midterm madness

IE doesn't have a set mid-term week. In fact, I've only had one actual mid-term exam this past week. However, in these two weeks we have a number of major projects to hand in, so it feels like mid-terms, and that's what we're all calling this hectic period. It means a multiplication of group meetings that have spilt over into the weekend. It means even more need for excellent time management skills. My peer Miguel has written about this in his blog this week, click here for the post. 

While the time pressure has mounted, and the anxiety about grades has become a little more real, what I'm starting to take away from this process of finishing big group projects is a sense of having learned something. I'm trying to apply the frameworks we've used to analyze other cases; I'm thinking about our business plan for the entrepreneurial management class in a completely different light than I did at the beginning of the term thanks to material I've learned in all my classes, particularly marketing; I'm gaining confidence in some of my newly learned financial and quantitative analysis skills. But, I'm also increasingly struggling to retain additional information as we are starting to delve into the nitty gritty of financial accounting. As my classmate who sits next to me said this week "I'm saturated." What am I going to do about that? Go buy some flashcards. When it's tricky and detailed, I need to start memorizing certain facts so that I avoid getting lost when we're looking at complicated issues. 

Time management fairy is telling me my time is up to blog! Back to accounting!

and term 1 (our lives with homework) begins

Since term 1 has started (this past Monday), I've slept a total of probably 17 hours in 4 nights. The excitement and newness is keeping me from getting stressed out, but adjusting to life again with school (vs. work) homework is a process! LOTS of reading.... for all seven of my term 1 core classes: Managerial Economics, Marketing Fundamentals, Entrepreneurial Management, Organizational Behavior, Information Systems, and the numbers classes as I'm calling them (even though all the classes involve numbers), Quantitative Analysis and Financial Accounting. 

I can't say which is my favorite yet (we just started!), but I'm pretty sure I will learn a great deal from all of them. I'm looking forward to getting to know my group mates better, to writing a business plan, to being able to develop strategy using tools I could never have understood before like income statements or human resources frameworks, and to learning - I like being smart!

I think where I'll have to concentrate on managing my stress, more so than with schoolwork, is the job search. It's hard not to compare yourself to others. And, even though Career Services and the students from the previous intakes make you feel positive, like the opportunities are out there and you just have to grab them, internship and job applications add a whole new layer of homework. My short-term strategy: 1. Keep meeting new people. They keep telling us to network for a reason - every day I feel like I meet someone new who worked for a consulting firm or company I'm interested in. 2. Get a million emails sent! This weekend. Now I need to follow up with these people I've met, and with all the Georgetown and IE alums available to me online via alumni databases. Another recurring piece of advice I've heard over and over again at my short time at IE is to ask good questions. If I ever get any of these informational interviews, they'll be my first chance to ask some of those excellent questions to figure out what company fits me...

The during-the-week partying has definitely died down, although tonight I attended a big, important party - Thanksgiving! Ingredient shopping, cooking, and ticket sales took up a bit of my reading time this first week, but I love this holiday, so it was definitely worth it. Two out of the three previous years I was living in Torino, I brought the Thanksgiving experience to my co-workers in Italy. That involved pie baking the weekend before, planning out each night what I could cook ahead of time and where I could store everything in the fridge, reserving at the local butcher shop a turkey (because they had to go out an hunt me one, not a typical thing to sell/buy whole Turkeys in Italy), and taking Thursday off work to complete the masterpiece. Last year in Torino and this year in Madrid I collaborated with a group effort - much more fun, and fewer dishes to cook! This year, I am thankful for many things - the health of everyone in my family, the support of my boyfriend, but most of all, for having had the sense to choose this great 13 month experience at IE and to have met some pretty cool people so far. 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!