A Weekend Soujourn to New Hampshire

Henniker, NH

Seventh Week of Summer Semester 
(June 18 - 24)

Today marks the start of the second-to-last week of my MBA program. I honestly wish I could spend more time reminscing on it but I'm just too darn busy, so let's get started!

On Monday I start my morning with my very first Monthly Consumption meeting. I was told by my boss last week that this month I would be pulling together the Foods SNAPshot. A SNAPshot is essentially a picture of our business' health. I attend the hour-long meeting and, I'm not going to lie, I'm a little intimidated by all the charts and graphs that I now have to make sense of by Thursday.

However, I don't have long to let my nerves get to me because I have a super fun class to attend: Sensory Training! I spend the next hour learning all about how the senses impact Ocean Spray product development, followed by tons of taste and smell testing. I love my job!

I have the rest of my afternoon reserved for beginning my SNAPshot (trust me, I'm going to need all that time!).

That night, in my Marketing in the Service Sector class, I have a case study due on Menton Bank and the company's transition to a new store model. However, most of my classmates are more concerned with our impending final project which is due in just one week. You might remember that my team and I are looking into the websites of eight different service companies and analyzing their effectiveness. We have our paper and presentation due next Monday, but in the interest of pro-activity, my team and I all decided to submit our paper and draft slides to each other by today.

Tuesday morning at work starts out well with a 2.5-hour new hire meeting. The session is really valuable as I learn all about my benefits, the way employee performance is measured, the history of the cooperative and more. Plus, I get to meet a bunch of other newbies and get some face time in with the CEO! Not a bad start to a Tuesday, if I do say so.

I follow the new hire meeting up with my buddy lunch before I have to get back to real work in the afternoon.

I spend the rest of the day in meetings for a Craisins^® package redesign and new merchandising vehicles before buckling down for a few hours of SNAPshot work.

Tonight marks our second-to-last Consumer Behavior class and the beginning of our final presentations! Yikes! Fortunately for my team, we won't be in front of the class until Thursday, but we still had to submit our final paper and the presentation to the professor today (in the interest of fairness to all the groups).

Before we get to the first two groups, our professor leads us in a discussion of an article on MTV's expansion around the world as well as our final book chapter discussion. We then move on to the first two groups. Fortunately, after watching these teams present I get less nervous about our presentation because they both seemed to cover the same topics as our team did (looks like we are on track for later this week!).

On Wednesday I start my day with coffee with the VP of Human Resources at Ocean Spray. She has kindly set up a session with a few new hires to see how our first few months at the company have been.

After my fill of caffeine, I head back to my cube for some more SNAPshot work. Fortunately, I have something fun planned as a break from all that Nielsen analysis: a store visit to Walmart and Stop & Shop to check out  Craisins^® pricing.

After my store visits, I spend the rest of my day working with an Associate Trade Marketing Manager to get a UPC request set up for a new cranberry sauce configuration, followed by a great working session with my boss to perfect my SNAPshot.

Tonight in my Marketing in the Service sector class we discuss the last case of the my MBA career! Fortunately, it's a pretty fun one that spurs some lively debate around what level of responsibility FedEx has when it can't meet its promise to 'deliver next day'.

After class lets out a bit early, my group meets one last time before our presentation on Monday to review our slides, make some final edits and get a bit of practice in.

Thursday morning is spent attending to a plethora of work requests and mentally preparing for the presentation of my SNAPshot during our consumption working session later in that morning.

Alas, I'm up first for SNAPshot presentations and I don't think it goes that well. I'm pretty frustrated with myself for not presenting all the information I had as clearly, or as confidently, as I would have liked. All I can do is take constructive notes from my team and hope that next month I use these learnings to improve - a lot.

On the bright side, I don't have much time to reflect on my embarrassing presentation because I have a ton of work I postponed earlier this week in favor of working on my consumption report.

