This is your brain. This is your brain during finals.

It's finals time and I am tired. I took my finance final yesterday afternoon and operations was this morning at 7 am. So that lack of brain power left today has reduced me to random internet surfing and quiz taking. And this is one of the "gems" I ran across today.

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Free Online Dating from JustSayHi

I promise I will post something of substance next week...my "key takeaways" from my first semester of B-school, if you will. But I have two more finals left (marketing and communications...you know who you are) and then I'm having my wisdom teeth out on Friday. Ouch. So it will just have to wait until I regain consciousness sometime this weekend.

Until then, how many 5 year olds could you take on?

Procrastination

When my brother sent this to me, I literally laughed out loud. It pretty much perfectly describes the process I go through every time I sit down to do homework. Being in B-school has taught me to fight the urge to put off my homework until the last possible second.... but I still mentally fight with myself every single time. Hopefully that fight will get less and less as time goes on. :)

Merry MBA Chrismas

So last weekend our dear friend Marci invited a bunch of us to her house in Midway, Utah for a little fun. Although the first large snowstorm of the year hit earlier in the day, we did not let a few flurries deter us from some sorely needed time away from Provo.

We had dinner, drank yummy hot chocolate, laughed, sang, and enjoyed the break from our studies. But the highlight of the evening was going to the 9th annual Interfaith Creche Exhibit. It was amazing to see more than 900 nativities from all over the world. So in the spirit of the activity, we took the opportunity to make our own nativity. See the final product below.

Rise and shout the Cougars are out...

Last Saturday was the biggest game of the year here in Utah. The BYU-Utah game was incredible and fortunately was here in P-Town. So thanks to my All Sports Pass I had tickets to the game and they were good seats: south end zone, 12th row!

I could tell you about all the highs and lows but since a picture is worth a thousand words...I'll just post some pics of the game.

Oh yeah and we won! Final Score: BYU 17 Utah 10



One of the last plays of the game.
Yep. I was officially there. (And it was very cold.)
The Celebration begins.

The field being rushed.The field is now rushed.
Better luck next year Utes.

We smoked 'em.

BYU - 35
CSU - 16

'Nuff said.

NACin' it.

Thursday night we had the opportunity to hear from Elder W. Rolfe Kerr at the Marriott School National Advisory Council (NAC) conference dinner. The theme for the conference was Enter to Win, Go Forth to Serve. Here are some of my notes from his talk:

Enter to Learn, Go Forth to Serve, and Strive to Excel

Enter to Win

• Learn more than is expected of you
• After belief, must follow application in your life
  
• Be a life-long learner and make changes along the way
• Right now is a time for building character, knowledge and confidence
• Know more about your families and service to the church

Go Forth to Serve

• Do more than is expected of you
• Mosiah 2:17: "And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service ofyour God."
• Do the job at hand better than it's ever been done and know your efforts will be rewarded

Strive to Excel

• Become more than is expected
• Pursue excellence in your person
• Personal
• Consciously succeed at home first
• Seek and merit divine help
• Never compromise your honesty
• Interpersonal
• Remember the people involved
• Hear both sides before judging
• Facilitate success of your associates
• Professional
• Plan tomorrow's (next week's, next year's) work today
• Achieve visibility by your productivity
• Develop one new proficiency each year
• Paraphrasing President Hinckley: "All of us cannot be geniuses but we can all strive to be better." (reference)
• "I'd rather see a sermon, than hear one. I'd rather get my lesson by observing you." (reference)
• Become more than is expected of you
  

Career Insights

Okay, so this is a week later than I promised...but a little thing called midterms got in the way. So I have a good excuse. But as promised...what I learned from our little visits last weekend.

Black & Decker

Key take-away
*HR must be a Strategic Business Partner and should:

• Be pro-active about acquiring the right talent
• Consult closely with the other business areas
• Not just be an administrative function
• Educate the company culture
• Give managers the tools to hire the right talent

Other insights:

• Talent Acquisition
• Why do they hire someone? 80% Traits and 20% Skills - Traits are innate, skills can be taught
• Behavioral Interviewing - the best determinate of future ability to do the job is past experience
• Analyze where are we finding the best talent and what is it costing us?
• Also how fast can we get them and how qualified are they?
• Build a database of candidates
• Internet
• Employee Referrals
• Research Firms
• Agencies (last option)
  
• Interviewing
• Practice
• Never stop networking
• Be a good person

Edwards Lifesciences

• Be good at influence management
• Own the project
• Become an expert in everything related to your product
• Use the 4 P's of marketing (product, pricing, promotion, place)
• To increase your network, set up a lunch everyday with a different person

Final Thoughts
In discussing our trip with , one of the things we all took away from this experience was how easy it is to set up informational interviews.

Prior to our trip, my fellow travelers and I all felt a little apprehensive about "informational interviews". But everyone we met with was super willing (and I would even say excited) to talk to us and share their perspectives and experience about their personal career path, current job and how to get the right position for us. Reaching out to alumni and other people in our networks is suddenly not so intimidating and as we learned oh-so-valuable. The contacts we made and the information we gleaned will most definitely help our our internship search journey.