I've started to develop a small routine. I'll admit to having my fair share of late nights at Posner Hall; study groups, groupwork, corporate presentations, the odd guest speaker are all reasons for treading the hallowed halls of this establishment. The food stop in the building - the eXchange - isn't that great, and it tends to close very early. What does a student do? Order pizza? Possibly. Go off-campus? No - I'm not relying on the shuttles. Scavenge for all I'm worth? Bingo!
Every lunch session (12.30 - 1.20) and evening session (5:30 - 6:20) has an event that is catered - a club event or a corporate presentation usually. It's very rare that there isn't something on. Normally, there is more food than attendees - any remaining gets "donated" to the Master's Lounge where the students, ever greedy bunch we are, all pounce.
There is almost always a reception after the evening presentation too where appetizers and snack-type food is served, and again, very rare that it's all eaten. So I've found myself noting the clock at about 7pm and then wander down to the Lounge where I just wait until the leftovers come by - then I have dinner for the night.
I can't say it's an ideal situation; I am wheat intolerant and it's rare that there is something offered that doesn't contain wheat. But when you're hungry and cheap, like I am - well, I'll deal with the headache that comes after eating wheat. It's free after all.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
Budgeting Fun
I had an intense conversation (*coughargumentcough*) with my boyfriend the other night about our spending. With the loss of my income, obviously we couldn't live as we had been. However, it was (finally) drawn out of me my thought process about my supposed lack of concern about our spending.
Based upon the estimates of Tepper school, I would be spending about $77,000 a year for the duration of the program (I believe they actually say it's for the 9 months of being at the school, but I chose to push it over 12 because I still need to live when at my internship. Hopefully, the intent is to have a substantial internship income...). This meant that I would graduate from the program with $150,000 in debt, if I did what a lot of people did, which is finance purely through student loans. (In my case, since I paid for the first semester out of pocket, this "debt" was to myself that I have to put back into my savings account). This, to me, was my debt ceiling - I would not get any higher than this. In other words, whatever I had left over from the necessities of bill paying would be our discretionary income to spend on, but only to the total value of 150K at the end of two years.
The MBA degree is a social degree. Sure you need to go to school but unless you don't even turn up, it's very very likely you'll pass the classes. The true value of the program is a) the piece of paper at the end of it and b) the relationships you build in the two years.In a lot of cases, these relationships are built over alcohol and activities outside of school - which require money. Since, in my head, I have a comfortable cushion of discretionary income based upon the above calculations, I was fine with the odd dining out experience; Chris, being unable to mind-read, was not aware of this thought pattern. Heck, I didn't even realise this is what my decision-making was based upon until I had to explain it. But now that he sees where I'm coming from, the next step is to build the "budget" so we know exactly how much discretionary spending we have.
Based upon the estimates of Tepper school, I would be spending about $77,000 a year for the duration of the program (I believe they actually say it's for the 9 months of being at the school, but I chose to push it over 12 because I still need to live when at my internship. Hopefully, the intent is to have a substantial internship income...). This meant that I would graduate from the program with $150,000 in debt, if I did what a lot of people did, which is finance purely through student loans. (In my case, since I paid for the first semester out of pocket, this "debt" was to myself that I have to put back into my savings account). This, to me, was my debt ceiling - I would not get any higher than this. In other words, whatever I had left over from the necessities of bill paying would be our discretionary income to spend on, but only to the total value of 150K at the end of two years.
The MBA degree is a social degree. Sure you need to go to school but unless you don't even turn up, it's very very likely you'll pass the classes. The true value of the program is a) the piece of paper at the end of it and b) the relationships you build in the two years.In a lot of cases, these relationships are built over alcohol and activities outside of school - which require money. Since, in my head, I have a comfortable cushion of discretionary income based upon the above calculations, I was fine with the odd dining out experience; Chris, being unable to mind-read, was not aware of this thought pattern. Heck, I didn't even realise this is what my decision-making was based upon until I had to explain it. But now that he sees where I'm coming from, the next step is to build the "budget" so we know exactly how much discretionary spending we have.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Amazon Case Competition
Last night saw the submission of a slide deck containing our answer to the case competition posed by Amazon. I'm not going to repeat the case, as it appears the 2nd years also had something similar so it may be something that gets passed down.
I believe something like 28 teams signed up for this Tepper 1st-years-only competition. The slide decks are judged by the Business & Technology board members & Amazon, and the four finalists will present their solution/s on Friday after/during/before (?) the Corporate presentation by Amazon. Winners will get an automatic 1st round slot for internship interviews and a Kindle DX.
It was my first case competition ever. We were assigned a 2nd-year mentor.... who couldn't make it to any of our team meetings, so we had to suffice just sending him our notes. His feedback? We hadn't suggested anything ground-breaking - very similar to what other people had suggested in the past. Fine by me - I have no interest in a) working for Amazon or b) a Kindle, since I already have one. But it was a good thing to run though and get an idea of how these things are run..... as well as judge when it's worth my precious precious time to do this type of thing. Time is certainly a premium here. Mid-Terms are next week already!
I believe something like 28 teams signed up for this Tepper 1st-years-only competition. The slide decks are judged by the Business & Technology board members & Amazon, and the four finalists will present their solution/s on Friday after/during/before (?) the Corporate presentation by Amazon. Winners will get an automatic 1st round slot for internship interviews and a Kindle DX.
