Swiss Miss...
Well the weeks are flying by with barely a moment to devote to the ever-important blog...I mean, who should worry about Global Marketing papers, Strategy exams, or consulting projects when you can BLOG instead??!! ;)
Seriously though, many happenings have occurred recently that I shall have to write about soon. After turning our Herne Lodge (our college-owned house of 7 roommates) into the 'Herne Lodge B&B' 3 times in one month, I am tired of washing and drying sheets and towels! So much for my dreams of one day running a B&B in Tuscany or something. My boyfriend's parents came to visit, my college roommate came to visit, and then my parents came to visit. We got many comments from our classmates of 'oh, have you seen the new movie Meet the Fockers? Meet the Parents??'
This week we began our 4-week MCP- major consulting project. This provides an opportunity to consult with a business full-time for a month, and the options were extremely diverse and worldwide. We needed to form ourselves into teams of 5, and decide upon a project, which may interest you for reasons such as career prospects, area of interest, or even location. Classmates are now as widespread as Venezuela, Japan, China, Dubai, Australia, France and Germany. And quite a few still in Cambridge or London. Our project is for ABB, at their headquarters in Zurich. We've begun research this week in Cambridge, then go to Zurich next week, back to Cam, then back to Zurich for the final week. Swiss chocolate anyone?
more soon.
Saucy textbooks
Well I always seem to stumble across the sauciest little comments within my MBA textbooks.... after my Finance book telling me I might need to drink after completing a particularly difficult chapter back in January, this is what I stumbled upon while studying for the next round of exams:
In my Strategy book (Contemporary Strategy Analysis, Robert M. Grant, 5th edition, pg 465), in the chapter summary after discussing diversification strategies:
"Diversification is like sex: its attractions are obvious, often irresistible, yet the experience is often disappointing".HELLO! apologies, Mr. Grant, for your lackluster sex life! I suppose he does not have high expectations of the romantic interludes of the average MBA student struggling through finance and accounting classes and joking about NPV.....
more soon after exams!
Always
Our global marketing class features cases presented by a student group every week, complete with beautifully-designed powerpoint presentations and suggested marketing solutions. As some of the products were quite interesting, there has been a trend in bringing in product samples. We did a case on MontGras winery, and so brought in wine for tasting in the class. Did I mention the Heineken case, where the team brought a beer for every class member? And how at 10:30am, if you glanced around the classroom, you saw every class member with a green heineken bottle in front of them, complete with the prof taking a swig! Quite amusing.
Well the finale was a group of guys (ok and one girl) doing a case on Always in Russia. If you dont know what type of product Always is, you won't understand the amusement at many of the macho guys getting up there and describing marketing this product. Anyway a highlight was towards the end when our classmate pulled out a sample, poured blue liquid on it a la the commercials, put it on a chair and asked the professor to sit down on it!!! Classic moment. We all cringed but the guy did it....and to the credit of P&G's product, he remained completely dry. Needless to say the prof was amazed.
Never a dull moment.
