Let's keep it alive

We have decided to keep this blog alive. The MBA is over but I still have to graduate and above all the Cambridge MBA is one year that will last you a lifetime.

Also a blog is a great way to keep family and friends up to date and to keep a diary too.

I didn't want to lose the MBA archive, as I have received many messages of MBA candidates who find it useful. That's another motivation to keep posting. Current students and alumni were of much help during my pre-MBA and I'm happy to be useful for new candidates now.

As you can see I have changed the "theme" and title to adapt to our new reality. I always talk about "we" or "our" because I believe my MBA wouldn't have been possible without the support of my wife and the joy provided by my kids.

I still plan to publish a few "retrospective" posts to tell you about the end of the MBA, the IP, our holidays, readapting home, jobs and so on.

Also, and I hope sooner than later, I'll start here a series of posts about the MBAs who come to visit us in Sevilla. Who's going to be the first?

I'm an MBA

A few days ago I received the letter from the new MBA Director Jochen Runde, the statement from the Committee of Examiners and the Official Transcript confirming I'm an MBA.

I also received my grade for the Individual Project, which I wrote with the title "Innovative approaches to increase revenues for football clubs - Can good business sense make football better?". It was fun, and I got a good grade.

I haven't been writing in the blog for a long time. Partly because I was busy, partly because I don't want to accept the MBA is over. In fact I'm telling myself is not over yet, because Graduation is on the 16th of May 2009.

Now I'm back to work in Sevilla, Spain. I returned to my previous employer, in a different department and possition, but with the same boss. I left that door opened during the whole year and I'm happy to be back.

As you may know I funded my MBA with a Talentia Scholarship which requires you to return to Andalucía or to an Andalusian company abroad for 4 years after the program. Otherwise you have to return the scholarship, which in my case is worth €56k.

At some point I considered the possibility of finding a job in the UK and repay the scholarship, but given the current work market circumstances and my family responsibilities, that soon became an utopia, especially if I wanted to keep my pre-MBA standard of living in the short term.

The MBA is a long term investment, and I think there are at least two ways to ripe benefits from it.

If you are young, single, come from a relatively low income country and are ready to work like crazy for a few years it definitely makes sense to take any MBA job in London and build your career from it.

But if you have a family, your pre-MBA job was already about MBA level, and you don't want to start from scratch again, it also makes sense going back home, either to your old company or another, and use the Cambridge MBA to grow within your network.

I chose option two, and honestly I still don't know if I made the right decision.

Sometimes I think I should have been more ambitious and try a different job, a different company, a different industry. I can't really stand still, I'm an entrepreneur.

But it's not only about me, so when I go back home from work (sometimes as soon as 15.00) and I meet my wife and my kids in the playground near my riverside flat, I realise that -at least for now- I'm in the right place.

Vendo libros del GMAT

Business is business. 

Con mi regreso a casa me he dado cuenta de que tengo demasiados libros. Tantos que no tengo donde ponerlos. Y si hay 4 libros que estoy seguro que ya no necesito son los del GMAT. 

Así que he pensado que igual a alguno de los lectores de este blog les pueden interesar. Tengo 4, como podéis ver abajo. La guía oficial completa, los extras "verbal" y "quantitative" y el Cracking the GMAT de The Princeton Review. 

Vendo los 4 por 30 €, y de regalo Your MBA with Distinction, un libro fácil e interesante de leer antes del MBA.  Yo corro con los gastos de envío en España. 

Los libros están bien, prácticamente nuevos. Sólo tienen marcas a lápiz que se pueden borrar. 

En fin, si te interesa déjame un comentario. 

Bye Cambridge

This is Miriam, Diego and Leo at the bus stop about to leave Cambridge.

We'll be back soon. Graduation is in May 2009 but I probably won't wait that long. 

Last day at home

It's weird but for us "home" is not Sevilla anymore, is Cambridge. We are going to miss this city and our little flat. Somebody told me the other day that Cambridge is addictive, and I think it's true. It's a truly nice well-rounded city, especially for families. 

But tomorrow we are leaving for a week of holiday in Brittany (France) and then to our home in Spain, in Sevilla. 

Of course I'm looking forward to see some sun, family, friends, good food, and above all, I need to start working because unfortunately money doesn't grow on trees, not even in rainy Britain. 

Anyway, this is a picture of us at our porche.