On Monday I'm glad to rid myself of the economics textbook pricing paper. I also get back a graded Marketing assignment. So far, I seem to be falling above average in the grading spectrum in all of my classes. While I'm by no means in the top 10 or even 20%, it's comforting to know that I'm also not in the bottom 10 or 20%. I really just want to get safely above a 3.2 (if you get a 3.2 or below your first semester, you are on probation and I risk losing my scholarship if I fall below a 3.0).
Before work on Tuesday I meet my fellow executive board members at the director of the career center's office to go over additional opportunities for the Marketing Club. Our club signs on as members of a focus group for the start-up Open Runway, a website that allows women to design their own shoes. This should be a perfect first venture into consulting projects for the group.
After the quick meeting I head to work. Today the executive luncheon series sign-ups open at 3:00 pm sharp. The executive luncheons are lunches of six students and one executive where you have the opportunity network with the employer. These are not interviews, merely networking lunches.
The competition for these spots is so thick I fell like I'm back at the University of Washington waking up at 6:00 am to compete against 30,000 students for class registration. Unfortunately, I have work during this time, but I ask my boss and she kindly allows me to take a few minutes and sign up. I have my strategy all lined out, with alternate schedules available should my first choices fill up. Out of a list of 60+ luncheons only about 10 are geared toward marketing. With a class comprised of over 50% marketing students and a limit of six students per lunch, you can imagine the competition.
I manage to snag a spot on a few. They are as follows:
Oct. 20 - Rick Daniels, Gatehouse Media
Oct. 26- Lisa Laich, Ocean Spray Cranberries
Oct. 27 - Johanna Storella, Mass Convention Center
Nov. 5 - Andrew Boyd, Aberdeen Group
Nov. 12 - Jodie Nevelle, Hasbro
Nov. 17- Sue Morelli, Au Bon Pain
I am an alternate for the Au Bon Pain and Aberdeen Group lunches. Only if one of the confirmed students drops out will I get a confirmed spot in these lunches.
I'm particularly excited to meet Rick Daniels as he was an executive at the Boston Globe (the journalism major in me squeals in delight).
That night, after arriving home, I start calling up some second-year students from a list provided to us by the Career Center. We are to interview at lease three regarding their corporate residency experiences. I manage to set up my appointments; one with my peer mentor who works at a beer distributor, one with a student working at Open Runway and one with a student interning at Hasbro.
Wednesday is another 12-hour day. We have our first marketing club meeting. I'm super excited and hope all 40 of the members on our mailing list can join us (we did, after all, announce the meeting and free food in our marketing class this morning).
The meeting draws quite a crowd (about 25 people) and almost everyone stays past the last slice of pizza (now that's dedication). We present our activity options and get a better feel for the commitment level of the group. It is crucial to stress commitment to projects because, if we decide to take on a consulting project, we must put our best effort forward. There can be no flaking, or "I forgot" because while this may be an ungraded extracurricular activity for us, it is someone's real business.
Unfortunately, I front the $140 for pizza. Funding for clubs works on a reimbursement system. Let's just hope our paperwork is all in order and I get that check soon. I am, after all, the proverbial "starving college student".
After a couple hours in the library becoming intimately acquainted with accounting, I hit the gym and at 6:00 pm head to the Curry Center for our student organization training. The hour-long meeting gets me a bit nervous because with its laundry list of strict regulations. If we want to bring any food in to meetings, we need a contract (save pizza- phew!), if we have any more that $10 exchanging hands at an event, we need NU police there, we need chaperons for trips outside the state, six-week advance notice for trips, events, etc. They even have a specific kind of chalk to use if we want to advertise by writing on the walkways around campus.
After this I run over to Dodge for a 7:15 pm meeting with my peer mentor and two other students for the co-op interviews. I get some new information on her experience and jot down notes for my write-up later.
I leave campus around 8:00 pm.
Thursday is spent at school, work, the gym and then homework cramming before my boyfriend's arrival early Saturday morning. My group is very accommodating and agrees to meet after class today to finish our accounting Annual Report Project. It's such a relief to not have that looming overhead during the weekend.
Team 58 is going to Our House, a bar I quite like near campus, but having everything in line for my boyfriend takes precedence so I stay in and spend the night in books.
I also start researching for our etiquette breakfast tomorrow. The etiquette breakfast is a yearly event for full-time MBA students that is put on by W.R. Grace, a global chemicals company that hires co-ops every year. I brush up on their history, products and executive board, where I learn the many had previously worked for Honeywell, a company my Dad worked at years ago. In the spirit of networking, I call up my father and rack is brain on names of people he knew. As I get talking about other executive lunches I learn he also has connections to Ocean Spray, Hasbro and Gatehouse Media. Excited, I promise to send over a list and get some phone numbers. Look at me, doing the whole "networking" thing.
