The End Is Near!

End times are near.

The end of my MBA, of course!  It’s with mixed feelings that I look at the calendar and see that in just two and a half months I’ll be graduating form NYU Stern with my degree.  Then I have about a month before beginning work–so there is time for me to take a little bit of a rest before the next phase in my life!

In the meantime, the MBA2s are starting to get involved with more and more activities on campus–especially as the weather improves.  Beer blasts (our Thursday night on-campus social get-togethers and weekend kickoffs) are getting more crowded; so are club happy hours and events near campus in the village.  Most exciting of all is that our student leadership has been planning a class-wide senior trip for our last weekend here in May; this year, they are leading a trip to Puerto Rico, and all MBA2s are welcome to join.

I have never been to Puerto Rico, so I’m looking forward to a cool new experience with my Stern friends–a  proper send off after two years of really great times (and a decent amount of homework).  The pictures of the city look beautiful:

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Meanwhile, we also have spring break coming up–which is a week off in March.  It’s nice to have a few days to just relax in NYC–though some of my classmates are using the week to travel (I know someone going to Australia–pretty ambitious for just a week off)!

One of the great things about business school, if you couldn’t tell, is that there is a good amount of time off.  When we are in classes it is very busy, make no mistake–but having the “students’ schedule” is a huge benefit of the full-time program here.

Anyway, I guess it is best to travel now, as soon enough we’ll be working pretty long hours as we transition from full-time student to full-time employees.

But, you know, pay checks are good too.

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Ellen DeGeneres, is that you?

IMG_3170Happy 2015 everyone! Second semester classes started last week and the winter break seems like a far off memory. However, before my life gets taken over by Corporate Finance, I wanted to share with you guys a cool trip that I participated in last month. I traveled to Los Angeles with the Stern Entertainment Media and Technology Association (EMTA) to check out some of the top media companies and movie studios. It was a great chance to visit these companies in person and receive their corporate presentations. We also got to submit our resume to every company that we visited, so it was a fun and productive trip for those of us interested in pursuing the entertainment business. A snapshot of our trek:

Day 1: Visited NBCUniversal, Netflix, Dreamworks
Day 2: Warner Brothers, BMG Chrysalis, Lionsgate
Day 3: Walt Disney Company, Paramount Pictures

10885230_10100136969678580_5060116032023621507_nSome of these corporate presentations were multi-school events, so we saw a lot of other business school students there (from Wharton to Kellogg to UCLA Anderson). Some of the events were Stern only (Netflix, Dreamworks, Paramount). The Stern-only events were my favorite because they were an amazing opportunity to hear about the company in a more intimate setting. During the corporate presentations, the companies introduced their MBA Summer Internship opportunities and how their application process works.

As I mentioned in my earlier posts, I chose to attend NYU Stern for their world-famous entertainment business program. Going on this Los Angeles trek did not disappoint. If anything, the exposure Stern gives its students to the entertainment industry has exceeded my expectations. Cross your fingers for me as I progress on my summer internship recruiting journey!

Here is the official video of our trip: NYU Stern LA Trek Jan 2015

EMTA LA Trek

Above: The Stern group at Paramount Pictures!

 

A Few of My Favorite Things…

Now that I am in my last semester at Stern, I have started to reflect on what I really love about being the school. The following are a few of the reasons I’m so excited to walk into the Kaufman Management Center every day and am always proud to tell people I go to Stern:

