Aviraj’s Blog on Posterous

You can call me Avi

Warren Buffett on How to Pick Where You Work

Go to work, if possible, for an organization or an individual that you admire.  I mean I offered to go to work for Ben Graham because there was nobody I admired more in the business than him.  I didn't care what he paid me. 

But I knew I wanted to work for Ben Graham.  And I knew I would jump out of bed every morning and be excited about what I would do and I would go home at night smarter than I was in the morning. 

via imperfect.posterous.com

Agreed.

The question he was originally answering was "What should we do if we don't know what we want to do with our lives?", which was posed to both, him and Bill Gates. It's interesting how different their answers were. And Buffett's answer speaks volumes to me. I don't say money is insignificant -- I'd be the last person to say that today, given how important it is for me to make and save money at this point in time. But it is equally important to value the learning in an experience than just go where you get the most money. If you think long-term, that knowledge will earn you a lot more than you can imagine making elsewhere. This might be a simple, oft-repeated thought, but it is very powerful.

A selection of students from my MBA class at the Leeds School of Business had the opportunity to apply for a trip to Omaha for a personal meeting with Warren Buffett in January 2010. He's a finance guy and I'm not. I knew he's awesome and all but I have absolutely nothing to do with finance. So I figured the trip may not be completely worth my time and money and hence did not apply. Yes, BAD DECISION.

I'm in Boulder, Colorado for my MBA :)

So, a lot of you reading this may know it already but, there, I said it.

I've joined the MBA program at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In case that's a mouthful for you, it's commonly called the Boulder MBA. Orientation begins in a couple weeks, but I landed in Colorado 3 weeks back to soak in some of the awesome front-range summer (unlike the one back in Mumbai). And by God, it's been fan-bloody-tastic. Proof is here.

Boulder is a gorgeous little city about 45 minutes north of Denver, Colorado. It's right at the foot of the Rocky Mountains (hence the term 'front-range')  which lends it the most breathtaking views. This city, as with most of Colorado itself, is extremely outdoorsy, with a majority of the population heavily into hiking, biking, skiing and snowboarding. It helps that there are over a dozen ski resorts within a 2 hour drive from here. Honestly, the quality of life here is fantastic. Not just that, Boulder has the most exciting tech and startup scene outside of the Silicon Valley (at least in my opinion). In fact, I had even put up a post some ten days back which explains exactly why this place is perfect for me from a professional standpoint.

Now, I'm an international student here and, even though I've been to this place before, it's still foreign land for me. It's gonna take me some time to get a hang of the American culture (including everything from people, etiquette, accent to the food and even the transportation system). Here's a few things that I think are gonna be an interesting change for me --

1. American English. This one's going to be tricky. For the past three years I've been using a mix of British and American (for clients) English to the point that I can't quite distinguish between the spellings anymore. Practice practice practice.

2. The cold. The consequence of living in a city that's a mile above sea-level. But here's the thing, the winter is something I'm really looking forward to. After the depressing summer and monsoon of Mumbai, extreme cold is something I could definitely use, even if it takes some getting used to. That said, the summer here has been so awesome (well, at least for me) I would hate for the weather to change at all.

3. Coffee. It's served black and without sugar here. Dude, I'm no Jai Vardhan Singh. I need my sugar and cream (which I fortunately do get on the side).

4. Food portions. Anyone who knows me at all can tell you that I eat A LOT. And yet I struggle to finish even the lunch-sized meals here. That's just crazy.

5. Biking. Yes, I do look forward to that. I sure can use the exercise. But I haven't biked in 10 years. And even though I just need to ride from home to the bus and on campus, it's not so fun when it's all on hilly slopes.

6. Toilet Paper. 'nuff said. Ha! Seriously, I'm not gonna elaborate. If you're from India, you'd understand.

Anyway, the other piece of news is that I'm going to be the official first year MBA blogger for Leeds and will also be bringing in the international student perspective. That's something I'm really excited about. Blogging, as you can see, is totally my thing and I'm stoked that I can contribute to the school's marketing and communications efforts. I don't have a link to the blog yet (it should be set up by tomorrow hopefully) but it's going to be on http://www.cuboulderblogs.com. In fact, I've also created a new Posterous blog for this purpose which will Autopost to the official Leeds blog. Check that out at http://mba.aviraj.com.

So, finally this post is done. It's been lying in my drafts for well over 2 months now so it's relieving to get this off my chest.

Uhh, wish me luck? :) Cheers!