Early Winter Quarter Updates (Part 1)

Joshua Tree National Park

The last 13 blog posts have been about my various travel plans starting with winter break, so it might be easy to forget that I'm a student and have other responsibilities too.  So it's time for a quick recap on student life of the first 4+ weeks of Winter Quarter 2012 (although most of this entry will be about more trips and other fun stuff).

Class Schedule: Although I'm only taking three traditional classes, my schoolwork is once again pretty intense.  Venture Capital and Private Equity is one of the highest rated classes at Anderson, so I really wanted to take it even though it features A LOT of cold calling and an intense workload (two assigned cases, each with a required write-up due each week).  Investment Management and Security Analysis, sounds like something that should be right up my alley, but it's one of my least favorite classes I've taken so far because it's taught like a PhD class, with too much long winded formula derivations, and the professor is really confusing.  It probably doesn't help that I take the class from 7-10 pm each week.  Managerial Computing is an Excel class that focuses on programming with VBA.  I like it a lot and think it could be pretty useful, no matter what my next job is.  I'm also taking Business Chinese, which is a 2 credit language class that seems to require as much time as a regular 4 credit class would.  Student Investment Fund still has weekly meetings and other time requirements for meetings and guest speakers.  And last, but certainly not least, we're in the final quarter of our Applied Management Research (AMR) consulting project which takes more time than any of the classes mentioned above.

My classmate and I ready for some serious meetings in DC

AMR Project / DC Trip:  The most interesting part of this project so far this quarter is the trip that two of my teammates and I made to Washington DC in January to conduct interviews and research.  We had to take the red-eye flight out the night after I got back from my Sundance trip, and then we spent a day and a half in the DC area, with all expenses generously funded by one of the organization's donors.  During that time we had seven meetings with seven different people including the client, board members, a couple of CEOs, a corporate lawyer, and a member of USDA.  It was a really productive trip as we met some important people and gathered a lot of data.  With everyone so passionate about helping out GCNF and the entire mission of fighting hunger, the meetings were enjoyable too.  It was also an interesting experience for me as I led every meeting.  And despite the tough travel and the really packed meeting schedule, I couldn't leave DC without catching up with some of old crew, so I was happy I was able to meet up with Evan and Dan for dinner and drinks close to our hotel on Tuesday night.

Recruiting:  I've had a series of interviews with one company since winter break.  I guess it's been going well since they keep telling me to interview with more people, but it's been a pretty long, drawn out process.  I've applied for a few other jobs in the past few months but either got rejected without an interview or didn't get any response from all the others.  

The Anderson crew after some rock climbing at Joshua Tree

Joshua Tree:  I promised myself after the DC Trip that I'd calm down my schedule and catch up on schoolwork and recruiting.  However, when I saw that the Outdoors Adventures Business Association (Anderson's Outdoors Club) was planning a hiking/camping trip to Joshua Tree National Park, I got motivated to hit the road again.  I hadn't been camping since my cross-country road trip, and it'd been awhile since I'd been on a good hike too, so this seemed like a fun opportunity.  We left early in the morning on Saturday, February 4th and arrived at the campsite where several students had already spent the previous night.  After setting things up we went on a 6.5 mile hike of the Lost Horse Mine Trail.  The weather was great and there were some pretty cool views on parts of the mountain.  After that we did some rock scrambling, which is what the park is best known for, and was a lot of fun.  After a draining day we headed back to the campsite and hung out around the campfire for the next several hours.

Celebrating the Giants Super Bowl victory!

Super Bowl Party: The Giants won the Super Bowl.  This is pretty unbelievable and pretty awesome, and no one could have seen this coming back in December.  I remember over winter break watching the Giants lose to the Redskins (in 3D!) and everyone assumed that the season was over.  But after six straight, improbable wins later, they're champs!  My personal ride during that win streak was pretty interesting too, as I watched those six games in six different cities: Stuart (FL), Taipei, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, the Phoenix airport, and Marina del Rey (CA).  For the Super Bowl, I went to a party of 20 people or so hosted by a classmate (also a Giants fan).  Good times.

I have more to add, but they'll wait until my next post, coming up soon.