First Day of School

Charged my computer.  Packed up my bag.  Laid out my outfit.  Set my alarm.  It was the night before the first day of school.  

Sadly, I do not have many more "first days of school" left.  Even half-way around the world, the routine the night before is the same, though.

Sasin Graduate Business School

Today, our UNC crew had class 8:30am - 12noon and then again 1pm - 4:30pm.  It has not even been two years, but I feel so far removed from my former 'work life' that the thought of sitting in class.... even just sitting down.... for seven hours at first sounded like it was going to be touuugh. 

We had "ROI in Human Capital" and "Investments" today - both of which were pleasant surprises to my first thoughts of seven hours of class.  The Human Capital class is taught by an American woman, and was heavily discussion based.  The Investments class was hard to follow at times (the professor is Thai and has a decently heavy accent), but at least today was just a review of what we had learned in our core finance classes in school.

The most interesting part of class was being introduced to the Thai students.  Sasin is Thailand's first accredited business school - and only has 70 students per class!  All of the classes are taught in English, even though English is not the first language of the students.  

My investments class was too big for everyone to introduce themselves, but in the Human Capital class... every single Thai student (well, with the exception of one guy) is working for his/her family business after they graduate this year.  Students' families ran businesses in:

• Gold
• Auto parts
• Real estate
• Herbal medicine
• and some others....

It was funny, though - each of the students going back to their family business had worked in other companies between undergraduate and Sasin.  One girl even got her undergraduate degree in architecture, only practiced for a year as an architect before 'determining' that she was going to work for the family business - but went to Sasin Business School first.  If I were her - I would have skipped the architecture all together and just started designing jewelry.  When our American professor asked if she could get a discount on some gold jewelry, the girl just laughed......uncomfortably.  The professor took the question RIGHT out of my mouth.  Just because the girl (without words) said no to the discount.... my hopes are not yet crushed.  Five more weeks is plenty of time to work on this jewelry discount.