By Moulik Desai, MBA Class of 2012

And that is exactly how one of the students in the Class of 2012 decided to sum up a whole bunch of emotions running through our heads – exhilaration, anxiety and those butterflies fluttering around in our tummies. Well it’s only been a week, and it almost seems like we have spent a really long time here; and the best part is…. the classes haven’t even started yet!

It was almost as if we hit the ground running with the very first day at the Smeal MBA Orientation. And I can safely say that each one of the 109 students in class has spent between 30 to 50 hrs in the past five days of Orientation. This constituted administrative activities,  information sessions, team building activities, a scavenger hunt, personality tests, an official outing (and a social one too!), pre-term accounting classes and assignments and of course the Personal Career Strategy. And at the end of the week – Voila! we have our study groups for the next semester.

In keeping up with this pace of things, many of us were on top of things and some of us were stragglers at first. But as we worked through all of this, there was already a sense of genuine camaraderie. And this definitely set the tone for the next two years here at the Smeal College of Business. So for the most part, the theme that personifies the class this year is: “We’re all in this together and we will work through our challenges”. And on that note, we intend to carry with us the Smeal MBA tradition, ethics and its values as we move forward. As a team rightly said during MBA Action: “The Mayans were wrong, 2012 is only the beginning!”