Section Bonds

One of my favorite aspects of section is the rapport you build with classmates. It's immature, funny, and likely less than you'd expect from "serious" business school students. Truth is, we are no better than anyone else, we just got lucky.

Section emails slowly descend from vital information to playful banter. Frequently, folks voice their despise for the reply all button. Personally, I love it. It lightens my day and everyone needs a little humor in their life. Granted, it can crowd an already busy mailbox, but Microsoft was brilliant and added another button to our toolbar, delete. The latest section wide email was a request to make a phone list and the reason was to ensure proper dispersion of drunk dials. Sounds quite important to me.

Then there was today, a handful of people were listed on the distribution of buzzword bingo. These are phrases that without context aren't legitimate in many conversations, but somehow were carefully placed in today's class conversations. The key is for the phrase to go unnoticed and for the speaker to talk with a straight face. "Fly it up the flagpole" failed on both accounts, but "gut the pig" won free drinks for the next TNDC. Though this is not a trend I would like to follow for the majority of classes, it did entertain me during a very boring Accounting class and an interesting L.O. class. Thankfully, we shut it down for D.A. as I was having difficulty keeping composure through the morning.

Blur

I am not sure I ever anticipated the day that I would pull out the last of a quarter's cases. Yes, of course it was bound to happen and yes, I know that my marketing final is Friday, but tonight is when it finally hit me. I have 2 cases left in Marketing and then on Friday, the class will be complete. Everyone says to enjoy business school because the time flies. That's an understatement! I feel like it's been lightning speed since I arrived and I can't help but acknowledge how quickly it'll all come to an end. I realize I still have a while to go, but if this quarter is any indication, I'm going to blink and this will all be over. As for finals starting, I suppose I've tried my best to avoid those thoughts. Although, I do need to start "studying", which basically entails concept review. On that note, I have a career management packet to complete, an L.O. reading assignment and my LT wants to do 6 cases tomorrow... basically, they're out of their minds and I'm off to work. Night. :)

Darden Cup: Football

It is rare that I can justify getting out of bed before 10am on a rainy Saturday morning, but for Darden Cup football, I would have made sure I was out of bed at 7am. The SYs told me that football tends to draw a huge crowd; however, today that crowd seemed slim due to the forecast of rain. Nonetheless, there was good representation from all the sections, most sporting newly designed section t-shirts. Section E rocked participation by convincing 57 members of their section to attend; add in partners and they had 73 people signing under the FY column. Sections D, C and A were all within 10 attendees of each other with a lone B pulling up the tail.

Brett Nichol, our fabulous Athletics coordinator went to great lengths to shorten the duration of Saturday’s Darden Cup event. It worked out well in my opinion. Each section fielded 2 teams and each team played 2 games. The condensed format allowed the event to complete by 1:30 pm. Both Section B teams dominated play, though with less than desirable participation, they slipped in the rankings to tie with Section D for 3rd overall. A number of section A’s players got worked by E, leaving the injured on the sideline and E with the W. Section C’s president caught an incredible diving touchdown pass to win the game over Section E with 1 minute remaining. Kelly Woodham of Section B solidified their win over D with a late in the game interception. Additionally, Paul Hepper intercepted a pass from D in the endzone though it wasn’t enough to stop section D. The best play of the day came from Tack Richardson of Section D, who ran half the length of the field with his shorts around his thighs to solidify D’s win over E. Apparently the shorts were the only true casualty of the day.

Great job to all the day’s athletes!

Final Standings for Football:
Section A – 55 Points
Section B – 60 Points
Section C – 73 Points
Section D – 60 Points
Section E – 73 Points

Overall Standings:
Section A – 130 Points
Section B – 150 Points
Section C – 143 Points
Section D – 90 Points
Section E – 125 Points


My personal accomplishments:
Sacked QB Kevin (3rd string at Penn State pre Darden)
Lateral pass to Matt for a touchdown
Many off kilter QBs due to my rushing abilities
Couple good catch for some yardage.

Damn am I lucky to have LT7

Learning Team is one of those experiences that some people hate and others love. I LOVE LOVE LOVE my LT. Not only are they fantastic people in and out of room 138, but they know when it's time to get to business. I feel that we are more efficient than most teams and know when you must agree to disagree. The case method can be hard as there is only a "more right" answer and sometimes even after class, it's hard to see what that answer is. Moreover, there are many LTs that forget there is a class to teach you what you can't figure out together. The experiences of my mates provide very diverse perspectives and though we sidetrack at times, everyone is open to bringing the conversation back to where it is supposed to be.

In passing, I often hear horror stories. People talk about LT members that are not willing to share notes without asking. Others say they will be "kicked out" if they haven't finished reading a case because they are perceived as not having anything to contribute. On one hand, I understand these strict guidelines, but they are not ones with which I agree. I like the fact that sometimes you just can't get to everything in life and there are 5 other people to bring me up, not down.

