I've had only one difficulty with the Duke CCMBA (aside from the material—talk to me Sunday night after I hand in my accounting final, for example): travel optimization. Our next residency starts October 30th in Dubai. Getting from Chicago to Dubai has inherent difficulties, particular with the (self-imposed) constraint of flying only oneworld carriers.
I initially tried to go through Amman, and take a couple of days after the residency to visit Jordan and Israel. That fell through when Royal Jordanian dropped the only flight from Chicago that made the trip work, forcing me either to connect through Detroit or New York either two or three days early.
Plan B. British Airways has the largest network after my home carrier, American, so the logical routing takes me through London. And to avoid 16 hours in coach, I decided to stay overnight there on my way back.
Only, it turns out I made a slight error in planning the return. As the CCMBA program office mentioned to me when I posted my travel arrangements, my flight plans have me leaving Dubai the day after the residency ends. But this shouldn't be a big deal. I'll just stay in Dubai one extra night, right?
Well, that would mean one extra night at Jumeirah Emirates Towers, not Motel 6. Imagine the shock and horror when I called them and discovered that would cost AED 1,740 (US$474).
Result? After paying a £100 ($144) change fee to the airline, and booking an additional £96 ($138) night at the little hotel in Kensington where I'll be staying, I'm going to have my extra post-residency night in London instead of Dubai, and save $200.
All of this is completely boring, of course, and doesn't really add anything to modern American literature or journalism. But it is my last gasp of work avoidance before diving into 8 hours of financial accounting and 2 hours of management essentials today.