Marketing Research

One of my favorite classes this semester is Marketing Research. Dr. Robinson is new to NCSU, and she's a great professor! We had 1 exam which was in September (love early exams), and then the bulk of the semester is based on our project. We are basically going through the entire process that a marketing researcher goes through.

 

We started with describing a problem that a brand is facing, then held a focus group or in depth interviews, and just finished developing a survey. Our project is based around beer preferences and consumption. We just launched our survey two days ago, and are looking to close it in roughly a week to analyze our results. The rest of the semester is learning specifics in SPSS and how to manipulate and analyze results. We finish up on November 29 with our final presentations and report!

Registration

Bright and early this morning (8am early) I registered for my LAST semester of grad school!! wahoooo!!!

Wait...really, my last semester?? I can't believe it's just right around the corner! We have less than 6 more weeks of class, then exams start. I don't have any exams per say this semester, but 1 paper and 1-2 presentation/reports due by December 7. I'm trying to finish everything before the 7th because I have a wedding at home on the 8th, but I may have to end up coming back for a presentation on the 10th.

Anyways, for next semester I am currently registered for Consumer Behavior, Business Relationship Management, & Services Management. I'm applying to get into the Consumer Practicum class, but that application process doesn't start for another few weeks. It's a new class offered at NCSU put together by Dr. Wood. She is the consumer behavior professor, and I'm really excited for the opportunity to work with her!

If this schedule stands, I'll only have classes on Tuesday and Wednesday along with at least 2 meetings per week for the practicum. It's definitely vastly different than first year with all our classes during the day, Mon-Thurs!

Girls Weekend!

Last weekend, 6 of my best friends from high school came into town for our annual girls reunion weekend. Erica has a 4 bedroom house in Cary, so this year we decided to make Raleigh/Cary our reunion destination. Everyone came into town on Friday afternoon, and we started out with lunch and shopping at Cameron Village-pretty much a must see for anyone out of town!

Erica and I took care of appetizers and dinner for Friday night since we didn't have to travel anywhere. We stayed around Cary Friday night because our friend Katie is pregnant, and she could only stay one night. We had a great time catching up on everything going on in all of our oh so busy lives!

Saturday was absolutely beautiful, so we hit the pool for a few hours then came back to the house for happy hour! We arranged for White Horse to pick us up that night to go downtown for dinner/bars for the evening. We ate at Humble Pie, then walked over to Oxford where we met a few other friends.

Everyone left fairly early Sunday morning, but it was a great weekend-even though it was short! It's so rare that high school friends stay so close, and we are making sure it continues!

Football!

Yesterday was the first football game of the season-where I was able to go at least! We played Citadel at 6pm, and the day was absolutely perfect for tailgating. I was worried for all of 2 minutes during the game when Citadel tied us at 7-7, but then NCSU went on a run and never stopped. The final score ended up being 52-14.

After a great weekend, I'm back to grind! 2 projects to work on, 3 articles and 4 chapters to read, and a couple hours working for my internship!

2nd year MBA

We’re about a month into the semester, but I could tell the first week of class this year is completely different. The main difference is our classes. Last year, our cohort was together for 15+ hrs per week because we were in every single class together. Only small exception was second semester, we were able to choose a concentration class. This semester we are all together for about 3 hours a week.

Another huge difference is the group structure. Over half the groups from first year have split up or lost a few people which will change the entire dynamic of the group. We also worked with the same group the entire year, and this year I have 4 different groups. Working with 4 completely different groups is a very different experience. In the same group, we would have standing meetings every week and go over multiple projects and classes. Now, I have to work around 15 different schedules.

 This semester is also very concentration specific. I’m in 3 marketing classes, and only 1 core class. All the core classes are extremely important and provide us a basic knowledge of the subject. However, this semester is a little more interesting because its directly related to the field where I’d like to work.

 

Some would argue this as good or bad, but I also only have 1 exam this semester. And its next week. Every class has a huge project, but no final exams to study for. I know I'll be glad when I don't have to spend 20+ hours studying for 3-4 exams in December!

Summer Internship

I spent the summer interning at Quintiles as a Corporate Digital Strategy Coordinator. Quintiles is the only fully integrated biopharmaceutical services company offering clinical, commercial, consulting and capital solutions worldwide. The Digital Strategy group is a fairly new group, part of the overall Corporate Communication (CorpComm) department. A big project going on with Digital Strategy this summer was the re-design of Quintiles.com, internally known as Q.com.