  • My friends: I have made fantastic friends at Stern. I have found people to connect with through various facets of my life – friends who also used to live in DC, friends who like to do yoga, friends who are excited to travel, etc. We have brunch together regularly, go to each other’s conferences and shows, and travel together. I’m now even living with one!
  • The community: From the moment I walked into Stern as a prospective student in July 2012, I knew I wanted to be part of the Stern community. I have found community in several places – from my first-year block and the Social Enterprise Association to the friends I share a Class Pass calendar with. I love being able to walk into Beer Blast* on Thursday night and know that I could talk to and find a commonality with almost everyone in the room.
  • The faculty: My professors at Stern keep getting better and better. They keep classes lively and engaging through their humor and real life anecdotes. A few of my favorite professors include Glenn Okun for entrepreneurship and management, Diane Lennard for communications, and Bill Silber for finance. Moreover, I’m confident that I could contact any of them during my career and they would be willing to help or offer sage advice.
  • The opportunities: I just found out that one of my good friends is in the United Arab Emirates for the week, facilitated and funded by the school. Through the Stern Signature Projects, she and a group of Stern students are working on a strategy and business plan for the country’s first national park. No big deal. It is these types of opportunities that continuously astound me. Over the past 18 months, my friends have traveled to Singapore to present at a conference on women in business and to Paris to attend a conference on the sharing economy. Opportunities such as these are countless at Stern.

This list well captures how fun and special it has been to be part of Stern for the past year and a half. It certainly makes me glad that I have a few more months left to take advantage of it all.

*Beer Blast is a weekly social event for full- and part- time students. Think of a more mature and elegant college party.

How Was Break?

“How was break?”

It’s a chorus of the same question here at Stern, just one week back to classes after a month long break, with MBA2s eager to catch up over coffee, beer, and finance problem sets.  The answer is always somehow the same: a lot of fun, too little sleep, and much needed rest and relaxation.

The MBA1s had a bit of a different break, as many of them stay on campus both to prep for, and participate in, on-campus interviews.  That is anything but R&R, I know from experience, but worthwhile–even if you don’t end up with a summer internship when the smoke clears in February.  The reason is that the iterative process of mock interviews, research, and preparation is exactly what it takes to land the job you WILL get…whether it’s in January, February or later in the semester.  Practice makes perfect, as they say, and at business school it is no different.

For the MBA2s, though, Winter Break meant Thailand, Cancun, and Caracas.  It meant mai-tais in Malaysia, trips to see grandma in Orlando, or (for a wise few), some NYC apartment hibernation with a Netflix subscription and little else.  There are definitely worse ways to spend one’s break.

For me, I went to California, where my sister’s family is and where my parents spend the winter.  It was certainly nice to get some sun, fresh air, and avocadoes (is it just me or do Californians put avocadoes on everything?)  Then I switched gears dramatically, went to New Hampshire to go camping a few days.  It was a true whirlwind, but a good “productive vacation” if that’s not too much of an oxymoron.  I got back just before the semester began.

Thus, it’s taken a few days to “get back in the swing of things” — though I already have a good amount of homework to do!  Night classes start this week and then we are back to a full schedule — so pretty quickly people get back to the “b-school groove”.  It’s definitely nice to see all my friends and colleagues again.

Yes, so it’s a little cold, a little snowy, a little dreary.  And many of us do miss the tropical paradises we visited over vacation; still, NYC in the winter has its charms.  It’s a magical, beautiful city when covered in snow.

Winter, you’re alright.  Just don’t stay long.

 

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nyc-in-the-winter

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winter Break, Anyone?

Last week was technically the first week of the Spring semester. Stern gives us 6 weeks of winter break! Which I know is amazing, but REALLY it depends on what you are recruiting for, when you are a 1st year MBA. You see, most of the interviews for Banking, Consulting, and Marketing summer internships happen during the month of January. This is the usually the end of Fall Recruitment, the final push. Therefore, the MBA1s recruiting in these industries usually come back on campus the 1st and 2nd week of January. This period is great as it gives us time to only focus on interviews – without having to worry about classes, midterms or group assignments.

Once again the Stern Community pulled through.  Bootcamps, behavioral and casing preps were organized by the Management Consulting Association (MCA), the Graduate Marketing Association (GMA), and the Graduate Finance Association (GFA) to prep their members.  The Office of Career Development (OCD) was open and ready to help us. For example, the MCA created a spreadsheet that allowed us to sign up for casing prep with other MBA1s that were going through the process.  From Montreal, where I was spending the break with family, I was able to sign up and conduct multiple Skype casing sessions. When I came back on campus, we had rooms that were booked at school and that we could use for more prep. Some MBA2s even volunteered their time to help us, and give us some feedback.

