Winter Quarter Recap

Anderson crowd getting ready to watch some turtles race

Another quarter just about in the books.  We had our final class yesterday, and three finals coming up next week before spring break starts.  My workload wasn't as bad as it could have been since I didn't take any electives and only had three main classes (Corporate Finance, Operations, and Marketing 2).  We also had the continuation of the Communications class and Career Center class, but those each only met a few times during the quarter.  My professors were a night and day improvement over last quarter, so that was encouraging.

One of the reasons I didn't take an elective this quarter was because I wanted to focus on recruiting.  It was definitely a busy few months in that regard, but unfortunately no luck yet.  I believe my final stats are around 10-15 applications, 7 first round interviews, 1 second round interview, and no offers thus far.  I haven't heard back yet from the 2nd round interview, my interview yesterday, or a few of the applications I sent in, so there are still some possibilities before I come back for the spring.  A lot of the students recruiting for investment management haven't found an internship yet, and historically more people lock down an IM internship in the spring quarter than the winter, so its not panic mode yet.

And here's an action shot of the race.  Fear The Turtle!

One theme of the quarter seemed to be some more group Section A events.  Our section kinda got the rep during the fall quarter of being the more anti-social, dorky section, which is a pretty fair assessment.  Our class consistently has the highest grades in each class and it's become a common trend for our professors to comment "this is honestly the best overall work I've seen in my time teaching here" after any random assignment or project our class completes.  This all is a bit unfortunate because the curve is individual for each section rather than the entire school, so most of us would have a higher GPA if we were in a different section.  The good grades might be partially correlated to the anti-social rep too as it seems our class attends relatively less Anderson-wide social events, and nights out at the bars. So some people in the class have been making more of an effort to get the rest of our classmates out more often.  We still seem to avoid the larger Anderson events, but there have been a lot more Section A social outings this quarter including a number of group meals featuring food from someone's cultural background (we've done dim dun, southern Indian, and Korean BBQ), a karaoke night, Super Bowl party, a wine bar birthday outing, and a turtle race (Yes, we went to a bar to watch turtles race.  It was even worse than it sounds).  Some other smaller group events included a comedy show in Hollywood, poker nights, the UCLA games, an Anderson dance show and after-party, and plenty of Anderson Afternoons.

Riding a coaster at Six Flags with one of my learning teammates

My learning team for the quarter turned out to be a pretty good, fun group.  It couldn't match the team I had in the fall, but we all got along well, did a good job with our assignments and it was definitely an entertaining bunch. The highlight was our quarter-long marketing project, where we had to pick a company and devise a marketing plan.  We chose Six Flags, and to gather some "market research" we went to the park one Saturday afternoon.  Although we interviewed random people on lines, it was mostly a fun day of roller coastering, and definitely one of the highlights of the quarter.

Finally, the housing situation has been much improved since winter break.  My former gun-toting, video game obsessed roommate moved out in December after getting married, and the housing department didn't find a replacement, so I've been paying the same rent but have had the whole two bedroom townhouse to myself.  Definitely been able to get a lot more work done in the apartment the past couple months, and as an added bonus there was a lot of frozen chicken left in the freezer, so I've had plenty of free dinners.

So that's the winter quarter summary.  There's still five busy days ahead of me until I'm completely done.  I still need to finish a bunch of stock write-ups for SIF and study for three finals, but after that it's post-finals section party and then immediately off to Ghana for spring break.  I'll be getting back from my trip the day before the spring quarter starts, so it'll be right back into the grind again.

UCLA Bruins Basketball

Pre-game of UCLA-Arizona game, when the Bruins moved into 1st place.

I realize I've only made one post this entire quarter so far, so there probably is a bunch of business school-related stuff I can write about, but I rather focus this entry outside of Anderson, and talk about my first experiences with UCLA basketball.  

Back before classes began in September I bought the Den Pass for $100 which allows students to go to every UCLA football and basketball game for the rest of the season.  I'm a huge sports fan and it pays for itself over box office prices after only a couple uses, so it seemed like a no-brainer.  Unfortunately the combination of the inconvenience of getting to Pasadena to watch a mediocre to terrible football team and the packed weekly schedule I had during basketball season limited my attendance at sporting events the past few months.  In fact, as of last week I had only used the pass once (to attend part of a football game where UCLA lost 35-0 during orientation).  However, as UCLA has been one of the premeir basketball programs historically, and with Pauley Pavilion closed for renovations all of next year, I decided to take in the last two home basketball games of the season this weekend. 

So my impressions of Pauley Pavilion is that although it may be a historic venue (legendary coach John Wooden's teams went 149-2 in this building, and won 8 national championships in the first 10 years Pauley was open) that it is well overdue for a renovation.  My exposure to college basketball stadiums might be a little skewed since the only games I've been to have been at Cole Field House, Comcast Center and UVA's John Paul Jones Arena.  Comcast and JPJ are NBA-style arenas, and Cole was a pretty large venue itself.  So by comparison, Pauley felt really small and outdated.  There is no concourse, to use the restroom I had to go outside and use portapotties, and the concessions and electronic displays are all pretty limited.  But at the same time, it's hard to escape the historical aspect of the arena.  The team has been so successful over time that they only hang banners for national championships (11 in total), the court is named after Wooden, and in the games I went to there were a lot of ceremonies honoring teams of the past and the arena's history.  There has been some external construction going on for the past year or two, but next year the entire arena will be closed down as they do massive remodeling before opening the new arena for the 2012 season.  Not sure if I'll still be in LA to see that, but it was pretty cool being a part of the last game to be played at the current Pauley Pavilion. 

UCLA-Arizona State. 15 mins before tip, stadium a little empty.

As far as the gameday experience goes, I definitely got both sides of the spectrum in the two games I went to.  Thursday night's game was against last place Arizona State, and the crowd was pretty thin to say the least.  I showed up 20 minutes before tip-off and easily found some seats in the upper deck student section somewhat near mid-court.  All of the student sections filled up, but the rest of the arena was pretty lacking.  I've been told this is typical for LA weekday events (a combination of bad traffic and there being plenty of other things to do, both sport-related and not), but I was still surprised considering that UCLA is pretty good this year and it was 2nd to last home game of the season.  I was particularly surprised that when the scoreboard showed the final score of 1st place Arizona's loss that evening that there was no reaction from the crowd, which moved UCLA within 1 game of first place.

Saturday afternoon's game against first place Arizona was the complete opposite in terms of attendance and crowd energy.  Again, I showed up about 20 minutes before tip-off, but this time had to wait in a huge line outside, and then struggled mightily to find 3 seats together.  Eventually I was able to get some seats way in the upper deck corner.  My friends were running late, so the ushers started threatening to take my saved seats away, which I guess is understandable because students who showed up later than me had to hang out in the aisles and stairwells because there weren't enough seats to go around.  The stadium was definitely packed to the max, and the energy level was as high as any top ACC game I had been to.  Even way in the upper deck we stood up the entire game (a lot harder to do now that I'm an old man).  UCLA ended up beating Arizona pretty soundly to move into first place.  The last basket in Pauley Pavilion history ended up being scored by junior walk-on Tyler Trapani, which were the first points of his career.  What made this a special and somewhat poetic moment for UCLA though was that Trapani is the great-grandson of legendary coach John Wooden, who passed away at age 99 this past year.  It seemed like a very fitting way to close down the stadium, and although my experiences in the building were extremely limited, I'm glad I got to be there for the historic final day.

Joe and Josephine Bruin (featured at a football game)