Spring Semester Course Registration

WEEK 23 (November 14- 20)

Monday morning is stressful because…at 8:00am sharp registration opens for Spring semester classes. After some blips (a glitch existed for one of our required classes) I am happy to say that I was able to secure a spot in every class I wanted! My schedule for Spring semester is as follows:

 

After registering I head over to a few buildings around the plant to hand out my combined action item list for the LTTD proposal process. I’m trying to get input from each department in order to create a more comprehensive list. I drop off two more sections to the Senior Engineer in the Repairs Department and the Export Project Manager in the International Trade Compliance Department and make plans to return later this week and discuss edits with them.

That day for lunch our entire department gets together for a belated Veteran’s Day celebration. We take over the third floor auditorium and enjoy catered Italian food, a hilarious slideshow showcasing old photos of employees while in the service and generally enjoy each others company.

When I get back to my desk I only have an hour to continue my work on my Green Belt project before it’s back upstairs for our bi-monthly Team Time meeting. There we get a pretty cool overview of some cutting edge technology our facility is working on as well as a summary from our resident Black Belts.

After that I’m back at my desk for the next 4 hours – in fact, I don’t leave work until nearly 6:00pm (a 10-hour day!). Since my cube-mate is out for the afternoon I tried to take advantage of the quite to progress with my Green Belt project. I get quite far. Also, in order for me to even have the SLIGHTEST chance of making up the hours I will miss for the Thanksgiving Holiday (remember, co-ops aren’t paid for those days off) I need to work as many hours as possible this week and next.

I do get a nice little surprise to break up my day, though! I receive an e-mail from my former boss that I’ve been approved to return to my job during spring semester! I’m so excited to get more work experience there and, hopefully, with a larger time commitment per week (15 hours) I will be able to help complete some more in-depth projects. Yipee!

I get home around 6:45pm that night but there’s no rest for me. I head right to the grocery store so that I can eat more than oatmeal for dinner. When I get home, I finish up my blog post for the week and make it to bed by 11:15pm. 

Tuesday morning begins with some meetings. First up is one to discuss a new engine option for our international proposal we submitted back in September. We have to make sure we have calculated the correct pricing for this new, improved engine option and so we pull some Engineering and Finance folks into the meeting.

Today lunch is during another manager talk series- this time with someone of particular interest to me: LTTD’s General Manager. He gives a brief pitch about his past experience and the department and then spends a good while answering our questions. It was nice to see that he had a sense of humor and was open to any co-op scheduling a meeting with him to discuss career paths, the industry or anything else. 

That afternoon a continuation meeting from this morning to discuss the engine option pricing continues. This time we have an even fuller house in the conference room with several representatives from Finance, Engineering, Contracts and Project. It kind of brings me back to when we were putting together the proposal months ago.

After the meeting the rest of the afternoon is spent working on a reclamation process checklist for a member of the PM Council. I have my cube-mate review my summary and begin breaking it down into more easily digestible bullets categorized by stage and responsible party. 

It’s another late day at the office.  I don’t leave until nearly 6:00pm, logging a more than 10-hour day.

But, alas, I cannot just go home and fall asleep after work. I run some errands first. Then it’s down to some homework for class. I update my contact list for the TRU Chocolate survey distribution I'm doing for Market Research (I’m happy to note that I have exceeded my minimum quota for respondents!), then I send an e-mail to my executive mentor (I have been guilty of waiting several weeks between contacts) and close the night by preparing my business cards, suit and more for my networking/lecture series tomorrow evening.

Wednesday morning I’m up far too early for my tastes. I decided to go into the office early to compensate for my early departure today for my lecture series so at 6:10am I’m already on the 'T' to work. 

I spend the morning hashing out my new, revised reclamation checklist and make some good progress.

Continuing with my theme of free lunch every day this week I head over to another building for a ‘Meet your Leader’ lunch with the Executive for Lynn Advanced Technology and Preliminary Design. I really enjoy hearing about all of the new engine developments he works on, and, as always, am impressed with how young he is and how much he has accomplished! I hope to be nearly as successful one day.

 

When I get back to my cubicle I have a meeting with a manager from the International Trade Compliance Department to review his portion of my proposal process checklist. The meeting is very beneficial and we’re done, with a lovely list to show for it, in less than 20 minutes. Excellent! I hope my other reviews go as smoothly.

