90% of my time at Stanford GSB

Reporter : Kristine Whiteman

This week I had the privilege of standing in front my classmates and addressing them as I introduced Michael Isikoff. “Distinguished colleagues,” I said, practicing for our certain future. I realized as I spoke that it’s true right now.

I think 90% of the time school is exhilarating and marvelous and one of the best inventions of the modern world. 10% of the time it sucks and threatens to take me down.

The grass is certainly always greener isn’t it? I have had a number of convos this week with classmates who are ready to go back to work. The novelty of school has worn off, we’re tired of spending rather than earning, and it starts to feel like the world is whizzing past and all we’re doing is sitting here, observing instead of participating.

This year is especially tough for a crowd that’s used to doing and not just being. Being a group member instead of the obvious group leader; being the person getting talked to all the time instead of doing the speaking; being told where to go and when and how much is expected, rather than getting to set all these benchmarks for ourselves and the teams we’re running; being the learner instead of the teacher; in short, being the participant instead of the instigator.

Of course these are all good lessons. Of course we have willingly set the stage to take on this training. Its just not always that fun or easy. Our 2nd (& a ½) term is almost complete. One more to go. Unbelievable. Astonishingly amazing and wonderful.

Let’s hang in, yeah…fellow Sloans? Let’s continue on our quest to be extraordinary. Let’s be remarkable.

My Sloan experience, so far....

Reporter: Escobedo Sergio,


We've just passed the middle point of our program. What a ride has been so far. As to why this is my first post? So many things to do, so little time. But hey, I'm here. Finally.


This term has been much more exhausting for me. I was really tired by the end of January. It was almost impossible for me to keep up with all the readings, and I think I read fast. Fortunately I now am down 2 classes and that has freed up so much time for me. I now can relax, socialize a little bit more and of course watch Lost without feeling guilty.


So far being here has been an amazing experience. Being honest, I'm still in awe of everything and everyone. Every single day has been a source of inspiration, knowledge and challenge. Every single day has been an opportunity to build new friendships, try new things and just grow as a human being.

I don't know if I'll remember everything from our courses. What I know is that I'll never forget the Seattle trip, the hiking trip, the day we went karaoke'ing, the day we saw two movies in a row, the dinners, the lunch's, the ice cream Tuesdays and Thursdays and the other one thousand things we've done together.

I look forward to the second half of our year. Here's me wishing more good memories for everyone.

Sloan Ski Trip Awards - January 2008

Reporter : S. B.

We made this awards list to have some good natured fun to recap our successful Sloan ski trip. These are not meant to be mean or insulting to anyone. Hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed creating the list.



Flanagan-Bernanke Award goes to June Yang and Robert Jungerhans for making their classmates overspend wildly for a weekend of skiing. In addition to affecting personal happiness surplus accounts, they have also made a positive contribution to GDP and negative contribution to personal savings and deficit. Hence, the Sloan class of 2008 is thrilled to present this award to Robert and June.

Award of Honorary Mayor of Tahoe City goes to William ‘Billy’ Shaw for schmoozing everyone from bartenders to busboys, from random strangers on the slopes to ladies at the cash register. He used his hip flask and its social lubricant to smooth out any and all social situations.

Award for Best Outfit goes to Kazuomi Kaneto AKA K2 for wearing the most easily identifiable outfit on the mountain and for bringing some much needed cutting edge Harajuku fashion to the slopes. Like his outfit said “he stormed to the finish in all his whole races”. Yes indeed.

Award for Best Accessory goes to Brian Tice for showing that real men are not afraid to wear a fanny pack ahem, I mean a Waist Survival Pack.

Sloan Daredevil Award AKA Orthopedics’ Dream AKA I’m Surprised he is not dead yet goes to Pete ‘Beerman’ Cooper for skiing down slopes that most hormone crazed sixteen year olds would have the sense to avoid. These included vertical slopes with barely a patch of snow and exposed sharp rock.

Award for Best Supporting Role goes to Ed Swenson for loaning his pants to Jaime Perena. The pants then made their way into Billy Shaw’s hands and then to Koichi Zaiki and so on. In the end, it seemed like more people got into Ed’s pants this weekend than during any weekend in Ed’s college days. Way to go Ed.

