Category: Education

HBS found me an apartment within walking distance of campus. It wasn’t a nice part of Cambridge and there were cockroaches. I moved in, cleaned it poorly, but eliminated the cockroaches. Later, when I saw them entering under the door, I added a poison strip just inside to keep them out. I planned to find another apartment after a year, so this was ok.

The evening of the day I started at HBS I met my friend Joe while standing in line. He suggested that we go to dinner in a Harvard Square restaurant, and I agreed. We walked around a bit and he suggested a Japanese restaurant for sushi – I had spent a month in Japan when I was thirteen, but had never tried sushi. I enjoyed it a lot, particularly the wasabi. Later he introduced me to Indian food; overall, he started me on a lifelong interest in different cuisines.

First Year

As HBS’ experimental DBA group mostly didn’t have MBA’s they ran a special program to cover the needed broadening material. This was my first introduction to case teaching – where you are given the case with a few questions and are expected to have analyzed the case when you come to class. For the first semester this went well, I enjoyed the material, and didn’t feel so much that I was learning but that I was getting smarter. As there were fewer than thirty people in my group, I knew everyone, talked with them, and led a sheltered life.

The second semester I took a second year MBA class; I clearly remember the first time I spoke in this very-competitive, sixty-person class: I put my hand up, the instructor called on me, the room darkened except for a tunnel of light from me to him, I said something, he figuratively patted me on the shoulder, and I don’t remember the rest of the class. After that it was easier.

As doctoral students we had more opportunity than MBA students to talk with faculty: while working for them as research or teaching assistants, in the faculty club, and at social functions. After talking with dozens, I realized that I’d never met a group of people more willing to say “I don’t know.” (This wasn’t the same in the colleges where I later taught, where many of the faculty felt they were experts in everything.)

My first year at HBS was successful except for marketing. Our marketing instructor called me to his office and said: “You’re in finance, aren’t you?” I agreed. He said: “I can see that you’ve been working hard at it, but you don’t really understand marketing, do you?” I agreed. He said: “If you promise never to offer an opinion on a marketing question I’ll give you a low pass. Do you agree?” (A low pass was the lowest passing grade.) Of course I agreed. (I’d been to dinner at his house and admired some of his collected art, but I doubt this affected his judgment.)

Someone I’d gotten to know and like left at the end of the first year. His grades were in the bottom half of the class – but he passed everything. His problem was that he’d been the smartest person and valedictorian of every school he’d ever attended. He just couldn’t accept that there was a group where he couldn’t do that, so he left. It was apparent to the rest of us that the only area where we could possibly be best was in our best area – and maybe not there.

The experimental DBA group ranged from 4-24 years of working experience. MBA students generally had 2-6 years of work experience. HBS’ faculty was mixed: about half had DBA’s from HBS and had previously been MBA students there with some work experience. But the remainder of the faculty were from programs that didn’t require work experience and usually had none. The senior faculty enjoyed the opportunity to learn of our experiences, but some of the junior faculty found us intimidating. We didn’t value their education and degrees as much as they thought we should – and they didn’t like hearing “It’s not like that” from us.

Second Year

After the first year I began to take more courses in finance (at HBS) and economics (at Harvard College and MIT). We were lucky; we could take courses wherever we wanted. At that time, the HBS finance doctoral students believed economics courses were better taught at MIT and econometrics courses were better taught at Harvard College. My experience in two courses at MIT was particularly notable.

Introductory macroeconomics at MIT was taught by Paul Samuelson. The first American to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, he was known for writing “the definitive paper” in economic sub-fields – pulling together in one place all of the important thought and research in a sub-field. I certainly wasn’t going to miss such an opportunity, and signed up for his course. Each day he passed out his notes for the day’s lecture. At the start of the class they appeared to be a perfect example of schizophrenic writing, by the end of the class (and afterwards) they made perfect sense.

Microeconomics was different; I went to class and listened carefully, all the words made sense but I couldn’t follow the logic. I was completely lost and talked about this with my friend Jonathan. He suggested I talk to his faculty advisor. I told him of my problem, he asked about my background and then told me I was using the wrong book. He said they assume you know microeconomics and are teaching you linear algebra; but you know linear algebra and need to learn microeconomics. “Try this book.” he said, handing it to me, “Bring it back after you buy your own.” That worked. The new book made sense and I did well in the course.