 My boss is the lead on the re-design, and I was her "right hand girl". We had a “core” group of 5 people including my boss, another Digital Strategy member, another intern, our outside vendor contact along with myself. We were each assigned sections of the overall structure to own from start to finish.  For each of my sections, I had to contact the department head and set up initial and follow up meetings to discuss and finalize content for each section. I worked with the HR department for the Careers section, CorpComm for News and Our Markets, and Marketing for Therapeutics, Events and Services. For the Careers section, I also helped to design specific templates based on the needs of the site and wrote content for certain pages.

 

In addition to working on the re-design of Q.com, I was tasked with the project of putting together the Digital Content & Style guide. This document would include information on how to write for our site based on our audience and our overall company strategy. It also included branding information (typography, color palette, fonts, and restrictions), template and wireframe examples, interface designs and examples of the live site. It will be added to the Marketing Brand Guidelines for the company, and would be a document to distribute to outside vendors who write for our site or create additional pages for Q.com.

 My internship has been extended through December as of now, because the site has not launched yet. I will help see the site through launch, and then develop a training guide for Quintiles employees and external vendors to learn best practices and ways to navigate through the CMS, Ektron.

 

My team was absolutely amazing from day 1, and I was never treated like a traditional intern. I was treated as part of the team where my suggestions and comments were weighed the same as everyone in the department. It's been a littly busy balancing class and work, but I feel its completely worth the few sacrifices I might make!

Peer Coaches

Each year, roughly 10 First Year students are selected to be Peer Coaches for the incoming MBA students. I was honored to be chosen as one for the 2012-2012 year. We had 2 training sessions-the first was with Laura Taylor and the second was with Belinda. We were able to gain insights from the current Peer Coaches in the first meeting as well, and their rewards and struggles with the program.

We have a total of 11 for this year: Mark Frazier, Donavon Boykin, Brian Kubis, Patrick Ferguson, Alysia Baker, Lionel Grebert, Marko Zivkovic, Jackelyn Vander Veer, Binu Raj & Mike Westrich.

Each person has different backgrounds, and we will be able to direct the incoming students to other coaches if they have specific questions about topics we aren't as familiar with.

We will meet with our students for lunch during their Orientation week, and I'm excited to meet the incoming class!

Suprise Interview!

Early this week, a recruiter from Company X (I’ll say their name in a later post if I work there) called and told me that the Marketing position I had applied for had been filled with a contractor because they really wanted someone to be able to work full time into the Fall. She said they found another internship that they wanted to talk to me about based on my experience. She sent me the link, and although it wasn’t a Marketing internship I let her know that I would like to talk to the hiring manager more about the position and just get some other details. I said I was available Friday morning, and she told me she’d let me know when the hiring manager would give me a call.

I never received a confirmation email, so I assumed he was busy on Friday morning and we’d schedule something for the next week. At 10am, I was woken up to my phone ringing. I answered and it was the hiring manager plus another colleague calling me about the position. I was in shock/panic because I honestly had no idea they would be calling me. So they started off telling me how impressed they were with my resume, and then jumped right into asking me why I’d be a good fit for the position. And that is where I really panicked. This was an actual PHONE INTERVIEW.  I really thought I’d be talking to them about the position details so I could determine if I was interested.  I somehow asked them for more information about the position so I could buy some time to grab my computer and pull up the description. I went into how I thought I’d be a good fit, and then they asked me a few more questions about my background and experience. I’m a little calmer now because I think I recovered somewhat well, but it was short lived because they asked me what questions I had for them. Clearly I hadn’t prepared any questions except how much does it pay, and I didn’t feel comfortable asking them that right off the bat. So I somehow came up with 3 questions for them. They asked me one final question, “we normally give our candidates a chance to wow us with a last statement as to why we should hire them since Company X is so competitive.” Yikes. I talked about a few of my strengths that I knew were important to the company in general and backed them up with a few examples from an old boss and project.

My surprise phone screen was over. I’ve never really had that experience where I had no idea someone would be calling and I was completely unprepared. I honestly didn’t think I would be offered the position because as a former recruiter, I would be able to tell that I was super unprepared to start off the interview. I talked to my Dad shortly after and he laughed at the situation and even thought they may have caught me off guard to see if it was really was flexible and adaptable to different, “surprise” situation. So I took it as a learning experience, and hopefully I won’t have to experience a surprise phone interview again.

