Winter Quarter Recap

BMP couples dinner in March

I did a much better job this quarter of keeping up on the blog, so I don't think there is a lot new here, but I feel like I have to add a "recap" post each quarter.... so here it is.

The beginning of the quarter was a lot of fun with my January trips to Vegas, Sundance, and DC, and then my February Omaha trip to meet Warren Buffet was definitely one of the most unique experiences that I've had at Anderson.  After the trips were done though, it was time to get back to reality, and realize I had a lot of work to do.

Classes were decent.  The VBA/Excel-based class was my favorite, and I'd like to continue to educate myself in VBA in the future.  I'm glad that I took the Venture Capital/Private Equity class because I think I learned a lot, but it was so stressful with the heavy workload and cold calling nature of the professor that I couldn't actually enjoy the experience as it was going on.  The Investment Management class which I hated in the first half of the quarter, I actually liked a lot in the second half as it moved from heavily theoretical to more practical topics.  I ended up dropping my Mandarin class seven weeks into the quarter.  The Thursday night schedule conflicted with a lot of my trips (first Sundance, and then the SIF trips to Omaha and San Francisco) so I had to miss three classes and I felt that I was really falling behind.  It was only a two credit class anyway, so dropping it didn't effect my graduation requirements.  On top of the classes, though, the big time commitments were SIF speaker events, the stock pitch competition that I mentioned in the last post, and the AMR consulting project. 

My job search continues with little progress.  During the quarter I had four rounds of interviews with one company, so I thought that I was getting very close to getting an offer, but they've given me the silent treatment for almost a month now.  I haven't been eliminated outright yet, but I certainly get the feeling that I'm not their first choice and am not very optimistic.  Unlike a lot of other career verticals, most asset management positions don't open up until late in the school year because the firms are smaller and only do just-in-time hiring.  I guess it was wishful thinking that I would be able to land a position earlier in the year and be able to relax more as the year goes on.  There is a very clear divide between the difference in lifestyle and attitude of students who already have jobs lined up and those that are still recruiting.  I've already seen more opportunities pop up in the past week in my industry than in the entire quarter before that, though, so I'm hopeful that things will still get sorted out before graduation. 

I've already written about most of the random fun activities which happened earlier in the quarter such as Casino Night and Joshua Tree.  Jay's visit to LA two weeks ago was a highlight of the last few weeks.  Also, two cool celebrity sightings in the past two weeks: Darryl from The Office was playing pool at the table next to me, and we were sitting at a bar last night with Cutty from The Wire. 

Not as good as in Asia, but we still found some tasty Taiwanese restaurants in LA

So now with the quarter over, I am on spring break until April 1.  With the post-grad job situation uncertain, this is also the last guaranteed vacation I have on the horizon.  Two days removed from my last final I'm already feeling so much more relaxed, and have been productive, catching up on exercise, cleaning, and cover letter updates.  Last night we had our quarterly Man Dinner with some of the guys from school.  It should continue to get more fun though.  Although the details still aren't finalized, I'm planning a mini California road trip over the break with stops at Big Sur, Lake Tahoe and Death Valley National Park.  I'll be sure to blog about its progress.