The Week of a Million Group Meetings and a New Car

Pretty flowers on campus

Twelfth Week of Class
(March 26 - April 1)

Monday I'm up early and at the library to start seriously looking at my draft financial statements for Entrepreneurial Finance. You see, our deliverable for this week is to create three years of pro-forma financial statements (Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement) down to each month for the first year and each quarter for the second and third year. Since I have trouble understanding other people's financial statements, let alone creating my own for an imaginary company I created out of scratch, I am understandably nervous.

Fortunately, a kind classmate, who is also the finance tutor, agreed to help me. But until our 12:30 pm meeting I'm on my own. Fortunately, I had pre-completed my write-up for Global Management during the weekend and had already read my six chapters and case for Brand and Advertising Management so I have nothing else to distract me except this.

At 12:30 pm I meet up with the finance tutor and he spends the next hour or so helping me determine things like corporate tax rates, interest charges and sources of financing.

After our meeting, it's off to Global Management where we have a speaker who is an expert in family business. This is perfect for our case today on Dalton Chemicals, a New Hampshire chemicals company run by a family deciding on who to lead an international expansion. We even get to watch snippets from The Godfather.

After class I start reviewing my portion of Global Management Market Entry paper that I have to submit to my group today. I finish up, hit send and begin working on securing insurance for my new car (which I am trying to pick up this week).

In  Brand & Advertising Management we discuss a topic that is near to my heart: Social Media. We apply the readings for the day to a case with United Airlines after they broke a musician's Taylor guitar. You might have heard of the now famous YouTube video that musician put out? You can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

Tuesday I am up early again, still cramming on my financial Statements. Unfortunately, it appears as though I underestimated the amount of time it would take to complete the documents and spend the next 11 hours trying desperately to finish before my 7:30 pm class. Again, the only reason I finish at all is because of the kindness of another classmate who is the second finance tutor (I'm lucky I have all these smart kids in my class!). I end up sliding into class five minutes late but with no fewer than 10 pages of financial statements and roughly 10 pages of assumptions, references and exhibits. Phew!

My new baby!

Wednesday I'm up early again, only this time it's for a reason slightly more exciting than homework: picking up my new car! For my new job I will have to commute to areas public transportation won't take me so I had to concede and buy a car. After about five hours of signing paperwork, verifying insurance and other such administrative requirements I drive off in the first car I've ever owed! I'm feeling tres grown-up right now.

When I get back into the city I manage to park it and run into my Innovation & Enterprise Growth class just a few minutes late (what is with my tardiness this week?).

After class lets out I get to hear about what supposedly was a great Career Center networking event that I had to miss to secure my vehicle and I also meet up with my Innovation team working on the Six Flags project to try and come up with what our professor terms innovation 'boulders' rather than the slew of innovation 'rocks and pebbles' we have now.

When I get home that night I'm emotionally drained from the day but plug away on a case for Braun's Syncro shaver, my portion of my team's Market Entry paper and readings for my Saturday class.

Thursday I sleep in to the embarrassing hour of 8:00 am (it's been a while since that happened) before grabbing my Dunkin' coffee and hitting the books. It is another long and arduous day in the library, broken up only by my 5:20 pm class for New Product Development where we discuss the several potential market entry scenarios for Braun. I take profuse notes because next week's deliverable for the class involves each of us putting together a 30-minute PowerPoint presentation on just this topic.

Friday is one of the most arduous days I've had this semester. I get up early, grab a coffee (turbo shot added - trust me, I'll need it) and meet the first of three groups to work on final projects which have, of course, suddenly appeared in the face of four weeks left of class.

First up: my Global Management group. We work from 9:30-2:30pm on our Market Entry project that is due to be e-mailed to the professor by Sunday (presentations are on Monday). As is always the case, while we thought we would just be 'quickly' putting together our PowerPoint presentation during the session with our paper 'all-but-done', that didn't quite happen. That 'all-but-done' paper ended up getting several sections added to it, several more taken out and reduced from 10 pages to the required five. After several hours reworking our paper we finally get to the PowerPoint but are unable to finish it before we all have to separate to meet with our other, different respective groups.

I grab a soda and head upstairs to a reserved room to spend the hours from 2:30 pm -7:30 pm plugging through my Brand & Advertising Management project on Henniker Brewing Company. Fortunately, we make good progress and are able to get some solid media plan costs nailed down and the remainder of the written portion of the essay distributed between the five of us.

I drag myself home after that meeting for my depressing dinner of Lean Cuisine, eaten while hunched over my laptop as I research, write and edit my two portions of my Innovation and Enterprise Growth team project on Six Flags amusement parks. I e-mail my portion out to the rest of my group at the lovely hour of 12:30 am. After winding down, I don't manage to get to bed until 1:30 am...and I have to be in class at 8:00 am tomorrow....

Saturday my alarm goes off at 6:45 am and I stumble around my apartment getting ready for my third Saturday class on 'Mastering Business Intelligence'.

The course ends up being fine, but slightly different than what the description led me to believe. It turned out to mostly focus on information system management, much along the lines of the Information Resource Management course I took during Year 1 of the program. While not what I was expecting, it was fine and I manage to make it through the four hours and even participate.

After class I grab lunch with two of my classmates at Temptations Cafe for an amazing panini. How have I never tried this place and it's just across the street from Dodge Hall?

When I get home I work on finalizing the PowerPoint for my Global Management team and send both the paper and the slides to our professor. The rest of the day is spent working on this blog, compiling costs for my Brand & Advertising Management media plan and reading for class.

Sunday I wake up at a leisurely time but do manage to get to the library for about 6 hours of reading (I had an uncommonly large amount of textbook reading to do this week). When I get home I continue to do some homework and reading before eventually going to sleep at midnight, anticipating the huge week ahead of me.

*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 entities' staff or affiliates.