I love winter term

Three weeks. One class. I get to devote my full brain to only ONE thing for three lovely weeks. Can we always have winter term?

Last winter I took Negotiation Workshop. I thought I would pick up valuable career skills, and I did. I also got to take a hard look at how I communicate and present myself, learned strategies for improving, and gained confidence that I can get what I need without having to transform my personality. I use what I learned in that workshop every day.

This winter I'm taking a class on venture capital and technology startups. It's an adaptation of a similar class at Stanford Business School, taught by an HLS professor and a well-known venture capitalist. We are meeting with actual VCs, pitching them a business idea, and in the last week, negotiating a term sheet with them. It seems like a waste that I don't have an actual idea, given the people I'll be talking to.

Before last summer, I was focused on patent prosecution and litigation. I never considered corporate work until I tried it. Since then I've been trying to figure out how I can integrate my interest in technology into a corporate or tax practice. I know IP due diligence always needs to be done, and licensing deals get made, but that doesn't seem to add up to a career. This, on the other hand, sounds perfect. You get to work with small groups of people pursuing an idea they're excited about, and shepherd them through a difficult process.

I need to learn a lot about business in a hurry, though. I'm annoyed that my Corporations class was so bad. It makes no sense to have a case-based Corporations class. In class today, we briefly discussed the different type of corporations and why you would choose each one and the tax implications and practical implications for attracting investors. Doesn't this sound like the kind of stuff you should know if you've taken an entire course entitled "Corporations?" But no. All we did was read cases about shareholder squabbles among circus families.