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Recruitment is hard, it is part of the process, and we expect it. However, it can really make you question yourself, your abilities, and the reasons that you came to b-school in the first place. There are quite a few learnings that my peers and I took away, and that I am sure we will keep using the rest of this semester, for full-time recruitment and even later on.  A few that I can think of right now are: knowing yourself and understanding what the different firms are looking for, being open to more options, and more importantly remembering that there are more opportunities out there – and that we are in it for the long haul.  Fall Recruitment is emotionally taxing for everyone that is involved in it. For the ones that get offers, it is finally the time to take a deep breath and enjoy being done (for a while at least). For the ones that don’t make it, it is the time to recover, and keep fighting the battle. Like my father told me: “You will not miss what is meant for you!”.  For all of us, it is time to reflect, and to celebrate the learnings and friendships that were made through the process! But the thing that I am most looking forward to, is having a real winter break next year when I am an MBA2, 6 weeks of “freedom” that I will hopefully use to travel 😉

Have a great week,

Michaella

The End Is Not The End

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END OF SEMESTER!

It’s the end of the semester and weather is turning cold… hence our increased flannel and warmer weather gear.  This photo is of me and my co-tour guide Michelle; we accidentally wore blue plaid the same day for our scheduled tour… which definitely looked planned (it wasn’t, I assure you).

We Graduate Ambassadors are wrapping up our last week of “official” tour-guiding for the year… and although tours will be given in January, many of us won’t resume our regularly scheduled hours until February.  Michelle was a fantastic co-guide (and so were you Joy! — another fellow Graduate Ambassador) so I’ll definitely miss you; I hope my co-guides next semester are as fun.

So, yes, the last week of finals–and then a [very] long break…at least for me.  As an MBA2 who has a job lined up (yay me!), a bit of the pressure is off–so I don’t really need to be around campus throughout January. However, MBA1s and some MBA2s who are still recruiting may have a bit more to do here because a lot of the on-campus recruiting, especially in “traditional” career tracks (banking consulting, CPG marketing), happens over the winter break.

Taking a look back at last January, it was a very different month for me — I was doing “mock madness” with the Graduate Marketing Association (GMA) leading into my interviews.  This was a great couple of days of programming where MBA1s get mentored by more-experience second-years, as they are schooled on the ins-and-outs of interviewing.  They even have a “question bible” available with literally lists of every question anyone has ever been asked in a marketing interview.  It helps you to prepare snappy responses beforehand–taking (a little) of the pressure off during the actual interview.  This is just yet another way the professional clubs, in this case the GMA, helps shepherd you through the job-finding and job-getting process.

So this year, in lieu of recruiting, I’m going to visit my family in California and then take a sweet camping trip in New Hampshire.  I will most likely not have such an extended vacation for a long time after I graduate from business school, so I’m going to make the most of this one.

See you in February– for one more semester of triumphs, tests, and business school shenanigans.  Have the happiest holiday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Last Day of Class

Tuesday December 7th was the last day of class. As I look back on this semester, I realize how quickly time flies.  I cannot believe that technically 25% of my MBA is now almost complete. I am starting to understand the MBA2s that say that 2 years is a really short time, and that we must maximize every moment.  I feel like I just arrived here, yet as I look back a lot has happened in this short period of time.  Here are my top 5 lessons:

  1. I now feel more comfortable reading financial statements.

The first time that I took financial accounting and reporting in my undergrad, I didn’t know what was going on. I just did the mechanics of the class, not really understanding why and what I was doing.  However, after working a couple of years, I can now see the light! While I will never be a pro at Statistics or Firms & Markets (microeconomics), classes are taught in a way that make you understand where they might be applicable to the working world – and that is invaluable.

  1. I know what I don’t want to do with my life – for the moment.

A huge theme that was mentioned during Launch (our introduction to Stern) was “Exploring”. Part of this journey is about embracing the unexpected, connecting and talking with people in ‘random’ fields. But most importantly pushing and questioning yourself, past your usual boundaries. This is obviously not comfortable, and I feel like I have been on a rollercoaster for the past three months. However now, I have some potential careers crossed off my list, I have some that I have added onto my list, and I am curious to see what I will learn next semester.