Running

In my second year I took up running. This turned out to be a major help to me. First, because it helped me handle the stress that I felt. Second, because I usually ran with my friend Jim – which gave me a chance to talk over what I was experiencing and hear what Jim was experiencing. I doubt that I would have made it through the program without those runs.

We ran virtually every day and worked up to an hour. This was three times around Fresh Pond, where we usually ran. We ran slowly – my only running pace – Jim could run much faster. One evening when we were at the far side of the pond, a runner passed us at about twice our speed, looking half asleep and so light on his feet that it appeared that they gently tapped the ground each stride. After looking at some Runners Magazine pictures we decide that it was Bill Rodgers, who won the Boston Marathon four times around this period.

Tests Before Thesis

Before you could start on your thesis you had to pass three tests. The first test was a complex case analysis. You were given the case on a Friday afternoon and turned in your write-up Monday morning. Sometime during the week you defended your written analysis against three faculty members. Sixty percent failed the test the first time. I was thrilled: I received two satisfactory’s and one low pass – I passed. My friend Pierre received three outstanding’s – the first time in the history of HBS! Wow!

The second test was just for finance majors and was on economics. My microeconomics and econometrics were strong, but my macroeconomics was weak as I’d just had the one course. A friend from Nigeria tutored me, which made learning it well enough to pass possible. But my real difficulty was psychological: I’d never worked as hard as I could at anything! I felt that if I did my best and failed it would be worse than not trying my best and failing, because I wouldn’t have the “I could have done it if…” excuse. Happily, I was finally mature enough to recognize the problem and actually did my best – studied all waking hours – and passed.

The third test was a discussion of your planned thesis area – also defended against three faculty members. The official rule was that you could wait until you were ready. But it had been instant dislike between my assigned faculty advisor and me. He told me “You’re not ready, so you have to take it as soon as possible.” I did, but I was lucky: I had chosen an area so narrow that I could virtually memorize all of the articles in the area, which I had done. The faculty members didn’t have enough time to do the same. They had broader knowledge and could better assess the implications – but I’d though longer about it. I happily remember the door opening and the committee chairman holding out his hand and saying “Congratulations!” while seeing my advisor looking unhappy behind him.

Good Luck In Your New Endeavors

At the end of our first thesis year, HBS sent us a survey, asking what else we had been doing while working on our thesis. I told the truth: I’d been teaching and consulting while working on it, a third of my time for each part. They responded with a letter that ended: “Good luck in your new endeavors.” It arrived on a Saturday. I talked about it with my friend Jeanne, who said: “You told the truth? Why? Didn’t you see what they were doing?” No, I didn’t see it. (She saw everything! She was the most politically astute person I’ve ever met.)

On Sunday, I visited my uncle for advice (the same uncle who was on the faculty at Case, now retired and living near Boston, please see my Undergraduate College post). He said: “They’re trying to get your attention. They want you to come in and say that you’ll work to get back in.” So that’s what I did. My particular hurdle was completing the theoretical part of my thesis. (HBS was accused by other finance schools of not being theoretical enough; we were a means to refute this.) The theoretical part was a mathematical model of how I thought the financial management of municipalities affected their borrowing cost.

My problem with the math was that my head wouldn’t let me sleep more than two hours before waking me with dreams of equations and what I should be doing with them. It took me four months of sleep-for-two-hours-work-until-too-sleepy to finish. The last six weeks were a back-and-forth with my committee as they tried to have me make the model more complex without actually requiring it. I kept answering their questions with new uses of the simpler model. Eventually they accepted my thesis proposal and HBS readmitted me. Either I’d answered enough questions or they just decided that I’d done enough work.

What To Do Next?

I continued consulting and teaching, but gave priority to my thesis. When the end of the thesis was in sight I began considering what to do next. I had more choices than most. As my mentor was HBS’ specialist on investment banking, his recommendation was a guarantee of a good job in those firms – and I was the first person he’d been willing to mentor. But I didn’t like New York City; it was too big and for some reason I didn’t care about making a lot of money. So I never really considered it. Ditto for full time consulting; 80-100 hour weeks forever didn’t attract me.

So I started looking for teaching jobs. HBS was a possibility – but not in finance, in “control”, HBS’ superset of accounting. This was an interesting and exciting possibility, but it meant eighty-hour weeks – not because it was required (it wasn’t) but because it would be necessary for me to meet the standard: first rate teaching and first rate research. So I looked at colleges considered “Harvard satellites” – while not officially associated, they had many HBS graduates on the faculty and emphasized case teaching.

