Built Strong to Last Long, or at Least that is what we told Creative

Day 2 of Academy Week was a presentation on working with agencies and creative. It was a really helpful session to help understand the relationship between BMs and creative and how to get the best work out of them. We learned about what makes up a creative brief, and then were put into groups to analyze a print ad and reverse engineer the creative brief. Each team then presented to the academy so we could dissect the brief and see which ad best fit. And as our presenter, Eric Bauchet, was from Whirlpool the day would not have been complete without some Maytag ads and comparison to LG, GE and Electrolux in the space.

After a quick lunch break, we got a preview of Jonlee's M537 Channels class with a discussion of the retail and manufacturer relationship. Going into retail myself this was an incredibly valuable presentation and I learned a lot of things I can apply this summer (GMROI, etc) I am really excited for the full length class in the fall.

After we wrapped up for the day, my team met for 3 hours or so to go over where we stood on our project. We assigned tasks and banged out a lot in the time we allotted then headed home to do the last of our "WHO" research. I grabbed a quick dinner of a salad and a Lean Cuisine (no I am not being healthy, I am stressed and have snacked all night!) and got to work. I read over 20 articles on Japanese consumer behavior before coming up with a one pager for my team tomorrow. Not looking forward to everything we still have to do! Tomorrow will be a busy day!

Internship - check, Schoolwork - ??

Everyone thinks I am on easy street now, my dream internship under my belt and the rest of the semester should be smooth sailing right? Um, no. Now that we are out of the core the number of teams I am on has grown exponentially (from one to four!) and now that I have a leadership role in Kelley Women, that seems to fill in any of the space not already allocated to school projects.

Accounting thankfully is not a lot of group work, but we have lots of cases to prepare for every class. Thankfully, for me Charlton is forced to take the same class so I have a study buddy at home to make sure I am not allocating costs to projects based on some silly driver like times they turned on the light switch.

Brand Management has a fairly in-depth project where we value a brand. My team (of 6) is valuing Tiffany. We have to look at the consumer perceptions and then a few different valuation methods. The good thing about having a team so large is we can have mini-projects within the project. Each pair has their own valuation, mine being product based. We also have a survey we all created to gauge customer preferences, so if you are reading this and want to help out...click here.

Market Research has a project too, teams of only 4, but so far it seems fairly straightforward. It is more of an exercise to get us using SPSS so our professor is walking us through it. Perfect!

Then there is my KIP class where we have teams of five to work on case write-ups and our industry presentation in a few weeks. Our first case write-up was on the Israeli Special Forces and really interesting. As for the industry presentation we are going with agriculture as CPG was too hard to find resources on.

Lastly, there is my CMA project where we are working on a global entry strategy for Kitchenaid...something like what we would see in our internships. It is fairly vague and we haven't gotten too far in, but I already know more than I ever thought I would on Japanese cooking tastes and trends.

And if that wasn't keeping me busy enough, there is our readings, homework, housework (still haven't done laundry this week!) and try to keep up with my friends. Pulled in 500 directions, and this was supposed to be easier than the core?

I ♥ Green 2!

I am going to miss you guys! Although after 16 weeks I am sure they are all sick of me.

Celebrate!

Today it was back to the Core, after a long two week break. I think we were all trying to get into the swing of things today, I know I was! Not used to being out the door and ready to take notes at 8:15 in the morning anymore. Hopefully, tomorrow will be better and I won't be rushing in minutes before the professor starts again (Sorry Cattani!)

After class today, my team headed to Chow Bar to celebrate the end of case comp. We had hoped it would be a victory lunch, but we were all happy to be done and could celebrate our A- finish. After catching up and having some Chinese (had to incorporate where we thought Eaton should go!) we concluded our "team meeting".

