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December 22, 2008
Winter break is heeeere!
There were times during Fall B when I just didn't think it would get here. But here we are, smack dab in the middle of a 3 week break from school. I finished up my last final and hopped right on a plane to San Francisco, where I hung out with some old friends from undergrad and one of my new best friends from Ross. I had never been to SF before -- it's a nice place!
But more ON topic -- there's a lot of Ross stuff going on. Closed lists are starting to come out (wish me luck), a ton of resume drops are happening January 1st, and today, just TODAY, we received the list of MAP projects for 2009. We can't register until January 7th but there are so many options that it's good we have plenty of time to peruse the list and decide which ones would be best for us.
On another front, the Net Impact Forum will be happening at the end of January. I just happen to be on the steering committee for this forum, and so, even during break, we're very busy getting everything in order. If you're going to be on campus January 29th or 30th (or both), I strongly you encourage you to come check it out. Even if you don't know if Net Impact is your kind of thing (though I bet it is!) rest assured we always put on a good event and you'll have a good time and get to meet some current students.
That's all for now -- more to come, I'm sure, before Winter A even starts!
Posted by betdavis at 11:29 PM | Comments (0)
December recap
December has been busy! The beginning of the month feels like a long time ago. We were just returning back from the Thanksgiving break, rejuvenated by a few days off, and moving into the homestretch for finals. Some December highlights:
• New building reception: The new business school building is almost ready! Students and guests were invited to a pre-opening reception for a sneak preview. It looks fantastic and I’m so excited to have my classes there next term. Not only is everything state-of-the-art, it’s specifically designed to support action-based learning with several community areas and a number of meeting rooms. It’s hard to believe how large and spacious the building is—I joked with my friends that we would need a bullhorn in order to find each other in the lobby!
• Secret Santa/Hanukkah Harry/Kwanza Kris (etc) party: Our section social chairs did a great job bringing in the holiday cheer by organizing a Secret Santa party. We were randomly assigned section-mates to buy presents for with a maximum of $20, so creativity was encouraged! The break from studying was definitely welcome as well!
• End of Fall B: Initially, I thought I had lucked out when none of my classes had final exams, but I definitely reconsidered after completing all of my final projects. Fall B drew to a close for me at 4am on Saturday when I finished my marketing project—with plenty of time to go before the 8am deadline. :) It’s hard to believe that means we are already 25% done with the MBA program. Even though I am enjoying some rest and relaxation during the holidays, I’m already looking forward to my classes for Winter A: Operations and Managerial Accounting (core courses) and Negotiations and Advertising Evaluation (elective courses).
• MAP: Speaking of Winter A, what about Winter B? The Multidisciplinary Action Projects list was just published a few hours ago. I haven’t ranked my top 10 projects yet, but there’s definitely a wide variety of projects and I’m excited to look through them in more detail.
Happy holidays!
Posted by esl at 07:22 PM | Comments (0)
December 06, 2008
Job Search Momentum Builds
“The focused student gets the job� - These were the words of advice repeated several times to us during our RLI orientation week. This was effective in steering individuals like me into concentrating my time and efforts on one function versus attending consulting club meetings, marketing company presentations, the hi-tech industry trek to California, and a host of other opportunities available to schmooze and hopefully impress recruiters. All this in an effort to get an invitation to a private dinner or a closed list interview.
My focus on learning more about the differences between a marketing career with a CPG (consumer packaged goods) company versus a retail company versus a marketing function in a corporation has allowed me to better understand the marketing career paths I can take. I’ve also limited the amount of time I need to devote to making small talk to recruiters while trying to balance a plate of food and a drink (because I go straight from classes to recruiting events in the evening and haven’t had time to eat dinner). This has allowed me to allocate more time to pursue other activities like trying to figure out how I can help Hitchsters.com achieve a critical mass of users and to focus on school work.
Although I still believe that I received good advice, I’ll have to wait to see if I “get the job� before I can assess the outcome. And I have to confess that some part of me still wonders if maybe I shouldn’t have left the doors open for just a little bit longer…just to see what else is out there.
Posted by monicaea at 10:11 PM | Comments (0)
December 01, 2008
The famous Michigan weather
It’s interesting how much people may warn you about the weather in Michigan before coming here and how unprepared you will nonetheless be in the end. We have not gotten into winter but the streets are already covered with snow. I just returned today from Thanksgiving break and found Ann Arbor covered in snow. Of course, this made the route back home very interesting. This weather can sometimes make you feel as if you are winning a small battle in the street, going from home to the business school can be an interesting journey, crowned once you cross the door of the B-School and feel that welcoming warmth of the lobby. Winter in other countries starts to feel as a joke already, yet we continue to receive the same warning: “This is nothing yet�; so obviously, it still seems that we are underprepared.
What has the weather to do with the school experience, apart from making it a journey to get in time for early morning classes? Well, I think Michigan weather is very much like the experience of coming to school to be challenged in an MBA. You get to the city while it’s still warm outside, everything feels like new, you realize that getting here was a big challenge but that you’re already done with the application, you know that there is more still to come, but you think it will not be as difficult for you. However, the cold weather steps in so quickly that it might even be overwhelming at times; you soon understand that it really is here to stay and that you have to and will overcome this. You realize that you need to adapt to this new time quickly. It not only changes how you dress but how you think about the environment.
So why do I think that the MBA experience resembles facing the Michigan weather? Because it is about quickly learning to manage a changing environment, an environment that will not be indulgent, an environment that will demand you to think differently, an environment that will challenge you consistently. However, you also get to realize that although the environment might be demanding, it is still shaping everything into a really awesome experience, parallel to the beautiful and picturesquely white-covered streets of Ann Arbor right now.
Posted by jorgelrh at 02:01 AM | Comments (0)