  1. It gets really busy.

When we started the semester, all the MBA2s kept advising us to enjoy the moment, and not to overcommit to too many things, as we would get really busy.  Of course, we didn’t know what they meant by ‘busy’.  Starting October, we were all suddenly overwhelmed with midterms, corporate presentations, coffee chats, prep sessions – the works. I have always thrived in chaos, but even I had moments where I felt truly overwhelmed. I think that we grow as much from the actual classes, as from the daily decisions that we need to make when it comes to managing our time and commitments.

  1. Take a deep breath.

In all this ‘madness’, it is still very important to take time for ourselves.  There were always more corporate presentations, classes, meetings, and happy hours to go to. However, I think that I learnt how to make the difference between what I needed to get done, and what I wanted to do.  I learnt the value of taking a ‘mental health day’  as my friend puts it, and do nothing work/school related even though I did have more coffee chats to schedule, more thank you notes and emails to send.

  1. We are family.

Throughout all of this, I have understood why Sternies call themselves family. High stress times are usually times where the strongest bonds are either made or broken. As Sternies, we have forged friendships in this last semester that will last us a lifetime. The MBA2s have been super supportive, helping us and guiding us as we maneuver this new unknown. I was privileged to attend the wedding of one of my newest friends, and I felt like I had known her my whole life. If so much can happen in a semester, how much more can we accomplish in 2 years? I cannot wait to see what will happen next year.

Happy Holidays!

Michaella

Top 10 Stern Survival Skills (i.e. Things You WISH You Learned During Launch)

10. There are bars near school outside of White Oak Tavern, Amity Hall, The Half Pint and West 3rd Commons.  Like beer pong and live music?  Go to Wicked Willies.  Like jazz?  The iconic Village Vanguard is right around the corner.

9. The NYU Health Center is literally a 2 minute walk from Stern.  You can book appointments online.  Don’t let your sniffle become pneumonia (and most importantly don’t let it spread to the entire student body).

http://www.nyu.edu/life/safety-health-wellness/student-health-center/make-appointment.html>

8. You can get CHEAP tickets to events in NYC through the NYU Box Office.  Get on the mailing list by visiting NYU’s Ticket Central page.  Matilda anyone?

http://www.nyu.edu/life/resources-and-services/nyu-box-office/ticket-central.html>

7. Your ID gets you into 12 NYC museums for FREE, this includes MOMA.  There is life outside of excel.  Go see some art.

6. Not a fan of the limited selection of salads in Sosnoff?  (OK, we mean the same salad masquerading as different salads).  Morton Williams, right around the corner on LaGuardia and Bleecker, has a killer salad bar (and hot bar) and is open 24 hours a day.  You CAN get a healthy dinner at 1am!

5. You can access amazing information through the Virtual Business Library link on Sternlinks.  These sources are more credible than Wikipedia.  Use them for research papers.  (Mintel is an excellent source of infographics use on Power Point presentations).  So easy a baby could do it.

4. While the restrooms are strategically placed in the same spot on each floor, sometimes Women’s is on the left and Men’s is on the Right…and sometimes it’s reversed.  If you’re visiting a new floor, pause and double check.

3. For those mornings when there’s a line a mile long at the Starbucks across the street and you’re desperate for an “expresso” fix…there is a second Starbucks on Broadway!  AND there’s a Think Coffee on Mercer.  (Also, the word is espresso. Just sayin.)

2. NYU has a bus system.  There are four routes and the schedules are posted online.  There’s a stop on Broadway and you can use your NYU ID card to ride.  Free ride to Union Square!

http://www.nyu.edu/life/travel-and-transportation/university-transportation.html

1. Beer Blast food is scheduled at 6, 7:30, and 9.  If you’re hungry and want more than a crumbled taco shell, hover by the table around these times and be prepared to pounce.

 

What’s In My Bag?

evelyn z bag

Hey everyone! For today’s blog post, I will be taking a cue from some of my favorite YouTube stars and their ever-popular “What’s in My Bag?” series.

