Team Efficiency

Team dinner at Katsuya in Brentwood

 One of the most important things that happened during orientation was our placement into "learning teams."  These groups of 5-6 students work together throughout the fall quarter on all group assignments and for studying purposes.  The groups were picked for us in a way that was supposed to create diversity (previous work experience and general demographics) so that everyone could contribute in different ways and could learn from one another.  Our team, for example, has two students who were born in Asia (including one who had never been to America before orientation started), and half the team had a more quantitative/financial background while the other half had more of a qualitative/marketing background. 

One of our many team study sessions after class

Anyway, I feel that I really lucked out with my group.  The six of us all have pretty laid back and easy going personalities, and seem like genuinely nice people, so we all get along real well.  It is a little unusual in a business school setting where there are so many A-Type personalities that there is no real headstrong, need-to-take-control members on our team.  In certain group situations that might be a bad thing, but for us the personalities have clicked well.  Even though none of us are too overly obsessed with grades, we've been really good at getting things done quickly and at a high level, which is where our self-given nickname Team Efficiency, came from.

The team dynamic is definitely important since so much time is spent together.  For the first few weeks of the quarter we were routinely meeting for a couple hours after classes 2-3 times a week.  Occasionally, when a lot of assignments were due at once, longer sessions became necessary or meeting up on weekends were advised.  The strength of our group became more evident as we continued to hear horror stories of other teams as the quarter went on, ranging from groups routinely meeting for 6 hours in a day to complete a single assignment, group imposed penalties for people showing up late to meetings, too many fiery personalities in one group leading to a lot of disagreements, or just a general dislike for other group members. Unfortunately the teams switch up each quarter, but for now its all good.  Last week to celebrate our awesomeness and a solid first month we organized a team dinner at a very tasty sushi restaurant in LA (pictured above).