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Category: Personal & Family Life

How to get a decent GMAT score in 10 days

Published 21 September 2016
How to get a decent GMAT score in 10 daysImperial College

I’m a brand-new MBA student at Imperial College Business School. To get in, most MBA schools require a good score in a gruelling test called the GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test). I too had to take this test, which measures all kinds of critical reasoning as well as verbal and quantitative information processing skills.

My problem was that I was a late applicant in an admissions process which normally takes a year. I had only ten days in which to prepare for the GMAT, and I managed a score of 620. The difference between my first practice test and the final test was pretty stark:

Total score Quant score Verbal score Quant % Verbal %
Practice test (estimated ranges) 370–470 6–18 37–39 0–6 83–89
Final test 620 32 44 24 98

Contrary to most of the advice I read online, it turns out you don’t need a minimum of three months, a private tutor or to be a maths savant. Here’s what I would say about preparing for the GMAT at short notice.

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Slow living in Finland

Published 12 August 2016
Slow living in Finland

At the start of this month I was in Finland, discovering new sides to my home country. I’ve lived abroad for nearly six years now, and I’ve found that different things about Finland have been more conspicuously absent than others, at different times. For example, to begin with, I missed foods I couldn’t get in the UK. Then I really felt the loss of ‘feeling native’. At various times I’ve lamented not having this or that in the UK, and there was even a phase where I started noticing all the things I can have in the UK, that I couldn’t have in Finland (a job?).

This trip was a little different.

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Personal & Family Life

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Experiments in body language

Published 17 June 2016
Experiments in body languageBody language

The inspiration behind this post comes from observing my fiancé. I say this with love: he is someone with a natural sense of entitlement – and I don’t mean in the millennial sense. I mean that he seems to feel entitled to exist and occupy a space in the world, and not ask for permission nor forgiveness for it. You can see this in his body language – for example, the way he stamps his feet coming up the stairs, or the way he belly-laughs at funny things on the internet. When he’s around, you hear it first.

Contrast this with me. My natural instinct is to deflect attention. I’m inclined to walk lightly, close doors gently, speak at the lowest volume that will still allow people to hear me, automatically walk on the edge of the pavement in case somebody wants to pass by, and generally behave as if I’m trying to minimise the signs of my presence.

Lately I’ve become really aware of the ‘minimising’ behaviours and tried a number of experiments to ‘maximise’ my presence, instead, and let me tell you – it’s fun. These are some of my experiments:

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Personal & Family Life

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More sleep, less stress, please!

Published 8 June 2016

Sleep is having another mini-revival. I remember first hearing about the importance of good sleep (from a non-medical source) when Arianna Huffington’s book Thrive came out in 2014. I only read the book this year, but I remember having being intrigued by the idea and hearing about it from other people. Usually business people like to brag about how little sleep they need, and how Napoleon- or Thatcher-like that makes them. Arianna Huffington was saying the opposite, and I liked it.

Now Arianna is back with another book on sleep, and I’ve been inspired to try and improve my sleep, too.

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Personal & Family Life

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Where do you go from being hugged by J. K. Rowling?

Published 8 November 2015
Where do you go from being hugged by J. K. Rowling?Happy owl

 

Last week, I met J. K. Rowling! I’ve now calmed down enough to tell the tale.

Working at Little, Brown has many benefits, but for a Harry Potter-head like me, the theoretical chance of meeting J. K. is really the main one. I had less than one day to get used to the idea last week when we got an email announcing a celebratory visit from ‘Robert Galbraith’ to mark the success of Career of Evil the very next morning. What should I wear? Should I talk to her? Would she be interested to know about my desire to get a Harry Potter tattoo?

The first question became moot by the morning as I blissfully forgot all about my impending encounter with the world’s most famous novelist. It was probably for the best. I decided I should talk to her, because the opportunity might never come again. And a friend put me off revealing my tattoo dreams, probably also for the best. Here’s the blow-by-blow.

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Personal & Family Life

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Book rec: I Know How She Does It

Published 20 June 2015

I have a book recommendation! Laura Vanderkam is a wonderful author who writes about time management. Her new book, I Know How She Does It: How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time is really worth reading if you’re a woman who dreams of having both a happy family life and a career, or already have both and find the juggling act stressful and difficult. (And if you’re a man in a relationship with such a woman, I would also recommend it to you for perspective.)I Know How She Does It cover

I’ve been a fan of Vanderkam’s writing ever since I happened to find What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast in a bookshop, and was inspired by her optimism about time. The lack of time is a favourite complaint among ‘busy’ people, but she actually maintains that you can make time for anything you want by planning and prioritising. And some of the things your time is currently spent on probably aren’t worth it.

The new book is based on research among women who have a big career and a family, and her findings are honey to my ears. I’m ambitious career-wise, but I also hope that I will eventually have at least one child, and I’ve already started worrying about how that’s going to work. The narrative is that if you want one, then you need to be reconciled to the fact that you will never be fully invested in the other. But Vanderkam’s research shows otherwise: the book is full of women who find the time to be properly involved in both, without big trade-offs, and it’s really reassuring to read about. 

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Personal & Family Life

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Kernels of thoughts

Published 16 June 2015
Kernels of thoughtsLondon street at twilight
London street at twilight
A June evening on my street

When I was growing up, I kept a diary for years. I had a friend who was a very gifted artist, and when we met and swapped diaries to get up to speed about what the other one had been up to, I was so impressed with the colourful, doodle-y pages of her diary. I obviously tried to ape her best as I could, so the main purpose of keeping a diary for a while was to come up with some witty illustrations or colour patterns my friend wouldn’t have thought of.

Now I dream of keeping a grown-up diary where I could record thoughts. I figure, when I’m old and want to look back, I won’t be so interested in which places I visited, etc – but what I used to think about things.

My efforts to start keeping a diary again have largely failed, but I can at least commit my ideas to the internet! Here are a couple of thoughts from the past week or so.

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Personal & Family Life

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