Award for Best Nutritionist goes to Koichi Zaiki for showing that not only can you survive on a diet of coffee, beer and hard alcohol, but that when you smoke cigarettes on top of that diet, it actually helps you ski better.

Award for Top 3 Snowboarders (Male) goes to
1. Krish Ulag
Everyone else skied
Everyone else skied

Award for Top 3 Snowboarders (Female) goes to
1. (tie) Karen Sansot and Brooke Schulz
3. Everyone else skied

Snow Flake Award (this award was formerly known as the Party Pooper Award) goes to Kristine Whiteman for (i) not going on the Sloan Ski Trip and (ii) using a really lame excuse to justify her not going.

Award for Most Stoic Skier goes to Jim Roth for willing to wear his ski boots and walking in them all day including to breakfast, dinner and (hopefully not) to bed.

and finally….

Award for Best Sport goes to Amanda Tucker for joining the class on this trip.. for having fun and being a great fun herself and for generally being a wonderful person.

ECON 101 as explained by Sloan 2008s

Reporter : S. B.


Econ :
1. Short for Economics, Economic etc
2. Has the term “Con” in it. Need I say more
3. Branch of empirical science developed to explain events many years after they have happened. New theories are constantly produced to predict future events and explain past events that older theories had failed to predict.

Decreasing Rate of Marginal Returns :
1. Explains why the more the time one spends studying for an exam, the less one will remember during the exam

Deadweight Loss :
1. In economics, a deadweight loss (also known as excess burden) is a loss of economic efficiency that can occur when equilibrium for a good or service is not Pareto optimal.
2. In Sloan Land, a Deadweight Loss occurs when one spends a huge amount of time on an individual assignment and later finds out that the assignment only counts for 0.02% of the final grade.

Zimbabwe :
1. Country in Africa whose economy is in such an unbelievably bad shape that it can be used to explain every possible economic theory however ridiculous it might be. Example : Nations can use price controls to combat inflation. E.g. Zimbabwe (or) Reducing taxes does not help the economy as proven in the case of Zimbabwe

Bartering :
1. System used by Sloans to allocate work in their study groups
Example : I will work on the initial model, if you will clean it up and write the report (or) I will bring pastries for our next study group meeting, if you can finish the assignment without me.

Ceteris Paribus :
1. The clause is often loosely translated as "holding all else constant." A prediction, or a statement about causal or logical connections between two states of affairs, is qualified by ceteris paribus in order to acknowledge, and to rule out, the possibility of other factors which could override the relationship between the antecedent and the consequent.
2. For Sloans, you may receive extra credit if you pre-pend this term to answer all questions regarding Shadow Price, Reservation Price, Reduced Costs, Crystal Ball Simulations, Explaining Coefficients etc. in Modeling and Analysis.


N.A.I.R.U :
1. Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment
2. Also known as natural rate of unemployment
3. 2008 Sloans know that this definition caused Prof. Flanagan to say “Ladies and gentlemen it is 15 minutes to 2 PM and the man is awake”

Fundamental Value of Currency
1. If a Sloan Fellow’s value in the job market were a currency, this would be what his/her worth would be in the open job market based on his/her skills and experience

Overvalued Currency
1. Again, if a Sloan Fellow were a currency, this is what the Sloan Fellow would expect their value to be after the Sloan Program.

Twin Deficits :
1. Term to used to explain how one can spend a lot of time on a subject and yet they seem to fall farther behind while also not getting enough sleep.

China :
Antonym : Zimbabwe
1. Country in Asia that one has to use as a standard disclaimer to all growth based econ theories.
Example : Raging fast growth will always cause very high inflation except in the case of China

My First Mid-term Exam in 20 Years !

Reporter : Pete Cooper

The weather was still pretty mild during mid-terms this Fall. Halfway through the Modeling take-home, I needed a break and decided to take a walk around the sprawling residence hall. Heading down through the Schwab lobby I ran into two of the front desk folks. My hair must have been sticking straight up in the air, because they smiled knowingly. “Yep”, I said, “first mid-term in 20 years”.

After 20 years of nightmares about missing classes and showing up late and unprepared to the final, everything in the Fall quarter has gone surprisingly smoothly. My trusty alarm clock wakes me up on time every day, I never end up in class unwittingly half naked, and the awareness of my personal investment is rarely needed for motivation. The Sloan administration bonded all of my classmates and I together quickly and we have been inseparable ever since.