While I was exploring where to go I received a phone call from George Low, the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). Low’s previous job had been to put men on the moon – I was thrilled to speak with him. He told me that he considered HBS’ experiment to be an opportunity to upgrade RPI’s management school. He wanted to staff much of the school with people who had worked, not just studied about working, and particularly wanted people with science and engineering backgrounds. This sounded exciting to me, so I visited. During my conversations with people there it was clear that the students were great – engineering undergraduates like I knew at Case – and that RPI was committed to improving teaching. So I and three of my friends, Jim, Jeanne, and Pierre (yes, that Pierre) decided to go to RPI.

July 20, 2020

When I returned home to look for a job after graduating from Case, my father talked about my studies with one of his friends. He said that my background sounded like “human factors”. As I didn’t know what that was I went to the library – this was before the Internet – and looked it up: It was the relationship between people and machines; it started with knob design, and expanded.

I looked under human factors in the yellow pages and found about 50 entries – this was near Washington, DC, so there were many consulting firms. I worked through the alphabet, calling each company, and found a job with Serendipity, Inc. My technique was to call a firm and ask about employment (I had a 30 second spiel), usually they asked me to mail a resume. Sensing a pattern, I began asking “Is this just an easy way to end this call, or is there a possibility of a job?” This seemed to get an honest response and, I suspect, made me memorable – increasing my chances.

Serendipity, Inc.

Serendipity was an interesting firm. Founded by three beer drinkers, it provided free beer after 5pm. As it was located in the suburbs – near where everyone lived – most stayed 30-60 minutes to chat about what they had in common: the work. This led to many good ideas. After a couple of years the company moved near National Airport, 30-60 minutes from everybody’s homes, and no one stayed. A few years later the company closed – I believe this was from a scarcity of good ideas.

While at Serendipity I worked on two projects: diagrammatic guide signs and exercise facilities for long term space flight. As there’s a blog post on the former, I’ll write here about the latter. The first thing that the principal investigator had done after winning the project was to write every large toy company in the country asking for free samples. Wham-O sent several of everything they made, so when we got bored we played Frisbee in the hall. One of my tasks was calling companies for advice and assessments of likely technology 15-20 years in the future; I found it enjoyable to work through people in a company over the phone to find the right one for my question.

When I joined Serendipity I was given a choice of job titles, and picked one at random. Years later, when I asked about a raise, I was told that I was at the maximum for my job title. I related the story of how I choose that job title and pointed out that the person who gave me that choice was still at the company to confirm my story. I asked about changing the job title and was told that that would be a promotion, and that no promotions from that job title were allowed. So I looked for another job.

Federal Highway Administration

After working a few months for another human factors consulting company, I found a job with the Federal Highway Administration. They were taking over the diagrammatic guide sign project and wanted someone with experience in the area. Working there was notable because it was adjacent to the CIA, and shared the same exit from the nearby parkway. As our building had no lunch facilities, we could go through a gate in the fence and eat in the CIA’s cafeteria.

During some open time in the project, we decided to see what happened to US Park Police during their extreme driving training. We took one of our instrumented cars to their training facility. (I rode in the back seat of a police car while our car followed. I’d never seen traffic open up like that!) First, we and the instructors drove it on their wet skid pad – which was a figure-8, so we had to avoid collisions with the other car using it – we called this a baseline, but it was really for fun. Then, a dozen of the students drove the instrumented car too. We never wrote anything about it.

During a down period, I was assigned to redesign the main office area, where there were several dozen cubicles. I designed it as a spiral, with me at the center end of the spiral. I justified it as the most efficient layout, with the lowest ratio of aisle/cubicles. But it was really to avoid unexpected interruptions.

When the project was finished I realized that I’d worked on guide signs for five years – and didn’t want to work on them for the rest of my life. So I decided to go back to school.

Masters Program

As my undergraduate grades were so poor I decided to go back to Case – now part of Case Western Reserve University – because I hoped that having actually known me they’d be forgiving. They accepted me into their one-year Master of Science in Management program (it was only the second year of the program, so I had little competition). As I had taken statistics as an undergraduate and a year of mathematical statistics in a night course while I was at the FHA, they suggested that I take the epidemiology department’ statistics course. This was different and enjoyable.