First up, I attend a meeting for two new Craisins^® packaging initiatives and then spend some time making updates to my consumption report before sending the final out to my team. That afternoon, I also get a lesson from my boss on another monthly report I will now be in charge of updating: the Sales and Operating Plan (S&OP). This report looks at the estimated volumes of each product and readjusts our forecast as we get actuals for each month in.

Tonight marks my final class of Consumer Behavior and my second-to-last presentation of my MBA program (are you getting annoyed with my countdowns yet? Too bad!).

My group is up last tonight and, despite our fears that we would run over on our strict time limit for our project on 'Health Conscious America' we ended up finishing early (I'm pretty sure we all rushed throught it). Fortunately, besides the rushed pace, my group feels pretty confident in our presentation.

And with that, I have just one class left next week.

My half-day Friday is super busy as I play catch-up from all my intern/new hire meetings from this week and the time I invested in learning how to pull my SNAPshots and S&OP report together. In fact, I only stop for a brief moment for my Meet and Greet with the VP of Global Marketing and Sales. Fortunately, it was a great 1:1 and I truly appreciated the opportunity to have a real conversation with a very busy exec. Lovely!

Lake Massasecum, NH

After the 1:1, I get super focused on finished the rest of my work so that I can leave by 2:00 pm today. Why 2:00 pm, you ask? Well, I have some super fun plans for this afternoon and weekend! You might recall that last semester, as part of my Brand and Advertising Management class, my team did a consulting project for Henniker Brewing Company. Now, the owner of the company has invited the entire team up to Henniker, New Hampshire for a trip to his lake house, an afternoon on his boat and tons of barbeque! Yes!

To make things even better, Nick is meeting me in New Hampshire later that night and we are staying in a quaint hotel for the evening because, why not?

I somehow manage to get back into the city in time to meet two of my former group mates at 3:00 pm and we make the drive up to Henniker, NH. As soon as we arrive (at about 5:30 pm) we jump onto the boat of our former 'client' and tour Lake Massasecum. It's simply gorgeous and being outdoors does wonders for my frazzled brain.

After a couple of hours of swimming and boat riding it's time for massive amounts of hamburgers, hot dogs and, of course, craft beer.

Colby Hill Inn, NH

Nick joins us around 8:30 pm. After some leisurely chatting with everyone on the screened-in porch (love!), he and I make our way to our cozy hotel for the night: the historic Colby Hill Inn.  It is painfully quaint and cute.

Amazing apple pancakes at Colby Hill Inn

Nick and I wake up on Saturday morning for a delicious breakfast at the hotel. I order their apple pancakes and some cranberry juice - of course!

One of Henniker's historic bridges

We then spend the morning exploring Henniker's picturesque bridges and old town area before heading back to the lake for another round of boating - this time on a speed boat with my group mate and her family. I am super impressed with my friend and her brother as they perform daredevil wake boarding stunts, leaping across wakes like it's no big deal. When she asks if I would like to try, I attempt not to laugh. Yeah, I have a hard time keeping my balance standing on solid ground so any sort of extreme sport is not in the cards for me.

After an afternoon on the water, we all indulge in some home-cooked mexican lasagna before Nick and I bid my teammate's family adieu to head back to the city.

By the time Nick and I get back to Boston we are super hungry and decide that a steak is the only thing that will do. We venture down to the theater district for a meal at Fleming's where the amount of food we order is nothing short of embarrassing. Wedge salads, oysters, Filet Mignon, cheddar jalapeno mac n' cheese, scalloped potatoes and a fennel shortbread topped with bourbon berries are just some of the items we devour. Delicious!

On Sunday, Nick and I grab some breakfast at Pavement Coffeehouse. I order my favorite breakfast bagel: the Tequila Sunrise with jalapeno cream cheese! Yum! After our coffee fill, we then head to the Fenway movie theater for an afternoon showing of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Laugh all you want, but it was actually a pretty fun movie.

After a couple of hours of historically accurate vampire killing, Nick and I meet up with one of my classmates at Dillon's for apps and adult beverages.

Alas, after a weekend of fun, I have to spend the rest of my Sunday preparing for my very last class/presentation/assignment of my MBA! Eeek!


*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.