No dice...

Just got my first "ding" in the quest for a summer internship. Merrill Lynch gave me the no go. The recruiter said she got positive feedback from everyone but they found people from their target schools to fill the holes.

This week is our first break of the semester. For some reason we have two whole weeks off. I'm going to be doing some cleaning around the house and I'm going to catch up on textbook reading that had fallen by the wayside as I focused on finishing problem sets and projects of various types.

I'm off to vacuum!

Damned late class

I got the call from Merrill while I was in class, by the time I got out and could call back the recruiter was gone, and she will not return until Friday. So I know some sort of decision has been made but not what it is.

Whatcha gonna do?

Ops management is a lot of work

We are working on the National Cranberry Cooperative case (HBS) and it's been very difficult to get a grasp on so far. Every time we think we have determined the base case we come up with something we missed. At some point we're going to have to make some assumptions and move on, but everything seems fairly significant so it is difficult.

Welcome to business school as I thought it would be!

A bear...

This semester is proving to require a lot more work than last. This is not unexpected given my courseload but the reality of it can be jarring at time.

Monday is my busiest day as I have four classes. This Monday I have a deliverable of some sort or other due in every single one of them. Our corporate finance case was finished this afternoon. The five hours we spent on Ops. Management was just the tip of the iceberg, unfortunately. I finished a chunk of that case just now but we still have several hours of work left to put together costs with process flow.

The accounting case isn't all that hard but it is tedious. And in Marketing we have a quick presentation to introduce our semester project. Which we haven't really decided on as of yet.

I am also doing an internship at a local venture capital firm one day a week for the semester. Some of it is generic office work but much of it is market research and creating models for companies that are potential investments.

And the final bit of good news. At Brandeis we are required to have international experience to graduate. That means either having worked overseas for 3 months or lived overseas for at least six months. As I have done neither (though I love to travel and have done quite a bit of it) I will need to spend the fall 2006 semester overseas.

I love Europe and could have been very happy spending my semester there. On the other hand I've always been fascinated by Asia and Japan in particular and I have never been to that part of the world. Given that I decided to apply to two schools in Tokyo; Keio and Waseda Universities. I just found out Friday that I will be going to Waseda. The group of people headed to Tokyo with me are fantastic and include an American who has lived in Japan before and speaks fluent Japanese. I don't plan to use that as a crutch but it will prove helpful in exploring Japan.

My friend David will be going to Seoul, Korea and I have other friends headed to Beijing. Both are pretty close to Tokyo so plans are in the works to visit. I'd also love to visit Hong Kong and Shanghai, so hopefully funds will be available for that.

I am waiting to hear from Merrill Lynch regarding a third-round trip to New York. I should hear something next week and will hopefully be able to land a solid internship to help bank some funds for the trip!

That's all for now.