The teaching assistant for the course and I became friendly. One day he mentioned that he read introductory texts because he found that those authors worked harder at explaining than the advanced books’ authors. He said, “You can never understand the basics too well.” Years later, I found the same when I was teaching; I couldn’t teach it well unless I understood it perfectly.

I had two major surprises during that year: first, that I had all A’s; and, second, that I really liked finance. So I looked into doctorate programs.

In introduction to accounting, which I hadn’t taken as an undergraduate because it was only offered at 8am, I learned “Credits by the window, debits by the door.” It still works because remember the room layout.

Doctoral Programs

My choices for doctoral programs were three: the University of Michigan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Harvard Business School (HBS) – the latter two had said “maybe, please visit”. The U of M was close enough to drive to, so I visited. I spent a very pleasant day there and learned that they felt like an anomaly in the midst of a football campus. Also, I was told: “If you can go to MIT or Harvard, why would you want to come here?” I planned a trip to Boston.

My plane landed at Boston in the early morning and I took a taxi to MIT. As we were driving there I thought: “Of the two people in this cab, the wrong one has been driving race cars.” This put me in the proper frame of mind to visit MIT. There, I had two perceptions: (1) These are, by far, the smartest people I’ve ever met; and, (2) They don’t talk about anything but finance. After the visit, they said “we’ll think about it” and I thought “I’m not sure…” and took a taxi to Harvard Business School.

A finance doctoral student took me to lunch in the faculty dining room. He talked of finance, and lots of other things. HBS was experimenting, he said, they wanted to shorten the time spent in the doctoral program and thought that people with work experience would go through faster. My unusual work experience with engineering, psychology, and statistics backgrounds should give me advantages in the program. I talked to several faculty members (I don’t remember who), and left thinking “I’d really like to go there.”

A couple of weeks later I received a regrets letter from MIT and an acceptance from HBS. Yea. (Please see my Harvard Business School Doctorate post.)

July 20, 2020

I had selected Case Institute of Technology because my uncle was on the faculty. Our family had moved from Long Beach, California to McLean, Virginia during the summer before my freshman year. My parents drove me to Cleveland, Ohio – where it is located – and I moved into the freshman dormitory with my first roommate (a chemist, he muttered about methyl-ethyl-ketone in his sleep).

Freshman and First Sophomore Year

My two main memories during my freshman year were: (1) working little and getting B’s while seeing others work constantly and fail; and, (2) hearing screams of frustration from others with their head out the dorm window (traditional behavior at Case). I continued working little and flunked out in the middle of my sophomore year.

The time I should have been studying I spent playing contract bridge. My bridge partner, who I’d gone to high school with, also went to Case. More mature than me, he was able to get good grades and still play bridge. He probably blamed me for his going to Case instead of MIT, where he also was accepted. This was justified as I’d tried to persuade him to go to Case. I lost touch with him after I flunked out the first time.

My physics course was an exception during my first sophomore year; I hadn’t done enough homework to memorize the formulas so I spent exam time deriving the ones I needed. This impressed my instructor enough that he gave me a D instead of failing me as I deserved. My other instructors gave me the grade I deserved, an F.

Second Sophomore Year

I returned home and found a job for 18 months testing electronic components. When I asked to return to Case, they required me to promise that I wouldn’t play bridge. So I played hearts – to be playing something – but the dean of students saw me playing and called me to his office. He told me: “You promised you wouldn’t play cards.” I responded: “I promised I wouldn’t play bridge, I was playing hearts.” He said: “We’re changing your promise to include all card games.” I responded: “We?” and left to find a bridge game – demonstrating my immaturity. A couple of months later I realized I was failing all my courses, asked for and received permission to withdraw from my classes (they kindly considered this “progress”), and I returned home planning to enlist in the Navy.

You may be wondering what my uncle said while I was being unpleasant to the dean of students (a neighbor) and flunking out. He was warm and kind throughout. I had a standing invitation to his house for Sunday dinner, enjoyed listening while he read out loud before dinner (as he did every day), and always felt welcomed. He and his family could not have been nicer.

In addition to being naturally a nice person, he may have been remembering his own past. His family lived in Dedham, Massachusetts, and thought he was working on his doctorate in physics at Harvard, a few towns away. They learned he was in Egypt when they received a picture postcard.

