A Glorious Leap Day

Eighth Week of Class
(February 27-March 2)

Monday morning I spend working on my business plan for Entrepreneurial Finance and my India country update for Global Management due later today. I also stop by my Finance professor's office to clarify some things regarding my business plan report. Unfortunately, I leave feeling like he wants an even more in-depth outline of costs than I initially prepared. Ugh!

I plug along on my assignments until 1:00 pm when the rest of my Country Update team joins me for 45 minutes of practicing our presentation. In our Global Management course, teams were each assigned a different country to present throughout the semester. The country presented on any given week is directly correlated to the case discussion for the day. Our case today was on Nokia (a Finnish company) and a crisis management situation they had in India.

Some photos from my India presentation

Our presentation goes quite well and I think people enjoy the personal touch gained by incorporating my own travel photos of India taken during my International Field Study trip last May.

In Brand & Advertising Management tonight our class is structured around a group discussion of individual team projects. These semester-long projects entail each group analyzing a company and working to either re-brand or create a new brand for them. My group has been fortunate enough to be working with an actual company (a Brewery in New Hampshire) as they develop their brand and get ready for a summer launch. How exciting is that? We might actually have a significant impact on the development of a brand! Anyway, the discussion goes quite well and we get lots of valuable feedback from the class, particularly related to the brewery's logos.

Tuesday I'm at the library by 8:00 am, working non-stop on my business plan for Entrepreneurial Finance. I've developed an idea for an online travel service that would allow the independent traveler all the convenience of a planned tour, without having to join a large group or be restricted by a tour operators pre-planned itineraries. While it's a ton of work I actually enjoy the process and before I know it I'm encroaching on the 15-page mark (and this is just part one of the project!). Later I will have to develop complete financial statements for the  company. Yeah, I'm more than a little nervous about that part.

I break at 11:30 am for work, followed by my Finance class that night at 7:30 pm where I submit what turned out to be an 18-page business plan.

Leap Day snow!

Happy Leap Day! Wednesday is the first semi-relaxed day I've had in weeks. I get up at the leisurely hour of 7:30 am and spend my morning doing some homework, getting a manicure, paying bills and generally do all of those 'house keeping' items that I've been just too darn busy for lately. Plus, Boston gets some Leap Day snow. Hooray!

On Wednesday I was also supposed to have my second class of the Career Center job search series, this one titled "Harnessing the Power of LinkedIn". Unfortunately, it was cancelled due to lack of interest. Luckily for me, my career adviser sent me the presentation slides so I still feel like I got some nice insight into the topic.

At 1:45 pm I head to campus for a meeting with my Innovation & Enterprise Growth team and our professor. Our professor has cancelled class for the day so that each innovation team can have one-on-one time with him to discuss our projects. My team is working on generating innovative solutions for Six Flags amusement parks. We spend our 20-minute session going over our nearly two dozen ideas with our professor. He gives us some great insight and helps us to reduce our idea list to the most plausible options.

After the meeting, I go to CVS, get a haircut and start to pack for my spring break trip to California. As if I wasn't feeling accomplished enough, I even manage to submit my Brand & Advertising case-write up on the stylistic properties of advertisements with a whole day to spare (that hasn't happened nearly all semester!).

I close the night by chatting with a prospective student about Northeastern's MBA program, scheduling numerous lunch dates with friends for when I'm home in California, watching Netflix and chatting with the boyfriend. What a glorious Leap Day!

Thursday I'm up early for my full work day. I manage to edit several employer interview videos before my New Product Development class at 5:20 pm.

We spend the two hours of class learning about Zaarly, a new company that allows local buyers and sellers to post and fulfill requests for anything from a new sofa to daycare services. The class then develops an actual survey to be sent out to our friends and family during spring break. We will even analyze the results when we return to class in two weeks. Fun!

Also, in an interesting turn of events, I get a call from a Northeastern co-op employer asking if I would be interested in a co-op at their company from June to December of this year. This provides some interesting issues. Since I would already have graduated by August, I would not be allowed to do a co-op per se, but could work as a temporary employee for the six months. I agree to to call tomorrow to further discuss the opportunity.

Just minutes before getting kicked off the plane....

Friday is the official start of spring break! I breath a huge sigh of relief. I get up early to pack, clean the apartment and take care of incidentals before my 1:51 pm flight. Alas, what started as a 1:51 pm flight quickly turns into a much later one. You see, after boarding the plane the airline representatives come on board and ask for two people to get off the plane because of weight limits! What!? This has never happened to me before. When it was obvious no one would volunteer, and with my already narrow connection time getting smaller, I volunteer to take a later flight in exchange for a travel voucher. When all is said and done it takes me roughly 12 hours to get to California. Ugh.

In between all that waiting around, I get an e-mail from the company I'm interviewing with saying they will have a decision to me by next Friday! This anticipation is killing me! Fortunately, I have spring break to distract me (I hope).

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