Photo Shoots and Car Shopping

Spring outside Dodge Hall

Eleventh Week of Class
(March 19 - 25)

Monday morning I'm up early for a 9:30 am meeting with a professor for the class I might try and petition called "Design Thinking for Market Driven Innovation". The meeting, held over in Ryder Hall, goes well and he even shows me the final projects from last year's class. The process books look very professional and the projects seem highly involved. While the class looks neat, I'm a little concerned about the level of commitment required since I'll be working full-time by them. I decide to contact someone I know who took the course last year and ask their opinion.

After we wrap up I make a beeline to my second home (Snell Library) and plug along on homework, send some e-mails, etc. before my 1:00 pm meeting with my partner for the New Product Development process audit project. We convene in the grad lounge and after much back-and-forth trying to come up with an 'innovative' company we realize that one has been in front of us all along! Northeastern University's College of Business constantly update classes, create new majors and updates requirements and therefore is the perfect company to use for our audit. I immediately set about emailing the Associate Dean of the College to see if she might be able to meet to discuss the school's current innovation process.

My teammate and I break at 1:45pm for our Global Management class where we discuss L'Oreal's acquisition of two Chinese makeup firms to expand into the Asian market.

After class she and I continue our work until our Brand and Advertising class that night where we get a special treat: a guest speaker! Our visitor for the evening is Kelley Kassa, an expert in social media. She provides some great insight (including resources for our consulting project with Henniker Brewing Company).

Tuesday morning I'm up early working on homework before an 11:00 am meeting with a guy renting out a parking spot near my apartment. After seeing the nice paved spot behind a South End brownstone I decide to sign the lease for three months (yes, they have leases for parking spots in Boston). It feels a bit silly to rent a parking spot before I even have a car, but with the competitive market for parking in Boston, you have to make a move when you can.

After signing the contract, I rush to my Zipcar rental and make the drive out to Marlborough to test drive a couple of used cars. The dealership has a couple of good options and is a much less stressful experience than my last go at car shopping last weekend.

I get back  just in time for a couple of errands before my 5:15 pm meeting with Six Flags innovation group. After a couple of hours of group work I break for my Entrepreneurial Finance course. Due that night was my topic paper on 'non-traditional inventories in the service industry'. Among other subjects that night, we discuss our upcoming financial statements which are due next week (Yikes!).

Getting the star treatment - photo courtesy of Megan Pollock/Chris Navin

Wednesday morning I'm up early to rush to the doctor for a  9:15 am appointment before meeting my former boss for the drive out to Waltham. What's in Waltham, you ask? Why, my photo shoot for Northeastern's new ad campaign of course! We make the drive out to Christopher Navin's impressive studio and spend the next couple of hours shooting professional poses that even include costume changes (I feel so fancy!). It was a really cool experience and I look forward to seeing the actual ad in April.

I get back to campus with just enough time to steal some slices of pizza from the grad lounge for our traditional third Wednesday pizza parties before my Innovation and Enterprise Growth class at 1:45 pm.

Noche for Restaurant Week

After class I manage to keep my focus for a couple of hours of homework before I meet up with two friends for my first Restaurant Week session of the year! On tonight's menu: Noche. I am happy to say it did not disappoint! In fact, despite it's a little over-the-top club feel, the latin-inspired food is just the right amount of spicy. I get the lobster and shrimp enchiladas for my appetizer, the Diablo chicken with corn bread stuffing as my entree and an amazing platter of fresh churros with dulce de leche dipping sauce for dessert. All of this deliciousness for $33.12 because of restaurant week. Does it get any better? 

Thursday starts with some major work on my forecasting assignment for New Product Development. We have been tasked with forecasting the potential demand for a new pizza product by TruEarth (a company focused on healthy food alternatives). Since I'm having some trouble figuring out some of the required numbers, I drop by my professor's office hours hoping she can provide some guidance. While I'm grateful for her suggestions, they mean reworking almost all of my formulas. Ugh!

After reworking the assignment for what feels like hours I have to break for a focus group I'm participating in at Dodge Hall. My former boss has asked members of the first-year Graduate Marketing Club to assist in suggestions for re-designing our Full-Time MBA brochure. The session generates lots of interesting insights that will make our new brochure even more helpful to prospective students.

Friday morning I'm up early for a guest lecture during a make up class for Global Management. Our visitor for the session is Stacie Berdan, an expert in international careers. The lecture is super informative and it is very impressive to hear about the 50 countries that Ms. Berdan has lived and worked in during her career (talk about being a jet-setter!).

After the two hour lecture, I meet up with my Market Entry team to work on our project. During the next couple of hours we manage to divide up the remaining portions of our paper and finalize the company we are going to use for entering Hong Kong (hint: it's HauteLook, Inc.)

After that session, it's on to another group meeting, this time for my Brand and Advertising Management project on Henniker Brewing Company.

After that wraps up, I have just enough time to finish and submit my one-page write-up on Ms. Berdan's lecture and clean my apartment before Nick arrives for the weekend.

When the boyfriend gets here we, of course, make a beeline to New York Pizza, followed by drinks at Parish Cafe (I'm really enjoying this routine!).

Saturday morning I'm up early for my first "Persuasive Communication with B2B Customers" class. I'm happy to say that I really like it and am glad to have a fellow student in the class with me. I'm particularly impressed with how well the professor can keep the class's attention for the four-hour period.

On top of my good class, I love that Nick meets me outside Dodge for our brunch date (I could get used to him being here on the weekends!). We head to one of our faves (The Other Side) for our requisite juevos rancheros and Tex Mex tango platters. Yum!

After that we hop in Nick's rental car and drive out to another car dealership for some more car shopping. Nick and I spend several hours at Ira Nissan test driving cars and meeting with sales representatives. While I don't leave with a car that day, I do leave with a signed agreement from the dealer to bring a car from another location for me (and it's the exact one I wanted!). Hooray! It's such a relief to have this handled with just a week to spare before work begins.

After a successful shopping session, Nick and I head back to Boston, watch some movies and relax.

Brunch at Eastern Standard

Sunday Nick and I make our way to Eastern Standard for brunch. Their brisket hash and sweet bread basket are just what I wanted. Unfortunately, Nick soon has to leave to drive back to Montreal and I'm left with a 2:30 pm meeting for my Innovation and Enterprise Growth team.

I spend the remainder of my weekend with the group, working through our heuristics, assigning innovations to each person to write up and working out the correct balance of our portfolio of innovations.


*The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Northeastern University, Ocean Spray Cranberries, either entity's staff or affiliates.