FY Standardization

As I walked up my stairs after another morning of classes, I started contemplating the standardized format of Darden's FY curriculum. As odd as this sounds, I like it a lot! Yes, my classes are chosen for me, but the fact that I can talk with my roommate who is in a different section about the same cases and same homework feels great. Not only that, but I could walk up to any first year and we'd all be on the same page, likely in the same camp (completely lost at times). I don't have to rely on the 60 people in my section, instead, it's the 333 in my class.

It seems that every Monday I'm tired. I'm sure it doesn't help that I'm up until 3-4am on the weekends and then end up going to bed at 12a on Sunday night. Yesterday was a busy sports day, which I often miss being in VA. I used to have soccer 3 days a week and now I'm lucky if I play once. Unfortunately, using my new cleats and braces have rendered my heel absolutely destroyed. I'm not sure if I've ever had such a large blister. This leads me into, what shoes am I going to wear for my briefing that starts in the next 30 minutes? I tried a couple pairs on and it seems that no matter what, the shoes will be tight. I must grin and bare the pain. It's only my future career, right? These days, if it's not one injury, it's definitely another.

Additionally, my DA homework is a bit more complex than I anticipated and though I've started, I'm not sure what the next step is. This proves to be a problem as I can't make it to learning team tonight and though I know my team may help me after the Merrill Lynch cocktail event, it's a bit difficult when you miss the entire discussion. Suppose this all stems from priorities and the purpose of business school in the end is to get a job.

Edit 9/23/07: I feel I should qualify my last statement, as I don’t actually believe the only purpose of business school is to get a job because if that is what I believed, I wouldn’t be here. The value business school adds to your toolkit and network far surpasses that of simply finding your next position in your career.

In the Heart of Turmoil

Sometimes you need to poke a little fun:

Dealbreaker has a great synopsis of what the headlines actually mean. Posted from the site:

In times of turmoil, you cannot always trust words to mean what they mean. Often they mean something they don't mean at all. Our guide to financial turmoil meaning should clear some of this up. Or not.

Key:
"If You Hear This" = "Read This" (Source)

"Low Quality Rally" = "Our Dartboard Malfunctioned" (UBS)
"We Might Encounter A Slight Correction" = "Expect A 40% Drop" (AIG)
"We Believe We Are Sufficiently Capitalized" = "Our Leverage Is Still 24:1" (Lehman Brothers)
"We Expect To Benefit From A Flight To Quality" = "Shorts Have Created So Much Buy To Lend Action Our Stock Is Buoyed" (Goldman Sachs)
"Another Front Is Opening" = "No One Wants Our Stock Anymore" (Barclays)
"It's Unclear Who Is Going To Be A Credit Provider Going Forward" = "No One Will Lend To Us" (Concordia Advisors)
"No Evident Catalyst For Ending The Pain" = "We Are Flooded With Redemption Requests And Our Attorney Quit" (Feda Capital)
"We Have Changed The Format Of Our Earnings Call A Little Bit" = "No Questions From Pesky Analysts After That Smartass From UBS Mouthed Off" (Baldwin)
"Markets Set To Bounce" = "Our Editor Has Almost Lost Everything" (Wall Street Journal)
"EU Has Tradition Of Bailouts" = "Don't Look At Me Like That, Germany" (Financial Times)
"Short Sellers Are Attacking Our Stock" = "My Mistress And I Are Fleeing Tonight To A Country With No Extradition" (Pick One)

Busier?

I didn't know I had time to be busier this week!! SYs warned me about how briefings impact life, sleep, cases and time management, but of course, I nodded, smiled and thought, it's not going to be a big deal. Sure enough, I'm running on empty with little end in sight and unfortunately, I forewent going to the grocery store on Sunday night, which has proven to be a VERY bad idea as I have absolutely no food at home.

My target is banking, so I've signed up for 7 banking briefings this week and one consulting simply because of Deloitte's blogger target. Suppose the marketing worked. ;) It's quite an exciting/interesting week given the state of the market and the consolidations happening at this point. The first briefing I attended on Monday was BofA. What a day to have BofA on grounds! Their entire presentation that was built last Friday was essentially void.

I've quickly learned that I prefer short presentations with the opportunity to talk with the bank's colleagues to the longer presentations. Most information can be found on a website or via a conversation, which all in all is simply more personal.

Today, I have another 2 briefings plus a Section D reception with Dean Brunner. Three other sections have already held their receptions and I've been informed that the time spent was worthwhile. Sounds great, but I'm still trying to figure out when I will have time to prepare my marketing case before learning team and my resume for tomorrow's career management class. The time I thought I had is now scheduled for a meeting with my Operations simulation group.

Luckily, with all the insanity around Darden these days, Friday is a Reading Day and thus, NO CLASS! :D It sounds like Merrill Lynch is still coming on grounds next week. I am interested to see what Merrill has to say about their merger with BofA and what it means for the banking market and job prospects in the future.