In the blink of an eye, my first quarter at Kellogg has vanished. For an outsider looking in, it would appear that business school life is a whirlwind centering on the pursuits of school work, romance and career.

The school work has been more than I imagined. I single out the root cause of the workload to be the sheer amount of teamwork that is involved at Kellogg.

For each of the five courses I’ve taken in the Fall quarter, I’ve had to work with a different team. Most of the assignments for each course are team-based. There is a pressure in each team to contribute something. Each team interaction is also an interaction in which you’re building your “personal brand”.

What happens here is how people will talk about you in the bars - and probably how people will remember you. There are some people I now know that I never want to work with again.

In contrast, there are others I’d love to work with again. The diversity of people at Kellogg is opening my eyes to new ways of dealing with situations, from managing people to preparing for meetings.

The diversity is even more apparent because studying at Kellogg feels like you’re trapped in a bubble – there is no life outside. I’ve struggled to keep track of general world events, and even friendships and relationships outside of Kellogg.

The usual drill here at Kellogg is that long distance relationships start to disintegrate by Thanksgiving. “Black Monday” is the fabled day on which everyone returns to school after the Thanksgiving break to find the number of single people has increased. Unfortunately, I’ve not been keeping my ear close enough to the ground to report whether this fable materialized this year.

A second somewhat related annual event follows shortly after – ski trip.

This is a huge week-long Kellogg party (and ski trip) that takes place the week after final exams for the Fall term. At least two thirds of the 1,200-strong full-time student body participates in it.

This year it’s in Vail. After the whirlwind first quarter, people will be letting the alcohol flow freely. Ski trip is said to be when the number of single people reduces. Unfortunately, I’m not on ski trip so I won’t be able to report on this fable either. At least just this once, I’ve decided not to follow the herd. Instead, I’ve decided to focus on the reason I came to Kellogg.

The instinct to follow the herd is strong at business school. From the obsession with recruiting for consulting to almost assuredly over-committing to leading clubs, everyone wants to be involved in what everyone else is doing.

I have attempted to resist the herd to focus on starting a business. Thus far, it has been a struggle. Kellogg and its parent, Northwestern University, do not yet have all the resources an entrepreneur would hope for.

However, one resource it does have is treks to the Bay Area to meet venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. Timed to clash with ski trip, some call it a “serious trip for serious people”. Through the trip, I hope to develop connections that help me in my entrepreneurial endeavors.

Other resources I have started to utilize include a pan-university web innovation course, providing a structure for students to build a web startup. An entirely new initiative, I’ve enrolled on the course and will be interested in seeing how it develops. For me, these two resources remain the highlight among workshops and other activities around entrepreneurship that happen at Kellogg.

My first quarter at Kellogg has been a whirlwind – from overwhelming teamwork, to unverified dating fables and resisting the herd to pursue an “entrepreneurial career”. There are still another five quarters and a summer break to go. I wonder if it will all pass within a few more blinks of the eye.