Month: April 2019

It is easy to only write about the applications and social things going on around at school, My Pick 6, travels with friends.  But I wanted to take the time to talk about part of what makes being on campus amazing, the professors and the classes they teach.

Bio: My first spotlight is on Jack Hanlon, an adjunct professor who spends his days heading up retail analytics at Jet.com.  Professor Hanlon taught Retail Strategy & Analytics, a required course for the Fashion & Luxury Program, during the Fall semester. One look through Professor Hanlon’s Bio (Forbes 30 Under 30, Cofounder Kinetic Social) will tell you he is more than qualified to be spending his Tuesday nights with the FLUX crew.

 

The Class: More than anything, Retail Strategy & Analytics taught me how to think differently about retail.  Obviously, I am a shopper, and an avid one, so it is easy to view every problem and case study through the view of how I shop.  I made this mistake almost every class and every class Professor Hanlon showed me a new way to examine it. Should a Midwestern supermarket keep dollar deals? Yes, things will fly off the shelf… right into a deficit that will close them down.  (Don’t you dare separate finance and strategy). Does Best Buy have a chance of surviving Amazon? No way. “You could not pay me to shop at Best Buy” said by me just weeks before I started ordering pick up in store items at Best Buy. He proved me wrong time and time again and it felt good to twist my thinking around in circles until I saw what he was trying to show us.

 

The Difference: Every week we had to write a reflection about the class and our biggest takeaways.  I usually sat after class to write so I wouldn’t forget to turn them in. Without fail Professor Hanlon would check in after class with anyone still sitting to see how we were doing outside of the classroom and how we were learning inside of it.  He was always readily available and giving with his time before and after class to talk through any thoughts we had on a topic. And those reflections I stayed after to write never went unread or unresponded to. Rather, Professor Hanlon wrote a full paragraph back each week to each of us about our reflections.  I never felt like I was doing work just for the sake of work, each item we handed in was read and examined fully.

 

Professor Hanlon pushed us as a class to learn more but always made sure we were sticking with him in and out of class.

During business school there are a million different things pulling you in all different directions, it is up to you where you put your energy, time and dedication.  One of the most common questions I get from perspectives is what club do I join and in what capacity. Don’t get me wrong, I joined everything I could and dove headfirst into being a Graduate Ambassador (GA), a VP of Knowledge Management for LuxRet and an AVP in SISA, and loved all of them.  However if you could only join one activity, it should be a conference committee and let me tell you why.

1. Concrete Deliverable

Everything I am involved in has different rewards, as a GA watching someone I have talked to through all aspects of application finally get accepted makes my heart soar! But with a conference committee, I get to spend a whole day celebrating and showing off the work I did all year.  I worked on the NYU Social Innovation Symposium, mostly on sponsorship and had the chance to plan and host a panel. I have never felt more pride in a snack room than the one I got to fill with my hard work. (Even if I did accidentally drop and smash a carton of glass bottles at the beginning of the day).  Watching a panel I spent months coordinating go off without a hitch made me giddy. Working on a conference team you get to watch all of your efforts unfold in front of you.

2. Close Friends

A conference team is usually a group of 5-10 that plans together for months to make the conference day happen.  That means you have 5-10 people you are spending a crazy amount of time with, usually once a week for months. We became a team quickly, things go wrong during planning, it is inevitable and working together to fix problems under pressure makes you close quickly.  I can’t tell you how happy we all were after the conference closed. It was a great way to meet people and develop close connections naturally.

3. Explore Your Interests

As part of a conference committee, you are planning panels, workshops, keynotes etc.  Each conference is hosted by a club, for me it was SISA, and you can get more specific with panels. This usually means you get to choose a panel, workshop or keynote to take responsibility for and plan.  I hosted a panel on the circular economy in consumer goods which included fashion brands like VICENZI and Eileen Fischer, as well as Toast Ale and Mobley. Planning this panel gave me the opportunity to meet new people and dive deeper into something I was interested in.  I know more about the circular economy and sustainable initiatives after planning than I would have otherwise.

 

If you have to be super selective of where you put your time and how you get involved (which you will in a 1-year program) I highly suggest spending that time on a conference planning committee!

There is limited space for electives in the Fashion & Luxury program so make sure you use it wisely.  For some that might look like focusing on a specific specialization like Sustainability or Finance. For others, it might be taking as many different classes as possible to gain a wide net of knowledge.  I like to keep my classes organized under three categories, one where I struggle, one where I know I’ll succeed, and one to expand my horizons.

Struggle

Over the summer we took the courses business courses like strategy, communications, accounting, and finance. For me, and I am sure for many, it was very clear which classes I struggled with and which classes came easily to me.  It would have been the easy choice to spend the rest of the year picking classes that came easily to me and avoiding the classes I didn’t do well in like the plague. However, I came to business school to learn. Finance was a struggle for me and my lowest grade over the summer.  NYU has grade non-disclosure which prevents students from putting their GPA on their resume or companies from asking for it. Grade non-disclosure means I get to learn more and take the classes that I struggle with without worrying about lowering my GPA. I am taking Valuation right now with a beloved finance professor because I know it will be a challenge that pushes me to learn more in an area I struggle with.  I encourage you to pick just one elective for a subject matter you find difficult. Challenge yourself to get better, or at the very least to learn. I am not going to leave Valuation ready to go into finance, but I will leave it with a more in-depth understanding of what seemed daunting before.

Succeed

For many people, the classes you do best in are also the classes that feel the easiest to you.  This does not mean the course is easy or that you are guaranteed an A, but it does usually mean you will be swimming with the current while doing the homework.  For me, Communications and Leadership were my favorite courses over the summer, I loved public speaking and understanding interpersonal interactions in an organization.  So this semester I am taking Developing Managerial Skills with Dolly Chugh. This has easily been one of my favorite classes during my time at Stern, Dolly is a phenomenal teacher and the course work is fun and engaging to me.  I look forward to doing the reading and am usually a few weeks ahead on work in the syllabus because I love it! Make sure you are taking an elective that you love and plays to your strengths.

Expand

The last category for selecting classes is expanding your knowledge field.  Stern offers full semester courses and half-semester courses. I like to expand with half-semester courses. For me this looks like taking classes on topics I don’t know a ton about and may never use but want to learn more about.  Right now I am taking Digital Disruption and New Media Marketing, each as half-semester courses to expand my field of understanding. Use these credits to expand on something you have always wanted to learn about but may not be directly relevant to you, maybe it is a class in Business & Law, entrepreneurship, or social issues.