Taking Multidisciplinary Action (Week 1)

This term in the good old b-school we are taking multidisciplinary action. We have all been assigned projects at companies around the world and this week we had our project kick off, met all of our faculty advisers and other support personnel, started drawing up our letter of engagement and team charter, assigned project roles and started doing research. My team is assigned to Masco RCG and so we headed off to IKEA, Home Depot and Lowe's to learn about how kitchens are designed and cabinets are ordered. I fell in love with a kitchen in IKEA. Chocolate cabinets with modern lines and white quartz counter tops. It is a deep and abiding love that will one day result in my being the proud owner of such a kitchen. I picked this project because I LOVE cabinets and logistics in manufacturing organizations. Love, love, love. The next month and a half have the potential to be brilliant. The picture at the start of the post is of one of my teammates, Sang Hee, during her first ever trip to a home improvement warehouse. After cost accounting she (and the rest of the MBA1s for that matter) has a special space in her heart for John Deere.

Spring Break

At the beginning of February I indulged myself in fantasies of secluded Mexican beaches, trips to Hawaii, the possibility of South America, and adventures in Spain and then I got the call that I had been selected for final round interviews at BASF in Florham Park, NJ. Those dreams faded and were replaced with the reality of spending at least some of my spring break in New Jersey being interviewed for a summer internship position. I readjusted my plans and decided to stay in the region and visit friends and family that I don't get to see as often as I would like as well as cities that I love and have not visited in years. 

After my interviews I met up with my mom in NYC. We spent a few days together going to restaurants, the ballet, shopping and MOMA (the picture at the left is Joan Miro's The Birth of the World... I like it). 

We were also able to meet up with Maria for lunch at a tasty noodle bar. 

On Thursday I boarded a train to DC and I have to say, I quite enjoy traveling by train. The seats are more comfortable, there's more space in the overhead compartment so you don't have to shove all your stuff in there, there's lots to look at during the trip and phone conversations that should really be held in private to eavesdrop on. You see what I mean? Quite enjoyable.

In DC I got to spend time with my sisters. The one thing I really wanted to do while there was visit the Newseum. As I think I may have mentioned before, I LOVE the news. Just love it. I've wanted to go to the Newseum since it opened. 

They have a section of the Berlin wall there as well as the antenna from the top of the world trade center not to mention endless exhibits on, well, news and the journalists that make it all happen. Abi and I spent several hours there and could have spent much much more time looking at everything. I nearly bought a "news junkie" t-shirt. It felt appropriate but I really never wear t-shirts so I didn't buy it. After the Newseum we went to Curry Fest 2009 and all I have to say is tasty. I really like curry. In fact, I don't think I've ever had a curry I didn't like.

Now I am back in Ann Arbor getting my apartment in order after a very busy term and taking advantage of a few days of down time to get caught up on several things I let go by the wayside over the past couple of months. Soon I'll be heading off on my next great adventure, the Multidisciplinary Action Project. Very exciting stuff.  

Culturefication

I’m a little slow in posting this but, you see, there really hasn’t been time. So, dear readers, I ask that you rewind your brains to Valentine’s day weekend and the days leading up to it. For all of the MBAs here at the RSB this meant that finals were fast approaching, we were getting several emails a day congratulating the new leadership of clubs that we are not members of and getting stir crazy – ready to get out of Ann Arbor and hopefully to somewhere warm and sunny. I went to New Jersey – something I will tell you about in another post. Along with all of the generic goings on I also had the opportunity to attend two concerts in the Hill Auditorium with some of my sectionmates. First up was a group called Sweet Honey in the Rock. While they are very good musicians and I found their music uplifting and inspiring, I found them to be overly political for my taste. I mean, I’m jazzed that Obama is the president but I don’t feel the need to turn every conversation into an opportunity to sing his praises. Next up was Kodo, the Japanese drumming group. Going into this concert I have to admit that I was less than excited. I don’t really like loud sounds. I think that this has something to do with the number of ear infections I had as a child, my ability to actually feel my eardrums moving (or at least I think I can… I wonder if I am alone in this sensation or if other people feel it too) and my paranoia that they are going to burst again. Something that most people don’t know about me is that I am hyper vigilant about my ear health. Now that I got that off my chest, back to Kodo. The concert was the day before valentine’s day and clearly prime date night. The problem? I went with a classmate of mine who is engaged. We’re friends and all but it was a little awkward especially because we ran into several people we know. We also just met in our seats and parted ways right after the concert. In that way it was like sitting next to a stranger except we aren’t strangers. Aside from the awkwardness and the loud noises I have to say I LOVED IT and I would totally go again. The drummers were amazing and the music was moving, soothing and exciting all at the same time. If you have the opportunity to see them I highly ask that you seize it.