Later in the afternoon, the recruiter called me and said she had some feedback about the interview. She said the hiring manager liked me, and wanted to extend the offer. I told her I’d let her know in the next week because I wanted to make the best decision. Clearly, I recovered better than I thought. My past as a recruiter definitely paid off in the situation because I knew how to recover and knew certain things to do and tell them. So my first interview of this internship search process turned out to be a success! At least now I know that I will have an internship this summer!

18 days. 18 days. 18 days.

COME ON MAY 9th!

Only 18 days until we are finished our FIRST YEAR! 18 days until we are 2nd year MBAs!

This year has absolutely FLOWN by. We've learned so much and grown together as a class. It has been an incredible experience so far. Next year will be completely different. We only have 1 class together each semester all together, and the rest we're split into our concentrations. I'll definitely miss having everyone together in the majority of our classes and being able to work with Team Dominate for everything, but I am excited to get into more Marketing focused classes.

Now the only thing that stands between me and being a 2nd year MBA:

MarkStrat paper

Markstrat presentation

Brand Management presentation (paper is finished!)

Tech Management presentation

Brand Management take home final

Supply Chain Homework #3

Supply Chain Final

Finance cumulative Final.

A few fun things throw in the mix...Beach Music Fest, my Birthday and the End of Year Party.

The worst really is saved for last. If I say Finance test, its still hard. And each test was roughly 4-5 chapters. When I say Finance cumulative Final...I panic. Because not only does it include ALL the information from test 1 & 2 (9 chapters?) but also the 3 remaining chapters that weren't covered on a previous test. Yikes. 12 chapters of Finance. Hard Finance by the way. Hopefully I survive this one...

MarkStrat Results

Our MarkStrat simulation ended last week. Each of our 5 teams started out with 2 products in the Sonite market, with the option to go into the new Vodite market. It ended with 13 Sonite products and 5 Vodite products.

Our team decided on a strategy that would benefit us in the last few years. We did a few rounds of R&D on both of our Sonite products because they were pretty bad to start out with. We had a good idea of what our target audience was looking for, however they did change preferences slightly each period. We also made the decision to enter the Vodite market as soon as we could. This was fairly risky because in picking the specs of the product, we had absolutely nothing to go on and it was pretty much just picking numbers out of a hat.

We started out as last in stock price, last in Sonite with only 16% of the market share, and the first couple years in the Vodite market our product was getting crushed by our 1 competitor.

The end was slightly different. We were #1 in stock price by over 750, #1 in Sonite market share at 40% and #2 in Vodite at 46.1% (only #2 by 1%).

We took everyone by surprise because of our presence in the top 3 highest growing areas. They might not have been the biggest the first few years, however they grew at a ridiculous rate in the last few years so our stock price, market share and net contribution numbers soared.

Quote for the rest of the semester!

I will act now. I will act now. I will act now.

Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, everyday until the words

become as much a habit as my breathing and the action which follows

becomes as instinctive as the blinking of my eyelids.

With these words I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for

MY SUCCESS.

I will act now.

I will repeat these words again, and again, and again.

I will walk where failures fear to walk.

I will work when failures seek rest.

I will act now for now is all I have.

Tomorrow is the day reserved for the lazy.

Tomorrow is the day when the failure will succeed.

I am not a failure.

I will act now.

Success will NOT wait.

If I delay, success will become wed to another and los to me forever.

This is the time. This is the place. I am the person.

 

I WILL ACT NOW.

One of my favorites..

"The cure for anything is salt water;

sweat, tears or the sea."

-Isak Dinesen

I found this quote last week, and it's pretty much perfect for me. When

I'm upset about something, I can do 1 of a few things.

1. I go work out. The instant rush of endorphins automatically puts me in a better mood.

I listen to my iPod, clear my head and forget about my own issues a least for a little while.

2. I cry. I don't let anyone see me cry though. Crying is just an

emotion that lets me personally let everything out.

3. I go to the beach. I read in a hammock. I lounge at the pool. I listen to music

on the beach. I'm instantly in a better mood as soon as I hit Route 10.

Something about it is just a relief, its a home away from home.

 

The stress of the last third of the semester has definitely set in. We have Easter break

next week and it couldn't come at a more perfect time.

As usual, a few things stand in my way of 4 days at the beach.

-Finance test

-Brand Management project paper

-Supply Chain Homework

 

This entire weekend is pretty much dedicated to Finance. The second test

is definitely going to be harder than the first, so looks like a

very busy weekend of Finance for me!

