New Delhi- Day 5

Julie,

Well today is going to be a no picture day since we didn't leave the hotel and I forgot my camera to take any pictures of the CEO/Alumni Dinner night tonight.. don't worry it wasn't as spectacular as Dubai so there wasn't much to take pictures of.

The morning started out as a rush as I was slow to get up and so that is why I missed you. Our first class today was stats which should actually be renamed to econometrics, because that is really what we are doing. I am LOVING this class. The professor is really good and its a shame he didn't get tenure at Duke. He is only an associate professor and must not have the publishing of research he needs for Duke to keep him around because it definitely isn't based on his teaching skills. He is a VERY GOOD teacher and I love the way he teaches the class. It has gotten me really excited about the ways I can apply regression analysis at work. It also feels like I am really able to get a firm grasp on this material which I think we definitely help in my application of it throughout my career after I graduate. It is at times like these that I am glad I did the executive program as opposed to full-time because now I can take what we are doing in class and trial it at work right away. Also while I am in class, I am constantly thinking "so if we were to try and do something like this at Foot & Ankle I would need these numbers or those numbers, etc. and I immediately want to go back to my room and start emailing people to see if we have them.

After statistics we had a speaker from the local Price Waterhouse Cooper and it was really dry. I ended up studying our group case the entire time. I had planned to take half my lunch afterwards and start typing my section of the group paper, but the speaker ended up going over time and then they allowed a question and answer session. Because I had planned something, I was going absolutely NUTS! I feel like with a lot of the international students there is zero groupthink or concern that "Oh maybe someone in this group doesn't want to sit and here me ask all these questions and I can just ask him these questions when he comes to lunch." Needless to say by the time we were 15 minutes over I felt like I was going to explode.

We ate and then I rushed to my room, but by that time I only had 15 minutes and I didn't want to be late to marketing because of the new singing rule so I scraped that idea. I ended up drafting an outline by hand during class because for most it we were discussing a case about a life insurance company and it was BORING! You could tell the whole class was dead and luckily it didn't drag on forever like it would have because I was working on this other stuff.

After class, we had a two hour break so I went to the gym and did my crossfit workout for the day and then met up with Hao to complete our section of the paper. This is where I REALLY started to get bugged. I had already spent 2 hours on our section drawing up an outline so he could type up the paper and after an hour he only had a paragraph. Because of that, I then took the second part of it and in the next hour I typed it up before our CEO/Alumni dinner. At that point he only had two paragraphs.

When we got back from the dinner, he called my room and asked if I could help him with his part. I ended up reading over what he had and getting rid of all of it. I felt so frustrated, but rather than raise a problem about it, it was easier and probably better for our team chemistry to just let it go so we could get this part done and move on. Luckily, now it is finished and submitted.

The CEO/Alumni dinner went off really well. The speaker was Nandan Nilekani who is like a business rock star here in India. He is well known in the global business world and is worth something like $1.3 billion. I was a little surprised Duke was able to pull in such a high profile speaker, so everyone was pretty excited. Overall I have been really disappointed with all our speakers since we started as we get very little actual business advice. It is either focused on public policy or current outlook, but these are some of the most successful business people in their parts of the world. Why can't they tell us some of the lessons they have learned along the way?

After the speaker the dinner was really good and then I headed up here to my room and as I told you before ended up working on that paper. Its been quite a day for having never left the hotel. :)

Thank you for being such a wonderful support and I want you to know that I love you and the boys VERY MUCH!

Love ya,

Brock