Lazy Saturday

For the first Saturday in a month there is no Michigan home game. While I'm grateful to have the extra day to do work, I don't really feel like I'm making the most of my "day off." Certainly, while laundry and errands are exciting, they're not really comparable to a football game.

In other news, Thursday was a none-too fun day. I got my graded Econ midterm and Strategy paper back. Not what I was hoping for, but I suppose it could have been worse. And, again, because I can't seem to get it to stick into my head: GRADES DON'T MATTER. So, I brushed off my disappointment by hanging out with my Section-mates at Happy Hour at Scorekeepers. No, there was no heavy drinking on my part, but at least it was good to chill out. And yesterday was devoted to studying. Only 3 weeks left until the end of Fall A!

LOAFing around

I took Sunday off to head to the outlet malls and do some shopping. Nathalie, Shari, Alex and I hit the stores, spent way too much money, and generally enjoyed hanging out. One of the stores we visited was Pepperidge Farm (lord knows what is wrong with the food that it winds up at the outlet), where I picked up a loaf of Oatmeal Bread to save myself a trip to Meijer (expiration date on the bread be damned).

After a long day of shopping, and 30 mins of being stuck in traffic, we finally made it back to campus, just in time for resume review. Everyone started grabbing their shopping bags from the trunk and sped off to their separate meetings. On Monday afternoon, when I finally got around to putting all my stuff away, I realized I had a loaf of Whole Wheat, NOT Oatmeal. Either I was completely spacey at the store, or someone stole my bread!

Turns out Shari was the culprit, as she took my bread instead of hers. She claims it was Alex's fault (blame shifter!), but my main concern was getting my bread back. Even though Shari had already eaten 1/4 of the loaf (she thought the cashier sold her the wrong bread), I brought her unopened Whole Wheat to the B-school today to complete the switch. And you would think that no one had ever seen such a thing! In the span of six hours, over 20 people asked me why I had a loaf of bread with me. From the stares and questions I got, you would have thought I was carrying something illegal around. Get a grip, people... it's just bread!!!

PS Happy Birthday, Mom! Busy daughter that I am, there's no gift or birthday card this year. But, at least there was a phone call!

um...

So, that was not a fun hour and a half. For those of you who were not aware, I had my BE midterm today from 4:30pm-6pm. A large part of the week, as well as most of today, were spent studying microeconomics. Going into the test I felt I had a decent grasp on the concepts.

Sadly, it was a bit of a rude awakening. THAT TEST WAS KILLER. I should be used to impossible exams (hello, Penn undergrad), but I think I lost my touch. Fortunately for me, the vast majority of my classmates also had a tough time. Given the forced curve, getting 2/3 of the test wrong may still net you an "Excellent." Oh well, once again, grades don't count.

In much better news, however, today I found out that I was selected to be a Ross Student Ambassador. This means I get to be a liaison between prospective students and the school. I'm very excited that I may be able to help prospective MBAs with their future plans. Once my bio is up on the website, I will post the link so you can all check it out.

Now that BE is done, time to relax, go out and have fun. At least for tonight...

MBA humor

I think we may have officially lost our minds. As MBA1s, we spend a lot of time in class together. We're all very busy this week, studying for our BE midterm (which is tomorrow), and the sleep deprivation seems to be getting to us. To the left, Lauren's attempt at mapping studying efforts to the concepts in our econ class.

And they say that MBAs don't have a sense of humor!

Happy Happy Joy Joy

Following our weekend of craziness, Section Six decided to kick back, relax and enjoy a few drinks at Happy Hour on Monday night. It was nice to finally breathe. Although not too much relaxing, because our BE midterm is right around the corner (Friday, to be exact).
At Good Time Charley's

Clockwise, starting with 12 (and the guy behind the umbrella stand): Matt Jung, Matt Plumb, John Hawkins, Joe M, Meryl, Alden, Katie, Anne, Audrey, Anurag, Lorraine, Me, Michelle (the brains behind this event, but NOT Section Six Social Chair)

For those of us who weren't quite ready for Happy Hour to end, Charley's was followed up by a visit to Ann Arbor Brewing Company.

From L-R: Hugh, Michelle, Me, Matt Jung, Cristine

Maize Out Saturday

After spending Thursday night and all of Friday studying hard, I decided that Saturday was going to be a day for having fun. Maize (the color formerly known as Yellow) was the star of the day.

The day kicked off with a baby shower for one of my classmates. Lene hosted said event, and made all of us attendees paint a onesie for the mom-to-be.

My fabulous work of art. It's very apparent that I did NOT come to B-school to develop my artistic ability.

Following the baby shower, it was off to the Big House, where the 0-2 Wolverines had a date with the 0-2 Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

Lest we be confused with the sad, sad fans of the Irish, it was Maize Out Day at the Big House. Meaning, wear Yellow or perish.

John and Randy, proudly wearing their Maize. Not only are these guys both MBA1's, not only are the fellow Consortium, but they are also Penn grads! Randy (on the left) is Class of '02 and is part of Section One, and John (in the ode to beer t-shirt) is Class of '04 and a fabulous Section Sixer.

The scoreboard says it all. It was a great day to root for the Maize and Blue, and a great way to witness my first win as a Wolverine.