It was my first case competition ever. We were assigned a 2nd-year mentor.... who couldn't make it to any of our team meetings, so we had to suffice just sending him our notes. His feedback? We hadn't suggested anything ground-breaking - very similar to what other people had suggested in the past. Fine by me - I have no interest in a) working for Amazon or b) a Kindle, since I already have one. But it was a good thing to run though and get an idea of how these things are run..... as well as judge when it's worth my precious precious time to do this type of thing. Time is certainly a premium here. Mid-Terms are next week already!
Saturday, September 10, 2011
First Controversy
The Robber Barons is a Tepper graduate-student written publication that is issued every week (or at least tries to be). From everyone who talks about it, anything can be written and published in it - and the direction normally taken with the publications is usually supposed to be funny. Some hit it. Others tend to miss and fall a little into the nasty territory.
There was an article in the Robber Barons this week that was interpreted as falling into the nasty territory. A first year wrote an article about things that annoyed him and specifically mentioned a fellow classmate (dubbed the "Tiger Mom") who, according to him, was irritating and asked stupid questions in finance presentations and constantly posted articles on the Admitted students Facebook page links to articles that have no interest to him. Said classmate took offense, unFriended him, and subsequently showed a picture of her dog having chewed up the article on the Facebook page.
According to the editors, anyone is fair game to be called out and made fun of in the Robber Barons. When I read the offending article, I had no clue on who it referred to (since I don't go to finance presentations). I had to be clued in on this controversy :)
There was an article in the Robber Barons this week that was interpreted as falling into the nasty territory. A first year wrote an article about things that annoyed him and specifically mentioned a fellow classmate (dubbed the "Tiger Mom") who, according to him, was irritating and asked stupid questions in finance presentations and constantly posted articles on the Admitted students Facebook page links to articles that have no interest to him. Said classmate took offense, unFriended him, and subsequently showed a picture of her dog having chewed up the article on the Facebook page.
According to the editors, anyone is fair game to be called out and made fun of in the Robber Barons. When I read the offending article, I had no clue on who it referred to (since I don't go to finance presentations). I had to be clued in on this controversy :)
Monday, August 29, 2011
Entrepreneurship Bootcamp
This last weekend hosted the Tepper entrepreneurship bootcamp. A bootcamp is supposed to be a "drinking from the firehose" experience related to the subject. It was held at the same time as the two finance bootcamps, so people did have to choose between one or the other. A little surprisingly, attendance at this bootcamp was also charged - to cover speakers and food, apparently.
The camp was very heavily focused on innovation and designing products (and not services oddly). There were a lot of First Years in the camp; a fair amount of the content was directed at how to start up a company and resources available - not really relevant for First Years. Given how tuition is ncreasing, probably not even relevant for when we directly leave the program.
But the good takeaways I got from it was that you don't need to have an idea in order to start your own business. There are apparently more people in the technical side of the campus that have ideas just no business knowledge to push it forward. Second, an innovation panel seemed to state that marketing the product to people was probably the most important thing - there was a very heavy focus on marketing. Third, I met a new faculty member - Dave Mawhinney - and a couple of venture capital lawyers at the mixer on the friday night. I was able to put into practice some of the networking tips Jonna Martin had presented from earlier. I have no interest at the moment in venture capital or starting my own business, but I figured it's useful information to have.
Also, Friday night was my first introduction to Hofbrauhouse, a HUGE german beer pub. Highly recommended.
The camp was very heavily focused on innovation and designing products (and not services oddly). There were a lot of First Years in the camp; a fair amount of the content was directed at how to start up a company and resources available - not really relevant for First Years. Given how tuition is ncreasing, probably not even relevant for when we directly leave the program.
But the good takeaways I got from it was that you don't need to have an idea in order to start your own business. There are apparently more people in the technical side of the campus that have ideas just no business knowledge to push it forward. Second, an innovation panel seemed to state that marketing the product to people was probably the most important thing - there was a very heavy focus on marketing. Third, I met a new faculty member - Dave Mawhinney - and a couple of venture capital lawyers at the mixer on the friday night. I was able to put into practice some of the networking tips Jonna Martin had presented from earlier. I have no interest at the moment in venture capital or starting my own business, but I figured it's useful information to have.
Also, Friday night was my first introduction to Hofbrauhouse, a HUGE german beer pub. Highly recommended.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Tepper Team Day
Photos from the Tepper Team Day and an article were published on the Tepper site.
Mmmm... I wonder who that is sitting on the far left?
Mmmm... I wonder who that is sitting on the far left?
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Welcome!
Welcome to my now-published blog! I have been writing entries for this blog ever since March when I was accepted into Tepper School of Business; only now did I come up with a name and started the process of publishing!
Why am I blogging? When I was doing my initial research into schools, I found blogs of existing students to be very valuable in discovering more about the school. But I didn't find any recent or current blogs on Tepper. So I want to share my experiences at Tepper to those who are interested in attending this fine school :)
A little about me: I come from a business background, a bit of a rarity in this class as many are engineers or IT professionals, and I previously worked for an oil refiner in a couple of roles.
I will try to update the blog once a week; elsewise Twitter will be the source of most updates so find me and follow.
Why am I blogging? When I was doing my initial research into schools, I found blogs of existing students to be very valuable in discovering more about the school. But I didn't find any recent or current blogs on Tepper. So I want to share my experiences at Tepper to those who are interested in attending this fine school :)
A little about me: I come from a business background, a bit of a rarity in this class as many are engineers or IT professionals, and I previously worked for an oil refiner in a couple of roles.
I will try to update the blog once a week; elsewise Twitter will be the source of most updates so find me and follow.
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