Sunday Mornings

In four weeks time, I will have Sundays back. Since starting grad school over a year ago, Sundays have been a day to get as much homework done as possible. I try to start around 9 in the morning, and will work on stuff until dinner. Today is no different. I am going to try and get a strategy assignment done, work on an ERP assignment, and read over a rough draft of my advanced finance course project. Getting as much done as possible today is important since the coming week is going to be busy putting some finishing touches on our Wal-Mart project for strategy. We present to the Wal-Mart strategy group the week after next, so we need to be as prepared as possible.

Anyway, I need to finish my coffee and get to it......ugh. It's too nice outside to be stuck inside thinking about business.

I have been guilty of blog neglection as of late, but I have some pretty good excuses. Assignments in ERP have taken up some considerable time, and we have been putting the finishing touches on our quarterly holdings report for the Shollmier fund. But those were the easier assignments. I just spent all of last weekend working on an Advanced Corporate Finance test. It was freaking brutal. I worked over 12 hours on the thing. As I have always said, I am not a fan of take-home or open-book test, they are always way harder than regular tests. But the good news is that after last week, and this week, and the next week, I will have turned a pretty significant corner in totally completing my MBA. My last final is less than a month away, and graduation is a month from tomorrow. Holy crap. Well, gotta go, ERP starts in less than an hour.

Spring break is upon us, which means that I have five weeks left until I have completed my MBA. This is both an exciting, and a terrifying feeling. Exciting for obvious reasons, I am really looking forward to being out of school again. It's terrifying because I still have no post graduate employment lined up. At this point, I have a handful of pretty good prospects, which is encouraging, but ultimately, none of that matters until I sign my name to an offer. More and more my wife is talking to me about having some sort of party and inviting people into town for my graduation, but I told her I am not sure I will be in the mood to party if I don't have a job. She hates this, but I can't help it. The main reason I returned to school was to be able to get a better job than I had coming into the program, and if I don't accomplish that goal, then I don't know how happy I will be on graduation day. Anyway, hopefully I will have a job by then and will be able to fully enjoy graduation, because I will really only get one chance to celebrate my official graduation, and it would be unfortunate to miss out on that because I am unemployed.

I have a haircut appointment this morning. I am a notoriously thrifty individual, so I have always hated getting haircuts. What a waste of money. You get a haircut, then 2 months later you need another one, and so one. In the past, to avoid this expense, I have grown my hair out to my shoulders, had my friends cut my hair in the backyard, and gone to really cheap haircut places. Well, those days are over. Long hair in the business world isn't ideal, and I have had one too many really terrible haircuts from backyard and discount barbers. So these days, I am spending more on haircuts than I ever have in my life, and I actually don't mind it. The peace of mind I get from going to someone that actually knows how to cut hair is worth the extra money. Plus, the quality of the haircuts is far improved.

Anyway, I need to get my day started, I have to finish my course project for finance today, and it might take a while.

Traveling Woes

I traveled for an interview this week. The interview was in New Jersey and consisted of two days of activity. I was apart of a group of about 15 candidates, 8 of us from the University of Arkansas, and the rest from various schools on the east coast. The first night in New Jersey we had dinner as a big group. They had employees of the company sitting at the table with us discussing various aspects of the company. It was an interesting way to really understand what a company is all about. They were really honest about their company culture and its impact on its employees. The next morning, we had an all day assessment which consisted of a couple group activities, an interview and a case competition. All in all, the whole experience was kind of fun. That was the good part.

The very, very bad part of the trip were all the traveling woes I experienced. Before this trip, I had never had any problems traveling by plane, but that all changed. Our intital flight from XNA was canceled, which by the time we got that figured out, we eventually ended up in Jersey 2.5 hours past our originally scheduled time, leaving me very little time to get ready for the dinner that night. We got back to the hotel from dinner pretty late, and had to get up very early. It was a constant time crunch.

On our journey home, in the Memphis airport I finally got a chance to relax and little, and was really looking forward to getting home. Well, our gate was changed, twice, and we had to walk clear across the airport (which was no good for me, I had just had the biggest plate of BBQ nachos ever). Once at the new gate, we found out that 20 of the 55 passengers weren't going to be on the new flight, luckily I was one of them. About 20 minutes after that, they announce that the flight is canceled altogether. Now, we are stuck in Memphis at 8:30pm, plus I have to be in Fayetteville in the morning, no exceptions. I only had one choice, rent a car, and drive the 5 hours to Fayetteville, which is what I and another candidate did. I got home around 2:30am, and from all the traveling and interviewing, etc, I was totally and utterly exhausted. It was a really, really long couple days. But, I should find out about the job pretty soon. Fingers crossed.

Had a very restful weekend, which is good because I am about to have a long week. I've got a big interview Tuesday, and I start a new internship Wednesday. I am really looking forward to the internship because it will be the first time since I quit my job to enter the MBA program that I will actually have some real work to do. It will definitely be a refreshing change from school work, even though it will drastically cut down my free time. In preparation for the internship, I taught myself how to iron. Google knows all.

NCAA brackets were just released and I already have a rough draft. First run through I had three teams from the Big 12 in the final four, and I don't even like that conference. I had to make some adjustments, now I have 2 teams from the Big 12 and 2 from the Big East, but I have Kansas all the way. I will make some further adjustments over the next couple days as ESPN analysts sway my picks, but Kansas will stay my winner. Not that I like Kansas, but they are freaking real good.

We have a really late spring break this year. My sister goes to Missouri State, and they are on their spring break right now. We won't be on spring break until the week after next. Meaning, once we get back, there will only be like 5 weeks of school left. That's crazy. Anyway, much like last year, I have zero plans, and also much like last year I will probably spend some portion of spring break working on my course project for Dr. Jandik's finance class. Last year it was corporate finance, and we had to calculate WACC for a multi-segment firm. This year, in advanced corporate finance, we have to value a firm's stock using a DCF model and a comparables model. It is actually pretty cool stuff.

Midterms are over, although this semester has been the easiest I have had since starting the program. Of 4 classes, I only had one test. First semester I had four tests.

May 8th is the official graduation day meaning someday before that I will have officially completed all requirements to earn an MBA. That "someday" is less than two months away. I can't wait.

Strategy test tomorrow. Time for blogging is thus reserved for breaks between studying. The test is partially open note, which I am not a big fan of. I have found that when teachers allow for open book tests, the tests end up being way harder than they would have been had it not been open book. The hardest tests I have encountered in the MBA program were logistics exams first semester, and they were open note tests. Anyway, I've got class tonight until 9 so I need to get back to these strategy notes.