You'd think that after all this excitement I would be ready to go home. But first, there was a stop at the Bus (where I got to stand outside and freeze for 2 hours), and then dinner with section-mate Hugh and his wife Sarah. We went to Sabor Latino, a Latino restaurant on Main St. The first thing on the menu? Lechon asado with rice and beans and fried plantains. Sadly, they were all out. So I will be going back at some point in the near future to get my lechon!

A little bit of everything

Yay! It's Thursday night. No classes until Monday. Should be great, right? Well, not quite. Our core professors decided it would be fun to schedule everything for Monday, so here's a brief look at my weekend.

• ACC 502: Quiz on Monday
• BE 502: Problem set due at 12pm on Monday
• OMS 502: Quiz due at 9am on Monday
• Strategy 502: Case write-up due at 8am on Monday

Add in a Corporate Happy Hour, a baby shower, and the Michigan/Notre Dame football game, and you've got a packed weekend.

In other news, Section Six had section elections today. I'm proud to say I was elected treasurer, which means I get to harass people for money. I'm REALLY looking forward to it!

Finally, as promised, here are a few pictures from the Shout-Off! last week (we still have not redeemed our prize money at Charley's. And it definitely will not be happening this weekend).

Our routine during "I Wanna Six You Up!" (performed to the tune of George Michael's "I Wanna Sex You Up")

Our very ambitious step routine (led by the talented Dave C). I think this is what may have thrown us over the edge and on to victory (or at least to the final round).

PS Many thanks to Lene, for providing the fabulous photos.

I've got chills...

The calendar says it's September 12th. That means that fall is still 9 days away. Yet, when I turned my car on this morning (at 7:35 am so I could get to class on time), the temperature gauge read 48 degrees! As I was shivering in my thin sweater and jeans, all I could think (and not for the first time) was, "It's only two years." It was a small consolation, however. By the time November rolls around, I may be in complete icicle form. So if there are no blog updates later this year, I think it may be safe to assume that I have frozen to death.

Tick Tock

I recently got reprimanded for not updating my blog often enough. So I wrote out my schedule for this week... you can see for yourself all the classes, meetings and events I had/have to go to. And the schedule doesn't even include time for studying, sleeping, eating or showering. I can't imagine you need more details about class assignments or meetings. Hopefully there will be some time for fun this weekend.

Field Day for Adults

Just another day as an MBA1. Today's big event: MBA Games. Me and my fellow Section Six-ers got to sport some lovely red t-shirts as we competed in a series of events such as Softball, Kickball, Soccer, and Connect-Four (among others). My contributions to the team? Cornhole (let's not talk how that went), and Tug-of-War, (we finished in 3rd place). Even though we didn't win the Games (we finished 5th overall, so at least we beat Section Five), it was still an interesting day, full of corporate sponsors, pulled muscles, two downpours and some generally unhealthy tension about how to play the games. And they call it team building?!?

Six Sells!

Tonight, after our very first week of class was finally over, we had the MBA Shout Off! Basically, this involved each section coming up with a cheer/routine and presenting it to a group of judges from the corporate sponsor.

Section Six had the chance to go first, where we preformed such classics as "I Wanna Six You Up!," "I Want Your Six," "Let's Talk about Six," and "We're Too Sixy." There was choreography, a step routine, plus I suffered a flip flop malfunction. Nevertheless, Six stepped it up, and after advancing to the finals, we took home the victory! Bragging rights for the next two years, and $700 at Good Time Charley's. Woo-hoo! Nothing says an MBA like cheerleading!!!

Coming Soon: Pictures from Shout Off! and a recap of MBA Games (Field Day for old people!)

Fall A begins...

In less than 12 hours, I will be back in a classroom full-time (first up, Microeconomics, where we'll be talking about electricity). As an MBA1, I don't have the luxury of choosing my own schedule. So the Michigan gods got together and handed me the following. Try not to laugh.We all know how much I love the early morning. Suffice it to say, I think this is going to be interesting...

The cost of education

Let's forget all the money spent in order to get to this point (GMAT fees, airfare, hotel and car rental expenses to visit schools, application fees, etc). Let's forget the two years of income we're giving up to be here. Let's forget the fact that annual tuition is already over $43K. Let's just focus on course materials. As an MBA1, I've been automatically enrolled in four courses for Fall A. To the left, all the books, solutions manuals and course packs necessary for the next 7 weeks of my life. Add it all together, and you reach the very mind-boggling total of $586.79!!! And that's just for the first seven week of the semester. As it turns out, come mid-October, I get to do this all over again. Oh, the joys of B-school!

Hail to the Vic...

So the day didn't quite turn out as expected. When you are the 5th ranked football team in the country, you are playing at home, and your opponent is part of Division I-AA (Appalachian State), you expect a complete blowout. Unfortunately, the Mountaineers walked out of the Big House with a stunning upset victory. Not necessarily the way I want to remember my first big time college football game. Hopefully next week's game against Oregon will yield a better ending. Despite the loss, I had fun cheering with my fellow Ross-mates.

Marlene (Section Five) and her husband Kurt

Shari, fellow Section Sixer and Future I-Banker

Nathalie (Section Two), quite likely the only Michigan fan in the stadium NOT wearing a Maize or Blue t-shirt

New beginnings

I've been trying hard not to fall off the radar. Unfortunately, B-school has kept me pretty busy in the past few weeks... and classes haven't even started yet! I know this a bit of a copycat move, but I figured a blog will force me to keep everyone up to date. And who knows? I may even start taking pictures!

Coming soon: pictures of my apartment and thoughts on the first football game of the season