Fun at Kelley!

Yesterday I got to witness my first flash mob in the Kelley atrium. During Coffee Break a bunch of my classmates just started dancing. Our program chair got involved and our really good friend was part of the mob (he didn't even tell us!) It was really cool, watch it for yourself here:



I am in the back with my white backpack (you can see the straps if you look really hard!)

New York, NY

I got into the city a little early, at 10:25, and hoped into a cab. It was awesome to see the city all lit up before me and reminded me a little of SATC with me dressed up in the back. I had no problems getting to the Roosevelt and took a quick shower and climbed straight into bed as we had another big day ahead.

First thing in the morning we headed down the block to find a little something for breakfast as we knew we would be getting treats at our first company visit. I settled on a yogurt parfait and a coffee and was ready to hit the town. Up first, Dylan's Candybar, where Kelley alum Maggy Siegel is the COO. She opened up the store for us and gave us a personal tour of the 3 floors of candy. It was a blast! We even got a sneak peek of the back room where all the inventory is kept and then we headed to the cafe for some treats (I got pumpkin ice cream) and some question and answer time with Maggy. It was a great experience and gave us a little different perspective of retail than Target and Wal-Mart who come to campus.

We had a little free time before our next visit and a few of my classmates and I went to Loehmann's nd then to Feline's. I ended up not getting anything but a proscuitto sandwisch from the Bed Bath and Beyond cafe.

Then it was time to head to Macys.com's offices. We were able to meet with HOUR and the merchandise, planning, creative and IT team. It was a really neat perspective on retail, and was great to see the differences between a brick and motar store and an e-tailer.

When we finished up there we were on our own, I headed back to the hotel with some of my classmates and changed into "something more comfortable" and then headed off to get some dinner. We walked to Serendipity, and were greeted with an hour long wait! We found a cute Italian place across the street and had an AMAZING dinner of pasta and salad. We hustled out of there to make our reservation at Serendipity, and proceeded to gorge ourselves on Frrrozen Hot Chocolate and a "Can't Say No" sundae. Everything was good but we needed at least 2-3 other people to help us eat everything. With full bellies, we headed back to the hotel making sure to look at all the holiday windows at Bloomingdale's before calling it a night

Where else do you go when you have a meeting? I think the epitome of “let’s get coffee” is Starbucks, although I didn’t have any coffee! Yesterday afternoon I met with the director of the Student Business Ambassadors, the undergraduate organization I will be mentoring. We had a great meeting, and have some good ideas to improve the organization forward. I am can’t to help them out and make their ideas come to life! I am really looking forward to working with them.

Women's Weekend

This weekend is the first ever Kelley Women's Weekend! An opportunity for the current Kelley Women to showcase the school and what makes Kelley special to about 30 prospectives. We have some great alumni visiting and a lot of great sessions planned for the attendees, should be a fantastic event!

Today it wasn’t quiet breakfast in bed, but breakfast with our program chair. Was a great opportunity to talk to him about our experiences so far and what he hopes to do with the program going forward. I am always so pumped after talking to him, and I love how approachable he is. Great to have someone steering the ship who loves Kelley as much as I do.

Our Israel KIP Blog, and I am a contributor!

This is what a 1st year MBA looks like (just hours after being inducted into the program)

1 week down, 15 more to go!

So after 4 hours of class, I have officially finished my first week of business school. There were times when I didn’t think I would keep up but I have been able to survive.

I did sort of shut down once I got home though, I did read for critical thinking for next week but I didn’t email my contacts back like I should have. Was just done for a bit.

At about 5:30 we headed back to school for Kelley field day. We were divided up among our cohorts and competed against each other in various physical challenges, like water balloon tosses, tug of war, 3 legged races, dizzy bat relay races, water balloon volleyball and to cap it off a car pull. I got to compete in every event and my team mate and I got second for the female teams in the car pull. The green cohort didn’t win overall, oh well, hopefully we will be able to redeem ourselves later in the semester.

After we finished up at Kelley we headed over to the soccer field to watch IU go against St. Johns. They ended up tied but it was fun to just unwind.

Going to have to head to bed soon, we are having our friends over again tomorrow morning for the second installment of the Top Chef breakfast club.

Schmoozing

What most people will tell you makes an MBA program is the network you acquire (there are a lot more factors, but this is right up there in developing rankings, etc) and tonight was my first exposure to Kelley’s recruiting network. I was pretty impressed to say the least, 40 companies there to speak to the incoming class who has only had 3 days of school. Just mindboggling! Most of us don’t have any experience in the fields we are planning on pursuing post-grad yet we have people here that want to meet us, so cool.