One of the important lessons of the first quarter is to strike a balance between the instinct to focus entirely on academic performance and alternatively to take advantage of the wealth of other valuable opportunities at Stanford. In general it’s plausible to do reasonably well in the classes, get adequate sleep, and not be overwhelmed. The real key is to push the envelope a bit, attend the different speaking and networking events and take time to enjoy your classmates outside of class. I can’t think of a better time in life to lose a bit of sleep to see a prominent CEO speak, network with the wealth of local VC’s, or have a beer with what may end up being some of your best friends.

The test taking process ends up a lot like riding a bike. It comes back without a lot of prompting. Everyone is in it together, from fellow Sloans and the MBA’s to the folks at the Schwab front desk or the Sloan staff. It is amazing to me how we all give and take a little to help one another over the challenges.

Sloan Holiday Party

Reporter : K2

It was very hard time in my life. Even though I spent a lot of time in overseas up to now, studying at Stanford GSB put me in very difficult circumstances - studying in native English, devating with incredible students from over 20 different countries, coping with hectic academic life, expanding networking even in busy life, overcoming culture shock..... I noticed such things would happen before leaving Japan for USA; however, the burden on my shoulder was much more than expected. I can say it was a good experience to have harsh burden; however, only people who experienced those things knows how hard it was.

Sometime I felt loneliness especially when I strongly felt burden from the above hard situation. When I need comfort from my family, they were not around me as I left them in Japan. However, what I found here at Stanford and what is now my precious fortune is my frineds here. All students at Stanford GSB was selected from a lot of candidates, thus their career background and academic record are great. What makes me feel "they are my fortune and part of my family" is their integrity and being humble. All people here is very coorperative and never be competitive nor selfish.... This experience opened my eyes what is important in our life and this experience will surely enrich my private and business life following this program. They give me comfort and make me more humble guy with pure integrity. Everybody is eager to contribute to class thus class becomes more enjoyable and comfortable place for all of us.

We finished yesterday our autumn term and had a Sloan Holiday Party at Schwab Residentical Center (located on Stanford Campus). It lasted for almost 5 hours. However, I felt time passed so quickly.... I learned before that if people really enjoying something, she/he feels time passes so quickly. In the meantime, if people should feel a difficulty in killing time, he/she feels time passes so slowly.

I do not know who made this idea; however, we sung a song, which we sung during our west coast trip in November. We can say that this song becomes a theme song of Sloan 2008! The title of song is " My Way". Yes, this song is famous - a song with lyrics written by Paul Anka and popularized by Frank Sinatra.

We spent 4 months together and will spend another 6 months from now. We will have hard time and pleasant time. We can share those time so that impact from hard time becomes less and pleasant time will be more great time. Each student will capture the things in different way and it will become each persson's root to grow up their tree further. They will find their own way for further career and private life. I wish we can repsect ways of others and can sing the song "My Way" again before graduating from Stanford and even after the graduation somewhere in the world. This is really a fun for our classmates and big fortune in our life.

Welcome to Stanford Sloan Diary - Class 2008

Welcome to Stanford Sloan Diary - Class 2008. My name is Kazuomi Kaneto. I am the founder of this blog. The purpose of launching this blog is originally to record our diaries for ourselves.

However, we decided to open a door to public as well since we believe doing so would be informative to people interested in our program and student life at Stanford Graduate School of Business (Stanford GSB) Even though we have a official website of Sloan Program at Stanford GSB, it is difficult for applicants to understand deeply our activities and studnets life of Sloan students (Sloanies).

This blog contains messages to almuni, its family and guys interested in Stanford GSB. We will also includes information about our program, our business school and communities surroundinng Stanford University.
Sloanies and its partners will post his/her diary on this blog. (our goal is one diary per day) and wish this blog will become informative and creative one to above people. Sloan program 2008 commenced from August and will end in July 2008.

I alwas remind myself that I need to find a fortune every day. Even thoughit it is a small fortune, I am happy to find such small fortune. This though make me a fresh and remind me that I am living invaluable life and give me clues to enrich more my life and my perspective. I believe everyone has small fortune every day and it is possible that this blog reminds us every day what his small fortune is.

I wish we can share with you the above thought and that more people become interested in our program and our business school.