I headed home where I wrote some emails, brainstormed and decompressed. Charlton and I made quick turkey sandwiches (thankfully our last!) and then headed to school for various election activities. Me to Marketing Club, Kelley Women faculty auction debrief meeting and Kelley Women's presidential elections; Charlton to work on his Asian MBA slate. It wasn't until 10:30 we left the Godfrey Center, giving me just enough time to catch up on my emails, vote and throw my hat into the ring for Kelley Women VP elections. The next few weeks look like they will be interesting!

Case Comp in Pictures

So after a week of living and breathing buses, hybrid drive trains, and Chinese infrastructure, I am done! My team made it to the second round and ended up 3rd or 4th in our cohort. While, not the win my teammates were hoping for (no team has ever won orientation case comp and then won the 1st year one) we were able to work through the problem well and spend hours and hours together and not kill each other. I thought our idea was fairly innovative and we were able to explain the story well, so while a loss it really wasn't.

And on the personal side, to be able to speak in front of a room of 70+ for 3 and a half minutes with no notes and just rolling with it...is a huge improvement for me. It really is amazing how much I have grown in the last three months.

There was a lot of stuff going on after, I decided to retreat home and watch a little Martha in my pj's (was glad to get out of my suit!) and finally relaxed. I then had a fantastic dinner at Malibu grill with some friends and called it a night...but not before doing some research for today's CMA day at Kroger.

The Countdown Begins

It's almost the end of case comp, my team is waiting in a breakout room for the drawing of our presentation time. I will be presenting in a room like this in just a few hours. We have run through the presentation and Q&A twice more this morning. I am ready to go! Let's go Green 2!

Run over by a bus...

After 4 days of camping out in a breakout room at Kelley that's what I feel like. Not that I have over done it, or put in crazy long hours (although today's 12 hour day was the exception, normally we have been doing 8-9 hours a day) I am just done. Ready to put the case behind us and venture out of the breakout rooms. My team has worked really well together, and our second year mentor has been great as he has checked up on us consistently to make sure we weren't killing each other. It's always good to know that someone else wants you to succeed.

We finished up around lunchtime today with getting all of our data in our finished powerpoint, and the rest of the day was practice, practice, practice. My teammate's wife brought us dinner (yummy quiche, thanks!) and we finally left the Godfrey Center at 9:30ish.

When I got home, I was in desperate need of some non-bus time and watched Martha Stewart's pie show. After talking to my brother and finishing the last load of laundry it was time to hop in the shower and blow dry my hair, a girl has to look good for her presentation.

I have to be at school at 7:45 tomorrow, ready to get the first round over with and find out if I can relax on Thursday or if I have to bring my A game again...wish me luck!

Days that Turn into Nights

Clocked in 10 or so hours at the Godfrey Center yesterday. Finished with class, headed to the lounge for lunch then read and revised my friend’s application essays (hope she gets into IU!) then camped out in a breakout room with my team for 4 hours to crank out our quant assignment (we had only alloted 2) headed home around six just in time to heat up some leftovers. Then I got some pieces of some upcoming deliverables done for critical thinking and ops.

Around 9 I had an informational interview with an alumni I met at the Kelley Women cooking event in LA last year. Was great to catch up with her and she gave me some really great career advice.

But you know my day can’t finish without a klutzy clumsy move of some kind, so before bed I sloshed burning hot cream of wheat water all down my arm enough to get me good. I know I look lovely with a big burn all over my hand and arm, beautiful!

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!

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!

Today’s agenda:

• meet our team & mentor
• opening session
• cultural orientation

Gotta say, I love my team. I am sure they will all be sick of me at the end of the Core but they are a great group of people and we get along famously already. looking forward to the 2 am study sessions

As always, I was totally pumped after the opening session. The faculty and staff are some of the most amazing public speakers and really nail home why this is such a special place

Cultural orientation was interesting, not what I would have scheduled for the first day but we did learn a lot in who we can be perceived and how we need to be sensitive in the workplace

All in all, a good full day. Now its time for our mentor dinner and maybe if I get inspired we will stick around for the D-bar.