 

But only 5 more days until the ocean takes away all my stress for 4 days!

 

 

 

 

Sweet Sixteen

If at the end of last year or even the beginning of this season, someone would have said NCSU's basketball team would be 4 points from beating Kansas in the Sweet 16, I would have laughed.

Hard.

I am a huge NCSU basketball fan. Let me reiterate that. HUGE FAN.

My Dad went to State, so I've grown up going to football & basketball games. But it wasn't until I started my freshman year that I really became an avid basketball fan. That was back when Julius Hodge was the star player (and he actually came to my b-day party sophomore year!) My freshman year, we lost a heartbreaking OT first round game to California. Sophomore year we lost in the 2nd round to Vanderbilt. Junior year we lost in the Sweet 16 to Wisconsin. Senior year we had the opportunity for revenge again California in the first round, but fell to Texas in the 2nd round.

I grew pretty accustomed to watching NCSU play in the NCAA tourney each year. Then I graduated and NCSU basketball must have been depressed that I left because they didn't make the tournament again until I came back!

We made a strong run in the ACC tourney, almost beating UNC in the Semis. Earning an 11 seed in the NCAA tourney, we won our first game vs San Diego State and went on to beat Georgetown in the 2nd round. We had a great chance to beat Kansas, but in the end we lost by 3. Heartbreaking loss, but hey it's just the beginning!

2 starters are sophomores, 2 are Juniors and 1 will graduate. Not to mention we have 3 of the McDonald's All American players in our recruiting class coming here next year! I'm hoping the 2011-2012 season was just the start of great seasons to come!

Great season Pack! Can't wait until next year!

MarkStrat

With marketing as my concentration, I take more of a vested interest in the projects and topics we go over in class. MarkStrat is our big project this semester. It is similar to our BSG simulation last semester, but this time around I have more of an idea what to do and how to achieve our goals.

Our class was split into 2 Industries: Wolf and Pack. We are Team I in the Wolf Industry, so we are competing again 4 other teams. Each team started out with two products in the Sonite market, all of varying market shares and profitability. The Vodite market is completely new, and there was no information on any of the segments involved. By sheer bad luck, we ended up with the two worst products in the entire game. I took this as an opportunity to use the targeting/positioning skills we learned the first few weeks of class and to prove that we could turn these awful products around.

We also are able to introduce new products into both markets as well as update current products. The first period we were not able to do any updates or new product introductions so naturally we ended up in last place after the first decision. We changed around our cost allocations with our research, production, advertising and sales force and after the 2nd decision we moved up to 4th place. In the third period we introduced 1 updated Sonite product and a brand new Vodite product. After these decisions were finalized, we moved into 3rd place.

Today we just entered our period 4 decisions, and we are anxiously awaiting the results. We introduced our second updated Sonite product and are hoping the new specifications hit our targeted segment directly. We also had to develop a Marketing Plan based on our decisions thus far, and our goals and plans for the second half of the game.

At the half way point, we currently have 2 products in the Sonite market and 1 in the Vodite market. I can't give away any secrets for our future plans, but we are hoping to make a big impression in both markets!

Second Year Classes

Tomorrow is the first day to sign up for classes. I think I have my schedule picked out:

Global Strategy

Marketing Research

Consumer Behavior

& Business Relationship Management

 

 

 However, I also have an alternative plan.

My main focus is Marketing and I want to take any and every class dealing with consumers, brand management, channel marketing and advertising that I can.

NC schools have a program called the Inter-Institutional Agreement where students can take classes at NC State, UNC or Duke to count towards their degree. The great this is that the costs to take classes at another university are covered under our GA. The classes have to be approved by our MBA department to make sure there isn’t a similar one offered at NCSU.

 The 2 I am strongly considering are Retail & Channel Marketing Management (a follow up class to Brand Management which I am currently taking) and Advertising Research. Tentatively I’d like to take Retail & Channel Marketing in the Fall and Advertising Research (to be more in depth after Marketing Research) in the Spring of my second year. The only kicker is that students at the school where the class is offered have first choice, and we have to wait until all students have signed up to see if there is room. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it works out!

Come on Friday..

or I'll even take Thursday at 4:30!

