Controlled Chaos!

We have a long weekend thanks to MLK, Jr. Day, and I spend most of Sunday sleeping.  Really. I sleep in until about 8:30 (usual wakeup time is around 6:30).  About four hours after that, I decide it’s time to take a nap.  The hours I’m actually conscious, I work on some of the reading assignments and send out a class-wide email about the Marketing Club’s speaker event!  We’ll be hosting Robert Cotter from Saatchi&Saatchi on January 27^th!

On Monday, the Museum of Fine Arts is holding an open house (free admission for everyone!) in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and I decide it’s time to do something a little more cultured.  The MFA opened a Degas exhibit a while ago, and I’d been meaning to stop by for quite some time.  I finally have the opportunity to go; the only downside is that half of Boston has the same idea as me.  It’s very crowded, and much to my dismay, there are screaming children everywhere.  I love kids, but I don’t like screaming kids! 

Tuesday, we’re back in class.  We only have one class on Tuesdays (Supply Chain Management); we discuss a very short L.L.Bean case.  I’ve always liked the company, and their corporate strategy is very different from a lot of other retailers.  They offer 24/7/365 phone assistance in multiple languages, free shipping (both ways!), and a lifetime guarantee on their products.  For those of you with retail experience, this is almost unheard of! 

The rest of the day, I’m doing homework and working on some chapter edits for Professor Garcia.  She’s asked me to construct a small table to illustrate the different coffee offerings from several major coffee vendors.

I wake up on Wednesday completely anxious.  I have a long day ahead of me, starting with classes.  Both Finance and Operations are over in a flash, and it’s time for me to go into my mock live interview.  The Career Center has been really dedicated to getting everyone ready for corporate residencies, and part of this is making sure we know how to handle interviews.  My interviewer was very helpful and gave me some great feedback; namely, I should be more outspoken about my international experience and my language skills. 

Once the interview is over, I attempt to relax a little bit. Until I realize I’ve somehow triple-booked myself in the afternoon!  I realize a little too late that I’m supposed to participate in a student rep meeting at the same time I’m supposed to attend an Insider insight from Ocean Spray, and apparently I also agreed to meet a friend for dinner.  I have to cancel on my friend and miss the student rep meeting.  Lesson learned: always check my calendar!

Thursday is another hectic day.  We have our two longest classes one right after the other.  After classes, the Women’s MBA Club has a quick meeting to discuss upcoming events.  We are putting together a panel event open to all the other schools in the Boston area!  The panel will feature several successful women in business – it should be very interesting! 

The next morning (Friday) in Career Management, we practice answering behavioral interview questions (the “tell me about an experience…” ones).  I feel a little better after the class session, and decide to set aside some time on the weekend to get in more practice.  

I also get an email from a student in the Executive MBA program – he’s looking for some help in Accounting.  I’m one of the tutors for Accounting this semester (yikes!).  We set up a time for next week.   

Saturday is spent recovering from the week.  I need to decompress after everything that happened this week, and so I try and spend as little time doing school-related stuff unless it’s absolutely necessary!    

I'm sorry this post is text-only! There haven't been many opportunities to take pictures lately.  But I will try and add more pictures to the next posts! 

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

The First Week Back

I hit the ground in a dead sprint this past week. 

On Tuesday, we have Supply Chain Management with Professor Lieb.  This course is about logistics and performance metrics, and it’s interesting to me.  I view Supply Chain as a gigantic puzzle, where the pieces (and thus the solution!) are always changing and moving.  It’s fascinating to see how the slightest shift can have massive repercussions throughout an industry.

Surprisingly, one of my classmates recruits me to join the 360 Huntington Fund, Northeastern’s graduate student-run mutual fund.  I have a very limited understanding of stock valuations, but he assures me that they will teach me everything I need to know.  I think I can fit this into my schedule, as they only meet every other week.  I’m not on the Finance “major”, but I think it will be interesting to participate, and I’ve been looking to learn more about the stock market.

We only have one class on Tuesdays, so I spend the rest of the day working on cover letters and a few small assignments, including my work for Professor Garcia in the Marketing department.  I’m helping her proofread and edit a book she’s written for her New Product Development course.

The next day (Wednesday), I spend the morning in Finance and Operations classes.  Operations Management seems similar in course material to Supply Chain; they are both about the logistics behind manufacturing and distributing a product, and there’s a lot of overlap in the course readings.

For our Operations course, we have a project that involves observing production/manufacturing processes at a company.  My learning team decides to visit the Ben & Jerry’s factory up in Vermont!  We’re going to make a weekend out of it and hopefully get some skiing in.  And maybe I can finally learn how to ski properly, instead of always sliding down the hill on my butt.  Needless to say, I am a terrible skier. 

The rest of the evening, I quickly draft a cover letter for one of my residency applications to send into Judi for feedback (my career advisor!), and then cram for the Statistics quiz.  I’ve never taken a Statistics course before, and all the terms and equations make my head swirly.  Even though it’s only a small portion of our grade, I decide to make flashcards.  My reasoning: if I don’t get a full grasp on the terminology now, I’ll be lost this entire semester.  Also, it forces me to write out the definitions.

Thursday, we have Strategy followed by Statistics.  I don’t remember much about the Strategy class session, unfortunately, because I’m trying to remember the difference between interval and ratio data.  We do a short case discussion about Home Depot before breaking for the day.  I spend the “gap” time between the classes reviewing my flashcards.