For those unfamiliar with this concept, I will be going over what exactly I keep in my bag during school and why.

 

 

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  • Backpack (displayed above): Some students prefer purses, tote bags, briefcases, or messenger bags, but I have 4 classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I have to carry around a lot of books that only a backpack could handle
  • Student ID: Badge to enter school and to access some of the graduate student quiet study lounges
  • Nameplate: Stern will issue these to you on the first day of LAUNCH (orientation) and you should display these in front of you in all of your classes so your professors can call on you by name if they need to
  • Financial calculator: My TI-83 graphing calculator from high school wasn’t cutting it in my Foundations of Finance class when I had to solve for IRR (Internal Rate of Return), so I had to get a financial calculator. Very useful for any type of finance class
  • Pencil case: Self-explanatory (you will rarely use your computer in class)
  • Agenda book: I enjoy keeping a hard copy of my calendar because I’m able to quickly jot down notes or ideas during class
  • Phone charger: a MUST in business school. Your phone will always be on WiFi (roaming in no man’s land between the 2nd and 3rd floor), you’ll be checking your email more times than you’d like to admit, and, before you know it, your battery level will be at 43% and it’s only 9:45am!
  • Quick touch-up bag: A few basic makeup items because you forgot you have a corporate presentation that day and don’t have time to go home to freshen up
  • Wallet: For running down to Sosnoff for a quick coffee between classes, for grabbing lunch with classmates, for paying a club trip fee, etc.
  • Water bottle: What better way to stay hydrated than with your nifty Stern water bottle? (also given out during LAUNCH)
  • Not pictured: Laptop – for all of those networking emails, group projects, and research you’ll be squeezing in between classes.

Fall finals are currently underway for all of us at Stern (where did the semester go??) … Wish me luck!

Social Impact @ Stern

When I entered Stern, I wanted to find a way to balance my business education with my interest in the social sector. After a lot of thought, I decided that I would focus my academic and professional efforts on traditional business while focusing the rest of my energy on socially-focused extracurricular activities. Luckily Stern offers a wide array of options for students interested in shaping their business education for a social mission:

Social Enterprise Association: I am a board member of the Social Enterprise Association (SEA), one of Stern’s largest student clubs. SEA is incredibly active on campus and offers students programming ranging from career development and networking opportunities to spring break treks and social events. SEA’s career development programming covers impact investing, corporate social responsibility, energy/sustainability, international development, social impact consulting, and education. SEA brings professionals in these industries to campus to share their experience and tips for recruiting. On the social side, SEA co-hosts Think Social, Drink Local with the Luxury-Retail Club. TSDL is part-fashion show, part-party, and part-fundraiser and is one of the best social events of the year.

One of my favorite SEA events is the annual NYU Social Innovation Symposium (SIS), a conference co-hosted by Stern, the Wagner School of Public Policy, and the School of Law. I am the chair of the SIS planning committee this year and am working with students from the three schools to plan the event. The conference highlights the potential of business, policy and law to create social change, and is attended by 300 business professionals, social enterprise practitioners, scholars, and students each year.

Board Fellows: I was looking forward to serving as a Board Fellow before I even applied to Stern. Board Fellows places second-year MBAs with a non-profit for the academic year. With the support of an advisor, students conduct a strategic project with the Board of Directors of the non-profit. I am working with one of my classmates to help a small non-profit expand and professionalize their board to support their growth and ambitious goals. Over the course of the year, we will be conducting a skills audit of their current board members, suggesting prototypes for new board members, and developing a recruitment and on-boarding process for new members. We meet each month with our advisor, who has over 15 years of experience in non-profit governance, to discuss our project. I would love to serve on the board of social enterprise after graduation so I’m hoping Board Fellows will be the perfect launching pad to board service.

I have found the social enterprise resources at Stern to be the perfect complement to my business training. As I mentioned in my first blog post, I also participated in the Stern Consulting Corps to help West Elm fulfill their Clinton Global Initiative Commitment. My classmates have also taken advantage of the Social Impact Internship Fund and the Social Innovation & Impact class offerings.