That means freedom :)

ON A BOAT!

so all I have left is this lovely midterm. Being as though its the class that I least relate with, it's not going to be easy. I thought finance would be a rough one, but after studying for 4.5 days I knew and understood the material forwards and backwards and did extremely well. However-that's all numbers with a clear cut right and wrong. Supply Chain/Ops is a lot of numbers and analytical work, but there are also a lot of concepts to apply and more importantly knowing how explain the answers. I'm pretty worried for what he is going to throw at us at this point.

Pandora is set on Beethoven, so all I can do is buckle down and study and try to know the slides and homework/cases that we've done...

key word being try.

With the exception of class, and a couple workouts...my life is dedicated to Supply Chain until Thursday at 4:30..and then its

FREEEEEDOM on the OPEN OCEAN!

The Race to Spring Break..

Spring Break.

Only 11 days away!

Doesn’t seem like that far, right?!

Well with the amount of work we have due in 11 days, it’s feels nowhere close!

The biggest thing we have is a Supply Chain Test. In 10 days at 3:00 pm.

So while I’d normally be excited about packing and organizing all my outfits for the cruise, I will be focused on Supply Chain.

Also in the next 10 days, we have a Supply Chain Case Study, Brand Management Case Study, Supply Chain Homework, a couple Finance Connect assignments, Brand Management Project Proposal, 2 MarStrat decisions, and for our Technology class project a few worksheets-Porter’s 5 Forces, Value Chain and Industry Map.

Piece of cake right?!

HAHAHA...well all I can say is I can’t wait until March 2! We are leaving at 6am for Charleston to board our ship by noon!

Hoops for Hope

This past Sunday, about 12 MBA students volunteered at the Women’s Basketball game Hoops for Hope event. NCSU took on Wake Forest at 5pm in Reynolds Coliseum with a sold out audience. All proceeds from raffles, apparel and ticket sales went to the Kay Yow Foundation for fighting Breast Cancer.

Our job was to split up into 4 groups at each corner of the floor. Breast cancer survivors lined up in each corner based on the number of years they’ve been in remission, and we organized the group and passed out pink scarves and feather boas to each person. We helped make sure they were able to get on and off the floor safely and quickly. Half time entertainment also included a special performance by NC’s celebrity, Scotty McCreery!

We all wore matching t-shirts that the Dean graciously provided for MBA students. We will be able to wear these t-shirts, designed by our classmate Caroline Chamblee Lewis, to other service/volunteer events we do throughout the year! We were all excited to be able to help out at this amazing event!

The group!

All of the survivors!

This was about as close to Scotty as I could get! TV Cameras blocked my good views!

First Test of 2nd semester!

Well it's that time again.

TEST TIME.

FINANCE to be exact.

We've heard from the 2nd years that Finance tests are VERY long, very detailed and you'll be in your seat working until the last minute of class. Needless to say, I'm a little bit nervous. I typically take longer to test anyways because I second guess myself, but there is no room for that on Wednesday!

We've all learned from our "mistakes" of last semester, and decided it would be a great idea to start studying last week. The first couple days, I was pretty stressed out because finance isn't really my thing. But after studying for a few days, and letting a lot of the information sink in I feel slightly somewhat better. Not confident by all means yet, but we still have 2 full days and that's typically when I do my best studying.

So bring it on Cash Flows, Time Value of Money, NPV, IRR, Payback periods and Capital Budgeting...maybe just not too strong!

Welcome to Miami!

This past weekend, I left the world of cold weather, classes and homework...and entered a world of warm weather, luxury cars, celebrities...otherwise known as Miami! 

I left Thursday afternoon for a long weekend to relax and get some sun. We stayed at the amazing Fountaine Bleu resort-highly recommend-and basically never left the resort. The restaurants were absolutely amazing, the resort was gorgeous, the beaches (a 2 minute walk through the pools) were breath-taking and the rooms were large and luxurious! We had 2 days of beautiful weather, 80s and sunny, and one day where it was a little cold/windy. We took full advantage of the roof top pools and the pristine beaches on the sunny days, and then shopped a bit outside the resort on the last day.

It was a great mini vacation...just enough to relax for a few days, but not get completely out of school mode! Now the next vacation to look forward to is our SPRING BREAK CRUISE...

32 days and counting!



INTERNSHIPS!

Well it’s the end of January...aand I'm not too much further along in my internship search then I was 3 months ago. My goal over Christmas break was to apply for a ton of positions, interview in January/February and secure an Internship by March. Christmas break ended up being a little busier than I thought, so needless to say I didn’t apply to as many positions as I had hoped.

