Pete Blaustein

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• Finishing midterm for McDonald's Investing seminar.

• Taking Yossi Feinberg's Advanced Microeconomics class with only 11 other students
• Professor Wolfson and Pfleiderer's finance class
• GSB Show
• Doing long loops with our running group in Windy Hill, Huddart Park, Arastradero, etc.
• Learning more about myself through Leadership Labs…you see a lot when you watch yourself on a recording!

• John Scully visiting Investments class
• All things Interpersonal Dynamics
• Diwali celebration
• Learning how to communicate in a comprehensive way (body language, tone, and content) better

Today's  biggest accomplishment: Finishing McDonald's midterm
Today's biggest challenge: A little under the weather and hard to get better while "going!"
Most fun: Cooking lesson

Today's biggest accomplishment: Challenging Prof. Hennessey's narrative of the financial crisis
Today's biggest challenge: Balancing all my commitments, goals, and time!
Most fun: Lunch with Jeremy and Sam

Today's biggest accomplishment: Very good progress on paper.
Today's biggest challenge: Realizing I don't have as much time to work on paper as I'd like!
Most fun: Paper

Today's biggest accomplishment: Financial Crisis class
Most fun: Golf and dinner with Sarah

8:00 AM Get up for pancake breakfast with my wife, Sarah.

Walk Maya, our Bernese Mountain dog, in Portola Valley.

11:00 AM - 2:00 PM Met classmate Mudit Garg and his wife Meghana for an Indian cooking lesson at their house (Meghana teaching Sarah) and hang out at their house.

1:00-5:00 PM

Homework: Jack McDonald's Investment Class midterm "Hemline and Stitch, B"

Touchy-Feely reading and homework

Financial Crisis and its Aftermath homework.

6:00 -7:00 PM Walk Maya

7:00 - 8:00 PM Dinner at home

6:30 AM Breakfast of yogurt parfait at school.

Drove to school (20 min)

8:00 - 10 AM Financial Crisis class with Professor Hennessey.

Discussion of three competing narratives of the financial crisis, (Wall Street, Everybody, Government).

10:00 AM Talked with Prof. Hennessey after class.

10:30 AM- 12:00 Noon Jack McDonald class on "InfoTech" a new case on the LBO of a data provider firm done by a GSB alum.

Lunch with Prof. Bulow and classmate Sam Cecil in Arbuckle.

I have tried to be a resource for Prof. Bulow on a paper he's working on vis-a-vis proper financial system reform and I always enjoy talking to him about the crisis. His view is that the lack of mark-to-market discipline contributed to the step-function like jump in the magnitude of the crisis as investments had not been properly marked . He's also quite skeptical (rightly, in my view) that regulators will be able to see the next one if only they had more power.

1:30-3:00 PM Investments class focusing on deals gone wrong and why they went wrong.

3:00-4:00 PM Finance and Investment club investment committee meeting.

Discussed goals of the portfolio and to what extent we want to pursue a "cheap large cap tech" investing theme.

7:00-8:00 PM Dinner at home with Sarah.

8:30-9:30 PM Reading for Financial Crisis class

7:30 AM Breakfast at home.

Drove to school (20 min).

9:00 AM - 2:00 PM Working on asset pricing paper in library. This is an on-going project from the summer that has not yet finished. Theory links agency theory to asset pricing and shows on common contracts between investors and investment managers affect asset prices. I am responsible for the empirical work in the paper and have been busy running tests in my free time over the last couple weeks.

Made good progress and got caught up on some recent papers by competing authors.

Working with a professor at school and a former colleague.

2:00 - 4:00 PM Tutoring MBA1's in Finance.

4:30 - 5:30 PM Ran "The Dish."

6:00 - 7:00 PM Got our dog Maya ready for Halloween.

Our Halloween costumes.

7:00 - 8:00 PM Dinner with Sarah and a mutual friend after they had walked the dish at Lulu's in Atherton.

9:00 - 10:00 PM Watching "Law and Order" with Sarah.

6:40 AM Breakfast with Sarah at home.

Drove to school (20 min).

8:00 - 10:00 AM Financial Crisis class. Discussed auto bailouts. Great class as we each had to defend our decision on video. Two classmates did the exercise with professional cameramen and were shown to the whole class.

Very fun and challenging to talk about decisions in "Liberty Diner" language instead of more technical jargon.

12:00 Noon Lunch with MBA1 who worked at Bridgewater. Discussed his experience, the economy, and my work experience.

1:00 - 5:00 PM Golf with GSB classmates David Sherry and Andrew Wasserman.

6:00 - 9:00 PM Dinner with Sarah, her friend from growing up, and her husband.

Also wanted to share my Friday with you:

Today's biggest accomplishment: Completely going for it with Diwali prayers and dancing.
Today's biggest challenge: Tutoring finance is difficult!
Most fun: Diwali

7:30 AM Breakfast at home.

Drove to school (20 min)

8:00 - 10:00 AM Finish Touchy-Feely assignment; turn in McDonald midterm; work on F&I emails relating to program scheduling.

11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Tutor MBA1s on more finance.

Quite impressed at how much the finance professors expect base level students to learn in the first 10 classes into the midterm! Even more impressed by the students' ability to go learn a huge amount of difficult material.

1:15-1:45 PM Quick lunch with friends in GSB square in front of Bass library.

3:00 - 3:30 PM Hung out with classmates on the quad and watched the PMP set up for LPF.

4:30 - 6:00 PM Run in Portola Valley, up Alpine to Skyline, into Russian Ridge OSP, view goes all the way to the Pacific, back home.

7:00 - 8:00 PM Dinner at home with Sarah.

9:00 - Midnight Attended a Diwali party at MBA2 house.

Diwali is the Indian New Year celebration and we had a fabulous time.

Prayed to Hindu god and then danced, danced, danced.

Classmates taught us how to do Indian dancing and we had a lot of fun.

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