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.