After he leaves I only have about an hour left to incorporate his edits and continue to work the reclamation process checklist. I leave the office at 3:00pm to catch to bus to my early evening lecture series on online marketing effectiveness being put on by the ARF (Advertising Research Foundation) and Research Now. The brief, one hour meeting covers, among other things, Research Now’s business offerings and ways to leverage your digital marketing budget to help pay for your other media buying.

When I get home I do some errands before passing out at 10:00pm, exhausted.

Thursday I wake up early (again) and am back in work at 7:00am. I start out with e-mail, checklist revisions and other administrative tasks.

Lunch today is courtesy of my boss in a belated celebration of my 25^th birthday. We head to RedRock Bistro and spend a good hour and a half chatting and discussing how fast my co-op has gone by.  It was really nice to have some one-on-one time with my boss to talk about things outside of work.

When I get back into the office it’s right to a meeting regarding a compliance plan for the United Arab Emirates. We review the license, provisos and foreign parties involved.

I break away at 2:00pm for a PM Council meeting that lasts all of 15 minutes since very few people showed up. We plan to try and meet sometime next week (though honestly, with the holidays approaching I have a feeling most meetings will be sparse). 

I get an hour or so to work on my reclamation process map, meet with the manager I’m working on it with and discuss a renewal of a reclamation contract before I head into a review meeting for our international proposal.

In the meeting we all come to an agreement on how to portray the financials of the proposal, which edits to call out and more. With decision time for our client fast approaching (December) everything needs to be perfect and strategically thought out.

After work I head to campus an hour before class. I’m meeting with my professor so that I can review the lesson on SPSS from last week (if you recall, I was totally lost!). The hour I spend with her really helps to clarify the software program and give me some insights into the case write up on Finale (a dessert restaurant) I will be writing up in the next couple of weeks.

Most of class that night is spent reviewing SPSS and working to finalize our questionnaire distribution and project plan. I can’t believe we only have four weeks of class left to get all of it done! Yikes!

Friday at work involves some more of the same: the reclamation process checklist, my pseudo-Green Belt project on the proposal process and other such tasks.

To break up that I sit in on a “Lunch and Learn” focusing on International Trade Compliance (ITC) or more specifically, marketing, technical and manufacturing licenses. We spend more than an hour covering everything from DSP-5 to MLAs to TAAs (if that’s all a foreign  language to you, don’t worry, about six months ago I felt the same way!).

I’m back at my desk for a little while, working on getting an extension for a reclamation contract with the Air Force when it’s time to break for another fun team event: an ice cream social! And, since GE is so generous with food, we didn’t just have some fudgsicles in a freezer; no, we had an ice cream man come in and serve it to us with a full sundae bar to boot! Delish!

I spend a couple more hours after that finishing up some work and then head home to rush and complete a slew of errands in anticipation of Nick’s arrival.

Nick gets in at about 11:15pm so there’s only one place we can go to: New York Pizza! Yes!

Churro fondue at Max Brenner

Saturday we wake up and make our way to a chocoholics dream brunch at Max Brenner. Nick gets the smoked salmon platter but I opt for some fried eggs with sausage, cheese, spicy home fries and a sugar encrusted biscuit. Since this is a chocolate restaurant, my dish even came with a cup of melted chocolate. We end our meal with some Mexican hot chocolate and a churro fondue platter with white chocolate, toffee caramel and raspberry puree dipping sauces.  

After brunch we decide to go to a movie (it was Twilight - don’t judge), a Target run and round out our night with dinner at Regina’s pizza in the North End.

Breakfast at South End Buttery

 Sunday starts with brunch at the South End Buttery where I indulge in some pancakes decked out with fresh berries and whipped butter and finish that up with a couple of gourmet cupcakes from their bakery (salted caramel chocolate and brown sugar and spice to be specific). 

Nick and I go home and relax before he leaves at 2:00pm. Then it’s back to work for me. I type up my blog, read my case for Market Research on Finale (in preparation of the write-up I have to do the week after Thanksgiving) and add a disclaimer to our TRU Chocolate questionnaire.

*The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of GE Aviation, Northeastern University, their staff, employees or affiliates.