Spring in January?

The semester picked up quickly with a busy week and spring-like temperatures. Monday morning we met for Critical Skills (we only meet about four times). The focus of LD2 will be interventions to help us improve on a few chosen skills (no, the interventions are not like what you have seen on TV). We split up into our learning teams and discussed what we wanted to accomplish for our first intervention and welcomed suggestions and feedback from the team. It was interesting to see that people chose the same skill to work on, communicating supportively, but are concentrating on different aspects, listening vs. speaking up. Everyone had helpful feedback and we saw the benefit of effective and supportive teamwork. A few handfuls of admitted students sat in on our Finance class to get the feel of graduate level course. After class some of my classmates and I headed upstairs with the admitted students for lunch. It was very laid back and informal and a nice way to reach out to answer any questions they had about the program and living in Boston. Hopefully we were able to give them better insight and gave a positive representation of the program. The rest of my day was spent making sense of our Ops and Finance homework and trying to stay on top of all our other assignments.

I took advantage of having a late class on Tuesday morning and slept in a little bit. It was actually a very uneventful day. After class I headed back home to finish the assignments for Wednesday and hopefully start on those for Thursday. Unfortunately I was a little too optimistic and spent most of the night on Ops and Finance. Our Ops assignment had a lot of equations and it took me more than an acceptable amount of time just to figure out which equations to use and when to use them. And it is a personal goal to do well in Finance, so I have been giving the assignments a little extra attention. Even so, I was still unable to solve a few of the problems relating to net present value (NPV).

Wednesday morning started with a few videos and a discussion on the Japanese restaurant Benihana in Ops. They became very successful on a simple, but effective plan. Between Ops and Finance I was asked to escort a prospective student to class and take her to lunch. In class we went through the problems I was having issues with and I was happy to see I was not as far off as I thought. I invited one of my learning team members to join us for lunch to give our visitor a second prospective. The lunch was a perfect middle of the week pick-me-up as the three of us talked and laughed for nearly two hours! Hopefully she will make her way to Boston! After an impromptu lunch, I had an impromptu meeting with my career advisor about the feedback on my mock interviews. I walked away having signed up for a second mock phone interview (practice makes perfect, right?). Before making my way home I received an email saying our plan to use Gillette for our Ops projects fell through. I quickly emailed my team to inform them and set up a meeting for Thursday. I finally made my way home to spend the night with SPSS (for Stats) and the Strategy textbook.

Thursday we picked up right were we left off in Stats and discussed probability (nothing like a good coin toss example!) and covariances . After a brief break, we continued with Strategy to discuss industry analysis. We were divided into four teams to discuss the newspaper, periodical, lodging, and casino industries and what outside factors/trends are important to each. We then looked at the power of buyers and suppliers. My learning team and I met up after class to discuss our options for the Ops project. Luckily, one of our classmates has a connection to a food manufacturer and offers to help us out! A few of us grabbed some lunch at Boloco in the Marino Center. It has been nice getting to know my new learning team members better and I am looking forward to the rest of the semester!

We ended the week with another busy day on Friday. In Career Management we were given general feedback on the mock interviews and discussed getting our references ready for the Career Fair (just over a week away!). The second half of the class was a panel of employers to give us insight and answer any questions we had about interviews. It was nice to hear from the people that actually conduct interviews and hear how different they can be. The Marketing Club set up a presentation with Bob Cotter from Saatchi & Saatchi in New York later in the afternoon. He works specifically with the Toyota brand and it was fun to see the different parts of his job. Following the presentation, some of my team members and I met up to discuss some of the cases that are due next week and called it quits around 4pm. I did not get as much done as I hoped that night (I was a little distracted by Shark Tank), but I got a solid start for the weekend.

The remainder of the weekend was full of case analyses, reading, and last minute cover letters. I did take a brief break to meet my brother and company at the Publik House for a few drinks and any non-business small talk.

*The views expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of Northeastern University, its staff, faculty or affiliates and are solely the opinion of Keri Deming