Saturday, November 18, 2006

Advice Needed from my Stanford Classmates

What should I do with all of my business school documents? I've got 4 boxes full of business school cases, presentations, and notes that I haven't looked at in years. I don't really want to throw it out but it is taking up a lot of room in my condo. I was thinking of buying a sheet-fed scanner and just scanning everything to PDF files but that seems like such a waste of time. What have you guys done with all that stuff?

Comments:
choyster, i threw away stuff that i could completely care less about; kept good cases/notes from classes in ob, finance and strategy; and kept everything from my favorite classes like van horne so I have one shelf of stuff

basically..my ops stuff is gone b/c that ain't me..so stop being a bag lady and jettison some stuff

hope you and tracy are ok

jenky
 
I have the same problem. I have all my cases in the binders, in boxes, and even a box with some disorganized cases. I can't quite bring myself to tossing them, but I have not referenced them at least in the two years since graduating. I do like Jenky's advice - but that requires spending some time deciding what to toss and what to keep. I am too lazy to do that, and since these cases cost me ~$6000 i feel like I want to hang on to them.

Susan
 
Hey Andy,

Sounds like you're back to the US now. Doh! Didn't get a chance to reach out to you and Tracy again for a farewell party in Shanghai!

Since I graduated, I never referred to my GSB notes/books once. This was partially because I left all my GSB stuff at home in San Jose and moved to DC to work so it wasn't practical to check my notes remotely. When I did need help (and I did multiple times), I just called the professors up. e.g., I had called Kumar once to get the Ops formula. I called Huang once to clarify some Finance ideas.

So this year, when someone at BCG is going to the GSB (class of 08), I asked her to go to my house in San Jose and take EVERYTHING away. Find what she could use and do whatever she wanted with the rest of it. It was like a treasure hunt. If there's one textbook that she could use (somehow the professor had not changed the version or would be ok with the old version), she would score a $100+ savings which would make all the effort worth it. Plus she had helped my Mom clean up the mess in our garage.

Madeline
 
Throw them on the bonfire in Berkeley before Big Game. Go Bears, you traitorous dog!
 
Keep them for 20 years, and when some obnoxious consultant preaches the great new revelation in business theory, show him your 20 year old notes.
 
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