Plans A,B, and C

I've left this blog to lag a little because of the time of year. My boyfriend's grandmother died the day that we left to visit his family in San Antonio, so that trip included the funeral. Then the new Star Wars MMO came out, so I had to play that for all its worth given that I won't be able to once school starts again. THEN my mother came in from Australia last Tuesday so I've been spending a lot of time with her. We just had a conversation about my school experiences and a lot of stuff, but I wanted to type down some tidbits and revelations.

I woke this morning at 6.00 AM in a slight panic because I realized that tomorrow is the 1st of January. Deloitte interviews were on January 20th. That meant I had 20 days to get as prepared for case interviews, as well as behaviour interviews, as I need to be. I have a tendency to leave things last minute or try to wing stuff - but not this time. While in bed, staring at the ceiling waiting for the alarm to go off, I began to plan my course of action I need to take between now and the start of school - not just for interviews but for the general internship search.

Allow for a digression: I believe I mentioned this earlier, but I have a Plan A, B, and C when it came to internships. Plan A is consulting with one of the big consulting firms. I chose this as Plan A because a) it's a very competitive process where very few internships are available to a large number of people wanting to do consulting b) I want to really try it out and see if I enjoy the lifestyle and the challenges and c) it's probably the most versatile internship I could get - the skills in this internship could translate nicely across other functions should I so desire. A kind of catch-all. Plan B and C are closely intertwined because of the opportunities. Plan B is internal consulting, for similar to reason c) above. The reason it's B and not C is because one of the opportunities I'd like to really take advantage of is internal consulting in a high tech firm. This relates to Plan C: Project/Product Manager in a High Tech firm. This is Plan C ONLY because a lot of the recruiting happens after January - consulting wraps up in early February.

Next week, I'll be going on the West Coast trek to visit companies in Seattle and the Bay Area for my Plan C. However, I still need a lot of work for Plan A.

Sitting right beside me is a poorly-bound "Case In Point." I'm reading through the case discussions and drawing my own frameworks and such. I plan on getting mum to give me a couple of cases, and I'm trying to enlist some friends to do so over Skype and when we're on the West Coast for the trek.

But then mum brought up an interesting point when we were talking about the values of networking and how women don't ask for help - I should ask for help. From alums. At the firms.

I'm a typical woman in this regard - I get nervous asking for help, like I'm inconveniencing someone or that I'm going to damage the relationship. But being on the other side lately - I get emails from prospectives all the time - I don't think it's a bad thing to be asked for help. I actually feel regret that I can't help sometimes.

So once this is written, I'm going to compose some emails out to the alums I've networked with and see if I can get some time on their schedule to go through a case :)