So the day started out with management and econ, then some researching down in the lounge. At about 3ish we headed home, watched an episode of Mad Men and then did some more schoolwork. We grabbed a quick bowl of soup and then headed to Bloomington’s Convention Center to meet the company representatives.

I was a little nervous, didn’t really think i was prepared to meet them, but it ended up being a great experience. I met with reps from Nestle, Best Buy and two from various marketing functions within Walmart. I learned a lot and think I can add a few to my list of companies to pursue.

Then I wrapped up the night with some thank you notes and some webinars on networking for my LPCD deliverable.

All of our classes tomorrow got bumped to friday to accommodate more Round Table meetings (8 more companies on my docket) and seminars for us to attend. should be another adventure in networking!

Twelve Hour Days

Day 2 of the program and I am already putting in twelve hour days! Got to school around 8 am for my core classes.

Today was critical thinking, quantitative analysis and accounting. I loved critical thinking, Professor Metzger is a riot and really does make you question your logic…and it was only our first session! I am really looking forward to the rest of the semester. Quantitative analysis was a lot of housekeeping, but that should be expected when you have a class so heavily dependent on tools, need to make sure everyone is on the same page. And accounting was accounting, going to be hard to get excited about that class.

Then it was time for lunch down in the lounge, which was basically me eating a peanut butter sandwich while I read up on CPG and retail happenings. Once all the crumbs were gone it was onto econ reading and case prep before a team meeting to work on the econ assignment. An hour later, I had some answers written up and a very confusing supply curve. We’ll see how we faired tomorrow.

After the team dispersed, I hung around in the breakout room and worked on my Friday accounting homework. Need to get it out of the way so i can focus on Round Table research and the Thursday night football game! Had only one problem left before I had the 1st Kelley Women meeting.

The meeting was really informative and talked about opportunities for leadership in the organization. I have already applied for a co-chair position, will find out sometime next week if I get it! I love the organization, it is such a champion for women in the workplace. We also talked about the upcoming National Association of Women MBA conference I am attending in Disneyland at the end of October. Kelley is hosting the event and it should be a great opportunity to network.

Finally left the Godfrey Center at 8:30, not bad for my second day! Once back here at the house I put in another couple hours finishing accounting homework, recopying last night’s speaker notes and researching half of my Round Table companies. Now its time to hit the sack so I can do it all over again tomorrow!

Done with Day One

So I kicked off the first day of school with a bad start:

• Burnt Charlton’s breakfast
• Had the dog run after some deer (which resulted in me running after her for 5 minutes)
• Had printer issues at school so i end up missing my finance slides for class

But then the day turned around. Not like choirs singing or anything but it went pretty well after that. Today I had finance, econ and operations. I got cold called in econ and survived and I felt adequately prepared for everything. Had my resume writing workshop after class and got a pretty awesome review on it (just needed a few grammar tweaks) Then it was time to come home, get some more studying done (lots of reading for my management case discussion on weds), grabbed a quick dinner here at the house before heading back to IU to see Guy Kawasaki speak. It was such a cool talk, I ended up with pages and pages of notes…hopefully I will be able to apply some of his lessons.

But since my Myers Briggs says I like lists here is what I accomplished today:

• Turned in team charter
• Revised resume
• Turned in academy application
• Wrote my SAC application
• Turned in my SAC application
• Read Mondavi case for MGMT and did an okay outline of the case
• Read module for weds econ class including text
• Watched two portions of the finance video lecture series

The sad thing is, even with all that I got done today I have loads more I didn’t even get a chance to start. Gotta keep treading!

Frantic

So today was the last day before the official start of class, not that the last few weeks haven’t been a lot of work. It may sound like all hot air balloon rides and food festivals but we have had some hard core reading and that case comp was brutal. Just like Jumpstart, we are going to start getting cold called and thrown into the fire. Core professors, please be gentle!!

Today was an all day study session, with a small break for me to write my academy application essay. The hope is to ge that turned in after my resume workshop tomorrow so I can get my interview out of the way. The club meetings start happening on Tues, we have a leadership presentation tomorrow night and not to mention the SAC application available tomorrow to try to wiggle into my schedule. AND CAN’T FORGET ROUNDTABLES! I need to research my companies something fierce and get everything all ready for networking night on Weds. Too much too do, so little time.

If nothing else, at least my lunch is packed!

