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.