So now, here I am at the end of January fully submerged into classes/projects/meetings and added on top is the heavy weight of finding an internship. My dream internship would be to work under and Brand Manager in a consumer product market. Those positions are pretty hard to come by, and they are all over the US...California, NY, Maryland, Minnesota, Florida, Georgia, Texas...and that’s just a start.

So how do I start?!

Our Career Resources class is dedicated to keeping us on track for our search as well as teaching us interview, job searching and networking tips. We had a class last semester called the 2 Hour Job Search. This method was developed by a career coach at Duke to make a list of companies and match it with your alumni network, desire to work at the company as well as the timing priority. This has been a great tool for me in my search. It puts things into perspective, and forces me to go one step at a time. I have to step back and think...it’s only January, I really have until April to secure a summer internship. It would be amazing to have  one figured out so it would be one less thing to worry about like a few of my classmates, but I want to make sure I get the right internship to jump start my career in the Marketing field.

I’ve started applying to different companies so now I’m just waiting to hear back!

Week 2 Down!

After 2 weeks of class, I can already tell this semester is going to be insanely hectic! Going with the motto Work Hard, Play Hard, we have a lot of fun things planned in between the madness: a long weekend in Miami, Spring Break CRUISE to the Bahamas, a few beach trips and Beach Music Festival just to name a few!

We have 5 pretty intense classes this semester: Management of Technology, Managerial Finance, Marketing, Product & Brand Management and Operations & Supply Chain. It’s similar to first semester in that most of the classes and times are set for us. We do have one elective to start our individual concentrations and since my concentration is Marketing, I picked Product & Brand Management. My ultimate goal is to be a Brand Manager for a luxury or consumer product company, so I’m really excited for this class. We have to build a marketing plan in this class, so I’m excited to start working on that.

So far, Marketing is probably my favorite class. Now I say that before we’ve really had many assignments to turn in, but I’ve really enjoyed the class discussions and material we’ve gone over. I’m actually getting ready to start our first assignment...shows I actually took my own advice to get work done on Fridays!

The big new thing this semester is CASE STUDIES. We have a lot of them. As in roughly 25...mainly in Marketing and Brand Management, so that in itself will keep me super busy. Then there’s Finance. Not my favorite class in undergrad, so I’m hoping this time around it’ll be a little better! So far I really like our professor, and she really seems to want us to learn and understand the material. The basis of our Technology class is a HUGE project where we start with a raw technology and come up with a business plan to develop it into an actual product. Finally we have Supply Chain. I have a feeling I’ll have to work a little harder in this class because I’m way more of a creative person, then analytical/see how something works kinda person. But that’s what business school is about-pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone and broadening your horizons to make yourself more well rounded and successful in the business world!

First Semester Recap

Looking back over first semester, there are plenty of things I learned but some stuck out more than others. It was a huge change in my life, and there are a few things I wish I had known going into the program...but I quickly figured them out.

So for future First Year MBA Students, here is my Top 10 List!

1.       Do not procrastinate! Time Management is absolutely KEY!

2.       Talk to the 2nd years. They will give you valuable advice, not to mention old tests!

3.       Go to social events...even if you can only go for an hour or so. It will make your class grow closer, and expand your network!

4.       Working well and getting to know your team can make your life a lot easier

5.       Read chapters BEFORE class and skim the material again AFTER class. Utilize your team/class mates for points you may have missed during class.

6.       Use the “day off” on Friday to get school work done, you’ll appreciate it later.

7.       Networking. Networking. Networking. It’s NEVER too early to start networking.

8.       Get your resume done EARLY in the semester when you have some extra time. Then you can apply for jobs throughout the semester as they are posted!

9.       Do NOT Stress Out! It will only make the workload seem worse than it is. Take everything one step at a time, and it will be WAY more manageable.

10.   Have Fun...two years flies by faster than you think!



Second Semester...

Break is over. 4 weeks of vacation went by WAY too fast!

Now it's back to the grind...the start of second semester!

Today we started with Technology & Innovation and Finance.

Tomorrow we have Marketing, Product & Brand Management and Supply Chain.

Starting class today was completely different from last semester. Everyone knows each other, we have certain sections of the room where we typically sit, and we know a little bit more of what to expect. Our group is already close, and we know each other's strengths and weaknesses so its less of a learning curve.

Some classes scare me a little more (Finance/Supply Chain) than others, but all in all I'm hoping for a great semester.