Join the Club

Today was another full day of MBA programing. The morning started out with back to back presentations on time and stress management. Stuff you guys all know I need help with ;) After a few takeaways…cheap massages offered by health services, SCORE! It was on to the club fair/expo. We had representatives from almost every club come and talk to our cohort and then they let us all out to talk to the reps at their tables in the atrium. It was craziness! Although I pretty much knew which organizations I wanted to join, I did learn about the Kelley International Perspectives scheduled for next year (China, Dubai/Egypt, Israel and Ireland) I am definitely interested in doing one! Just got to figure out which one.

Then it was time to come home and get caught up on some scheduling stuff for class. I got my outlook all set up for the next two weeks so I can tackle the work a little more effectively (hopefully)

When 4:30ish rolled around it was a mad dash to get all gussied up for our MBA induction ceremony at the union. It was an amazing event, I was getting misty at the end of it when the Dean remarked on us writing our new chapter. Just so pumped to be surrounded with so many bright and talented people, we have such a great class. I am really looking forward to seeing all of what class of 2011 accomplishes.

We all made our way to the Tudor room for a wonderful reception and cocktail hour…that lasted for a few. We actually shut the place down because we were having such a great time catching up with our classmates.

We walked Addie around our complex when we got home and I pounded out some finance problems. Now it is time for bed as i can hardly keep my eyes open.

We’ve got spirit, yes we do, we got spirit how about you?!

After a long day of academy and major presentations, and getting bogged down with our future assignments, we headed over to Memorial Stadium for the IU spirit event.

We got to watch the football team practice, receive a tour of the stadium, have dinner with our classmates and their families, get pep talks from the athletic coaches and get to see IU’s famous a capella group, straight no chaser. Was a lot of fun, wish I could relax in the hot tubs in the stadium though after this busy week.

We Won!

Sorry the news is a little late, but after yesterday I was a zombie! But let me rewind a little so you get a taste of the whole case competition process.

My team met in one of the breakout rooms at 8 and practiced, practiced, practiced until we had to head to the judging room. Our presentation went well and the questions we were asked weren’t anything we couldn’t handle. Our mentor sat in on it too and gave us some feedback after so that was helpful. We went to decompress for awhile and then were called back in with the other 3 teams we were competing against. The judges then announced who was advancing to the second round…my team! We were all kind of shocked, and stumbled out to the atrium to await for the drawing of second round presentations.

We selected the second slot, that allowed us just enough time to eat lunch and practice a few more times in our breakout room. Then it was show time! for round two, we not only presented to three second year judges but the WHOLE rest of our cohort. Once again it went really well, the questions were a little tougher but it seemed that the judges were satisfied with most of our answers.

Then we watched the two remaining teams and headed to the auditorium to await the results. Professor Powell walked the whole MBA class through the case and talked about things the second years liked and didn’t like about our presentations as a whole. Then it was the time that all 231 had been waiting for…the results! and when he read green 2, my heart skipped a beat. We won!? Wow! We are barely a week in and i won a case competition against 15 other teams? And with members from really impressive backgrounds. Its amazing that a girl from San Diego State and a dream can really accomplish.

After a much needed nap and some dinner we headed out to Brother’s bar to celebrate with the rest of the class! Glad to have one case under my belt and a jump drive to wear with pride around my neck!

It's 1:30...and I just got home

So tonight was our first all nighter! We got our case yesterday and thought we had a pretty good handle on it. My team got to school at around 8 am and I worked the numbers all afternoon. We took a break at lunch time so I could home and take care of addie and then it was back to the break out room. Everything was progressing nicely, until our mentor showed up around 4ish to tear our presentation to bits. So instead of taking a couple hour dinner break, we grabbed a quick one downstairs and worked through the night. We completely redesigned our presentation and was still able to get a half an hour in at our designated practice room. Our mentor brought us some awesome treats (homemade thai curry puffs!) and gave us some suggestions on tightening the presentation. So at 11:30 it was back to the breakout room to tweak it some more. Think we are pretty set. Of course I got stuck with the numbers so I will have a lot of practicing to do in the morning before heading back to school again at 8 (for our 9:15 presentation) phew! What a day!

Last night was the first Kelley Women event. We had appetizers and drinks at Grazie downtown, and it was a lot of fun. I got to see a lot of the second years again from Experience Weekend and meet some more of my fellow classmates. Found out about some of the events coming up, including the NAWMBA conference at Disneyland, and what volunteer positions are available. Really excited to get involved, hopefully the Core will be accommodating!

After a week in Bloomington, moving into our apartment and going to my Jumpstart classes, today it really starts! At 9 am this morning I meet the rest of my MBA classmates as we begin our two week orientation into the Kelley MBA program. Wish me and the rest of the Class of 2011 luck!