Aside to Hill Auditorium: Only people that are 5’2” could possibly fit in those chairs. Do us all a favor – remodel and get yourself some legroom.

What does this say about me?

One of my friends posted this on her blog (apparently the BBC has speculated that most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books in this list) and I thought it was interesting because as I was scanning down the list I noticed that I had read more than six of these books by the time I was 13. Additional proof that I attended some seriously fantastic schools. I've also read some crazy things like Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in Middle English. What does your list look like and what does that say about you? 

Key:

x - I've read it

+ - I love it

* - I plan on reading it

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x+

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien x

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling x+

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee x

6 The Bible x+

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman *

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens x

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott x

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare x

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier x

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien x

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger x

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell x

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy x

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams x+

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh *

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky *

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck x

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame x

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy *

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewisx +

34 Emma - Jane Austen x

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen x

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis x+

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden 

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne x

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown x

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez *

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery x

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood 

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding x

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan 

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel *

52 Dune - Frank Herbert x

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen x

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens x

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley x+

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck x+

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville x+

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens 

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker x+

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett x

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce x+

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath x

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens x

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker 

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro *

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle x

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery x

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams 

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas x

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare x

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo x

A Magical Place

This is a magical place we at the Ross School of Business like to call the "Winter Garden"... never mind that we like to call it that because that is what we have been told it is called. Oddly enough there are no plants. Can a place be a garden if there are no plants? Just one of the profound questions I ponder while sitting here (which I am doing right now... the sitting, not the pondering). Shockingly enough I know many of the people in this picture. For example, the red head with her feet up on the table... I've never talked to her but she is friends with the girl who picked up my blackberry and returned it to me when I dropped it in a lecture hall after hours in the school of education a few months ago so I have to like her plus she always wears scarves and I like scarves. But we were talking about the winter garden. It is our main common space in the new building, the cafeteria is there and there are plugs in the tables so it pretty much satisfies all the needs of your average MBA. Food, power for your laptop and lots of people like you to talk to about things you are mutually interested in - like how to make money and/or get an internship. I really like sitting here. The chairs are comfortable and the ceiling is made of glass which makes it feel like you are outside even when you are desperately trying to avoid ever being outside. I like it so much that I spend all my non-class time here which nets out to several hours a day. Basically what I'm saying is that if you ever need to find me this is where you should look because it is probably where I am. Thank you and goodnight.

Oh How Far I've Come

This week I've been thinking a lot about the past year and everything that has happened. I know that this is something that most people do around New Year's but, you see, something happened a year ago today that I think may have changed my life forever. A year ago I interviewed for the Michigan MBA program. In the year since that day I have waited patiently for Michigan to make up its mind about me, accepted a place at Boston College, left my job in the middle of a recession, went skydiving, got accepted at Michigan, changed all of my plans, started the whole MBA thing, had my apartment building burn down, moved again, and on and on and on. That brings us to today. Today was an uncanny repeat of this day a year ago. I had an interview with Apple and I think it went well but I can never really tell and then tonight I went bowling. Bowling is not spectacular in and of itself but as I was getting out of the car I realized that exactly one year ago I went bowling in the same bowling alley. It was like reliving the same day one year later and now as I get ready to turn in for the night I am amazed at how much has happened, how far I've come and how some things are strangely the same. The question is, will today prove to have been as life altering as that day one year ago?

Treat yourself right

Sometimes life gets away from me. I get so wrapped up in the day to day things that I have to get done (mainly schoolwork) that I neglect myself and the things that make me happy. Last night I took a step back and did somethings that I don't usually get around to. I stopped at Wholefoods on my way home from school to get some top quality ingredients for dinner. By the way... I don't think that I've been to the grocery store all month and I certainly haven't made dinner since winter break. Do you see what I mean about not doing things for myself? Anyway. I am a huge fan of the food network and all the time I have spent watching other people cook has given me the confidence to just sort of throw things together that sound good. Last night it was bow tie pasta with pancetta, salmon, artichokes and fresh parsley not to mention some really good bread. Whenever I do take the time to cook I remember how much I love cooking. It is a deep love that probably won't end until I have kids that hate everything I cook and that will ruin cooking for me but then again maybe I'll get lucky. 

While at Wholefoods I also picked up some tulips. I love flowers. Back in Evanston I was a frequent customer at the farmers' market where I would get flowers for myself nearly every week throughout the summer. It was a simple indulgence but one that brought me joy every week. Last night I put the tulips on my bedside table and when I woke up this morning they were the first thing I saw. There really is no better way to start the day that by looking at something beautiful. 

So friends, get out there and do something that makes you happy.