Friday morning I'm up bright and early. After dressing in my suit I get to the Curry Center an hour before the breakfast to meet with the Marketing club to finalize our direction.
The breakfast is fun, and frustrating. We are let in at 9:30 am and instructed to head to the back of the ballroom to chat with some W.R. Grace representatives. I do so and hand out my hot-off-the-presses business card. Hors d'oeuvres are passed around as are drinks as we are instructed on how to consume these appropriately. We are next instructed to find a seat at one of the tables for breakfast.
Here's where the frustrating part comes in. While I was chatting with the W.R. Grace employee, people had put their bags/belongings on seats at tables marked with their concentration. There were only four tables for marketing so I can understand their strategy. I am, unfortunately, forced to sit at the one table without a W.R. Grace employee (they had to cancel at the last minute). The whole purpose of this breakfast was to network and learn etiquette. It lost most of its purpose when I was just sitting with six of my peers. At least the breakfast was delicious! Several courses of fruit, pastries, French toast with sauteed apples and walnuts, potatoes and bacon, plus coffee and tea! I guess I can't complain too much considering the free fare.
As soon as I get home I dutifully write thank you letters to the two W.R. Grace people I spoke to. The Career Center has stressed that we send thank you notes out within 24 hours of a meeting.
The rest of Friday is spent sprucing up my apartment for my boyfriend's arrival and homework, homework, homework. I will admit to a tiny breakdown that night. I had tried SO hard to make it so that I wouldn't have to study while he was here, but, after more assignments were added at the last minute, I had no choice. I apologized profusely to him, but what can you do? I'm up until 1:00 am doing as much as I can.
Ahhh! So excited! I get up around 6:00 am to catch the "T" to the airport to pick up my boyfriend. On my way I e-mail my accounting professor as I'm having some trouble on the homework. While I can't meet with her this weekend, she generously offers to have a phone conversation and help me through some of my questions. How cool is that? I would never have expected a professor to take time out of their day on a Saturday morning to help me out.
After picking up the beau, we head right to breakfast at Charlie's Sandwich Shoppe. I indulge in pancakes crammed full of fresh cranberries! Yum!
We spend the rest of the day on a serious walking tour of the City and my of school. We make our way down the entirety of Newbury Street, meander through Boston Commons, zig-zag through Beacon Hill, stroll along the water front and cross the Charles River over to Cambridge were we rub shoulders with the Ivy set at MIT and Harvard. My boyfriend, an engineer, loves the MIT museum full of artwork he can finally
appreciate- tinkering bits of winding machinery.
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| Fall in Boston Common |
We end the day with dinner at Boston Shawarma (his favorite food) and a screening of The Social Network at the massive AMC Loews Theater at Boston Common. It was fun to watch as much of it was filmed at Harvard, where we had just been. Plus, the crowd erupted in booing after Mark Zuckerberg criticized BU (Boston University). How Fun! We close with some drinks at the Parish Cafe right on the corner of my block and a late night pizza run to New York Pizza (so good and open until 2 am!) with slices of pizza pie the size of my face.
The next day we grab breakfast at the Other Side Cafe where I devour their Tex-Mex Tango breakfast, work on some homework, head over to the North End (the old Italian center of Boston) for a day visiting the Old North Church, Copps Hill Burying Ground (my favorite cemetery ever), and indulging in Reginna's Pizza and Mike's Pastry cannolis and lobster tails; both well worth their lines out the door.
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| Copps Hill |
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| Whoopie Pie and Lobster Tail from Mike's Pastry |
We close the day by perusing shops at Quincy Market, visiting Faneuil Hall, walking the WWII memorial and strolling along the waterfront.
Since Monday is a day off from school (thank you Mr. Columbus), I will include it in this week's post.
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| Tasting Room |
their competitions. We even get free tasting glasses. What followed was hilarious to say the least. After the tour you can take a party trolley (yes, that's party trolley) to a bar down the road named Doyles. Doyles was the first bar to ever serve Sam Adams and as part of a deal with the brewery, when you order a pint of any of their Sam Adams beers on tap, you get to keep the pint glass for free. Needless to say my boyfriend was thrilled.
It was a wonderful weekend and desperately needed. I realized I hadn't had a day off since I've been here.
* The views expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of Northeastern University, its faculty, staff or affiliates and are solely the opinion of Katrina Graves
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