcement at the local level is near to non-existent. May local officials are bribed by the businesses they regulate.

This means business are given license to dump toxins into local rivers and pollute the air and drinking water. Interestingly, the Chinese government is well aware of the issue. The problem seems to be that permitting for businesses and enforcement of regulation are tied together under the same local authority. If the Central government was really serious about enforcement, it would have to separate those two functions.

Prof. Frost showed us a video of a colleague who was documenting polluters through satellite imaging. However, the Chinese legal system doesn’t allow for civil torts against polluters. So, public enforcement of the environmental laws is nearly impossible.

In the afternoon, we went to see the 10K Buddha’s. It was a small oasis of calm in the middle of busy Sha Tien. Although, it was a bit odd to see a gift shop in the middle of the shrine. The Buddhas and the monks themselves were beautiful and some were even comical. I did not see any that reminded me of classmates, but I did see one that had the same sweet mustache as Professor Freixes. 

The Hong Kong Jockey Club was a blast. I ended up using a hybrid version of the Freixes system (bet on the 2^nd and 3^rd horse to place and bet on the horse that had won the most races) and eventually started winning more than I was loosing.

All in all, this was a particularly good day. It was packed with useful information, engaging lectures, the chance to explore Hong Kong and get to know my classmates and of course there was a healthy dose of fun. I even learned about… ahem… statistical probabilities. 

International Studies - Hong Kong, Day 2

Hi Everyone,

Congratulations to all the recent admits! We are looking forward to meeting you on campus later in the year.

We have been busy completing our midterms last week for Finance and Marketing. They are done and we are now getting ready for the biggest end of year party (AnderProm) next week! 

As Jennifer mentioned in her earlier post, we will continue with Alex Pugh's (FEMBA 2015) series of posts where he shares his experience from the International Studies trip over spring break to Hong Kong! Here is Day 2 of his trip -

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Day 2

The day started with a Tai Chi lesson from a master practitioner who looked like he stepped out of a kung fu movie. That said, he was quite graceful and did an excellent job explaining the philosophy of the martial art. We spent about an hour and a half practicing and it turned out to be quite a work out. 

 

Later in the morning we met Dr. Gilbert Cheung, who gave us an organizational behavior lesson on managing Chinese workers. One of the things he emphasized is the importance of hierarchy in Chinese families and in the work place. Assertiveness is not a desirable trait and neither is correcting someone who has made a social mistake. Chinese will support their friends or family even if they know they are wrong. Chinese avoid direct conflict, but can become very upset when they do not get their way. As a western manager with Chinese employees, its important to understand this and work with them in ways they feel comfortable.

 

Invest Hong Kong

 

We next visited invest Hong Kong, where we got a pretty standard sales pitch for doing business in the city. The really interesting information came during the Q&A, when we discussed Hong Kong’s emerging design and urban development sectors. While they are very small in comparison to finance/banking, international trade and service/retail, the design industry had recently doubled from 2% to about 5% of the city’s GDP.

 

We had some free time after the presentation. So, I went with some classmates to get a pair of pants custom made by a Hong Kong tailor. They look and fit great.

 

After getting outfitted, we joined the Alumni mixer at Angel Share in LKF. This was a pretty cool bar and the only halfway decent cocktail I got in the entire city. It was great to meet alums and prospective students as well as get to know the people on the trip a little better.