My father suggested the Coast Guard instead of the Navy; he said that my stuttering wouldn’t be as much of a barrier. I now believe that he saw the Vietnam War coming and was trying to keep me away from it. I joined the Coast Guard for one year active duty plus 5 years in the reserves. Boot camp was a good thing for me: while I’d played tennis in high school, I’d never been strong since I’d never done anything extra after polio (see Growing Up: Age 5-8; Isle Of Palms, SC).

The Coast Guard provided incentive to be stronger, and I met the requirements. One day they posted the armed forces qualifying test results for most of my group – not including me. As I knew my score, I was initially disappointed as it was higher than the highest posted. But that person was large, strong, and outgoing – accepting and enjoying the hard time that the cadre and recruits gave him. I couldn’t have done that. For the first time I began to get an idea of how much smarter than most I was, and began to think about what it meant.

After boot camp I went to a Navy fire-control technician school to learn how to maintain and use the equipment that aimed the guns. There I did well and began to help others if they had difficulty.

Third Sophomore Year

Case accepted me back and I moved back to Cleveland. And this time I had a car; my parents celebrated my new maturity by giving me my mother’s car, a Sunbeam Alpine sports car with a removable hard top. I moved into the same dormitory as my previous sophomore years. When the weather was good I left the hard top on the front lawn of the dormitory.

When I returned to campus I was surprised: the sophomore class that I was joining included girls – the first class at Case to do so. As the Case dorms lacked facilities for them, they lived in the Western Reserve dorms. No surprise, they were both smarter and more mature than most of their classmates. They needed to be as Case, like all engineering schools, is well supplied with students and faculty without social skills – a/k/a nerds.

Now a bit older and more comfortable with myself, I found friends and moved into an apartment with three others for my last two years. As she was dating one of my friends, I got to know Ruth – a math major at Case. One day she showed me a 30-page derivation she had just received back from her professor with the single notation at the end of “Not so” – and a low grade. (This was probably the result of her professor’s inability to communicate, not because she was a girl.)

On To Graduation

I majored in systems engineering while taking as many psychology and organizational behavior courses as possible. This exposed me to a greater gamut of professors than most. One of my organizational behavior professors was at the other extreme from Ruth’s. He frequently put a sign on his door that read “Yes I love you. I am very busy. Please go away.”

During the three years to graduation one of my clearest memories is of Professor Louis Green. I had taken Basic Mathematics from him my first sophomore year. It was the filter course for math majors; if you attempted all the homework, took all the tests, and were not a math major you were guaranteed at least a D – and you could stop being a math major until he had to turn in the grades. I lasted a month before I realized I was over my head, dropped the course, and changed my major.

The second encounter was when he was teaching the required math course for engineers in my third sophomore year to 600 students. The first test median was zero (60% received that), the average was 5, the high grade was 91, and I received a 45 – probably the highest relative grade I’d ever received. Professor Green had assumed that we knew the material and tested what we could do with it. The class rioted (in a well-behaved manner), hung him in effigy, and protested to the Dean – my uncle. They reached a compromise: another exam on the same material – to see if we’d learned it. This time the average was 85; I got another 45 – and a needed wakeup call. I skipped the last week of classes as it was review and I knew I’d learned the material. As I was walking out of the final exam he asked me: “Where were you last week?” I confessed. He asked: “How did you do, Fred?” (the first time he’d spoken to me in five years and he remembered my name), I replied, “I think I did well, but maybe I didn’t understand it at all and flunked it.” It was the former.

Another notable professor was Frederick Way; an early user and researcher in computers, he was one of the rare Case faculty members without a doctorate. When asked about it he usually responded: “Who is competent to examine me?” I was talking to him in his office one day and he mentioned a paper, went to one of the many tall stacks of paper, ran his fingers down one side – and pulled it out!

The Burroughs 220 computer at Case had a brass label on its On/Off switch: “Robert M. Kosterbanic Memorial Panic Button”. Bob had crashed the computer so many times that he was told he would need a memorial if he did it again.

Most of my friends had jobs when they graduated, I didn’t. I enrolled in the Educational Psychology department at Western Reserve University, across the street from Case. (Looking back, I clearly wasn’t as mature as I thought I was.) The course material was easy, but I was dismayed to learn that my advisor was working on a third repetition of the research for his doctorate – and when I read what he’d written (including his dissertation) I judged his research fatally flawed. This ended my interest in learning from him, so I left the program and returned home to look for a job. (Please see my First Real Jobs and Masters Degree post.)

July 14, 2020