Professor Tarasewich gives us 15 minutes to complete our Statistics quiz.  Twenty multiple-choice questions PLUS a “short-answer” problem in 15 minutes?  Nerve-wracking beyond belief, and I panic some more.  I work as quickly as possible through the multiple-choice in order to give myself enough time on the last problem.  I don’t know how I feel about the quiz; we should get the results next week. 

The rest of the day feels like a breeze; I have a meeting with the case competition club, and then I attend the Insider Insight with L.Knife.  They are offering a Marketing & Sales corporate residency starting in June, and I wanted to hear more about the company before submitting my application!  After the presentation, I head to the gym (one of my New Year’s resolutions…), and then I go home to finish work for class.  

Friday can’t come fast enough!  We have Career Management; we go over interviewing tips – mock interviews are coming up next week!  Everyone is required to complete a mock live interview and a mock phone interview before we can apply for other residencies.  The Career Management office asks professionals from different companies to come in and interview us.  It’s a good way to practice and get feedback from the volunteer interviewer!

The afternoon follows the usual pattern: gym, reading for class, editing for Professor Garcia.  It’s not glamorous, I know, but it needs to be done. 

I take a much-needed “day off” on Saturday.  Instead of spending the day nose-deep in all of my books and case studies, I watch sports!  First, I attend the Northeastern vs. Boston College hockey game at Fenway Park.  College hockey is kind of a big deal around here.  Kind of like football in the South! 

Watching the game at Fenway Park!

After the hockey game, we watch the Patriots take on the Broncos.  I’m not a fan of the Patriots, but I’m even less of a fan of the Broncos.  I apologize to any of you Tim Tebow fans, but I find him irritating and self-serving.  Somehow, I manage to put my serious distaste for Tom Brady aside for just one game.


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

On Forgetfulness

I just realized my last post was in October! Oh goodness… I have no excuse for you, beyond the fact that I’ve been mind-numbingly busy.  I’ll try and highlight some of the more important things that have happened.

Between October and now, I celebrated my birthday with my good friend Vicky. Our birthdays are three days apart; this is our second year throwing a joint birthday bash. We decided we wanted to have a “theme” this year, so we wore masks and called it a masquerade! We got a lot of curious glances and strange looks from the other patrons at Punter’s Pub, but otherwise the night was a success.  I just wanted to say thanks to all of my wonderful classmates for coming by and making it extra special!

Some of the masked revelers at Punter's!

The last few weeks of the semester were a crude mix of case studies, sleep deprivation and caffeine headaches. I’m pretty sure I’ve consumed more coffee in the first three months of graduate school than I have in my entire life. Yes, this also includes my undergraduate career.

To break up the monotony and get some fresh air, a few of my comrades and I went over the river and out to Cambridge to watch a professor perform with his band, GEEZER (hey, they named it, not me!). Professor Zack is our MIR (Info. Resources) professor – holy cow, can he play the sax or what! We danced the night away before having to return to the seemingly unending mountain of case studies. 

Finally we were in the home stretch! Juggling the Marketing plan paper, various presentations and studying for the last Accounting quiz in the very last week of classes was pretty intense! Our team came up with a solar-powered lawn-mowing robot. Pretty darn cool, if you ask me!

And in the middle of all this craziness, I found out I’m going to China in May! Planning on where to travel before and after the trip seemed much more important than studying for MIR – sorry, Professor Zack! Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing (and Tokyo and Singapore and possibly Malaysia)… here I come! Thankfully, I managed to make it through that last week in one piece, and I also felt pretty confident about the MIR exam. 

After our last day of classes last Thursday, I dropped all of my books and papers into a big pile and celebrated the end of the semester with a surprise birthday party for one of my good friends, Elvira!  We had a fun time at Central Bottle, which is a great place to poke around for any of you wine and cheese connoisseurs out there. Afterwards, we joined the rest of our classmates for the end-of-semester/holiday party at Our House East!

Happy Birthday, Elvira! ^_^

Over the next few days, I proceeded to numb my brain with a mega-marathon of ‘How I Met Your Mother’ – this is such a funny show! I don’t know how I missed out on in the first few years it was out. Most unfortunately, I was pulled out of my sitcom-induced coma on Monday evening when our grades were published.  I kid, I kid… I’m actually very happy with how this semester has panned out!  I definitely worked hard this semester, and my grades reflect that effort.

Winter break sounds like it would be a lot of fun just relaxing and pigging out on the couch… but it’s not. Almost immediately after grades were released, our professors for the next semester emailed us. As it turns out, there’s pre-work for both Finance and Statistics.  And there’s going to be a quiz on the very first day of Stats. Yikes. The professor can tell you that it’s only 5% of the final grade until he turns blue in the face; it’s still Statistics and it’s still really scary for me. 

Now classes have started back up again – just had Finance and HR this morning, and I will attempt to make weekly updates this semester. On that note: I’ll be working as a research assistant for one of the Marketing professors this semester! I made the decision to leave my position at Victoria’s Secret after encountering increasing difficulties with regards to my commute and my work schedule. Needless to say, I’m excited to be working with the Marketing faculty and getting some more exposure to the field. More updates to come! Thanks for reading! 

*The views expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of Northeastern university, its faculty, staff or affiliates and are solely the opinion of Esther Bliedung.