THE PRIVILEGE OF LIVING IN EXTRAORDINARY TIMES

How do you know you are not sleeping enough? When the clerk at the phone shop gleefully informs you that your Blackberry's battery died because a mere four hours of recharging every night is not enough to keep it healthy.

What about the health of my internal battery? Things move fast at business school, and even faster at Chicago Booth.

It is exam week and the famed Chicago rigour is in full evidence. I have been averaging less sleep than I was as a Wall Street investment banker, and that was not much. Tomorrow, I have my economics final exam.

The great thing about studying economics at the University of Chicago is that most of what you learn in class was invented, or was in some way affected significantly, by research done within one square mile of where your are. This immediacy of cutting-edge research electrifies academic life here.

Two other things I have come to love are the discipline-based approach and the flexible curriculum. The former ensures that I get a complete toolkit of skills – a bit like a Swiss army knife – with thorough preparation in economics, finance, accounting, strategy, marketing and so on.

It is very reassuring to know that, as a Chicago MBA, I will walk away with a solid foundation in all these disciplines, to be used as needed throughout my career.

The flexible curriculum ensures that I can decide which “tool” of the Swiss army knife I want to emphasise and become a real ninja at using.

At the moment, I am leaning towards economics and strategy, although finance and marketing also have me interested.

This term we also started our formal career services module.

It began with a “self-discovery” process where each of us was put through a series of tests to determine what it is we truly love doing.

From there, given our individual inclinations, a systematic approach of discovery led to an examination of career paths that would fulfil those.

The entire approach was scientific and customised.

I discovered that management, strategy and entrepreneurship are the areas that best suit me. I hope to use the summer internship as a means to further test this hypothesis.

I bought two T-shirts this term. One reads “Obama: Yes We Can!” and the other “Chicago Booth”, and I am proud to wear them both. This has been a historic time to be in Chicago.

On the balmy night of November 4, I walked a few blocks from my apartment on Michigan Avenue to Grant Park to hear Barack Obama's acceptance speech. I still get goosebumps when I think of it.

Historical moments don't get any bigger than that. This is something I will be able to tell my grandchildren about.

As I saw tears streaming down cheeks – black, white, Asian, Hispanic, rich, poor – all gathered in Grant Park to underline that, “yes, we can”, it reinforced for me that there really is no place like the US – in no other country would a Barack Obama have been possible.

Suddenly, Chicago, Obama's adopted home, had became the epicentre of change.

To me, it was another confirmation that I had made the right choice by coming to the most progressive and forward-thinking city in the US and to a university where, until recently, Obama was a lecturer.

A second historic moment I lived through this term was David Booth's unprecedented $300m gift and the renaming of the school as Chicago Booth.