Am I really that old...

Last night, after a long Week 2 at my internship, I made a shocking discovery:

I found a very long, very gray hair. Yikes!

This is not the first gray hair discovery. I found gray hair #1 my 2nd week of business school. Now I find gray hair #2 the 2nd week of my internship.

Coincidence? I think not.


In all seriousness, my internship has been great so far. It has taken a little bit to get used to working again (getting up at 6 am! arriving at work at 7:30 am!) but I'm settling in and my project is starting to ramp up.

I won't be able to talk about the specific details of my project because of confidentiality / trade secrets etc. but I do want to write about my life during the internship, the things I'm learning (both about marketing and about life) and what it's like to work for the largest company in the world.

Now that I'm feeling more "settled," I should have time to post more often. Stay tuned.

It was a long trip....

...but totally worth it. Oklahoma City Temple.

Four hours to get there. Three hours there. Four hours back. One entire tank of gas (that is a lot of $$$ these days). This made for one long Saturday but I don't regret it for a second!


It was my first time in one of the new "small" temples and it was amazing how much they can fit into such a small space!

I'm grateful that I had the means to get down there to the OKC to do a little temple work. It also makes me even more grateful for the all the temples we have in Utah and even more determined to take full advantage of the blessing of having many temples so close. I've been very fortunate in my life to never live more than 45 minutes from a temple. Even when I lived in Orlando, the temple was just across town. Saturday really brought home for me what a sacrifice it is for some to attend the temple. I really need to eliminate my excuses and get there more often!

Welcome to Arkansas!

After three days of driving, crossing five states and 1300+ miles, I finally arrived in Bentonville, Arkansas to begin my internship.

(Yep! I'm a dork and I stopped at the border to take a picture. ) Checking in on Friday afternoon was a breeze and then I spent the rest of the day getting settled into my apartment.

Saturday, my mom and I spent the day seeing the sites in Bentonville. A trip to the hometown of Wal-mart wouldn't be complete without a visit to Mr. Sam's (that is what Sam Walton is called around the Home Office) original 5-10 store in downtown B-town. It was actually pretty cool to see the evolution of the world's largest company.

(The matching outfit was unintentional)

Geneva, my partner in crime during P&P and field study this semester is interning at FedEx Freight just 100 miles away in Harrison, AR. She make the trek down on Saturday night for a little visit and to check out the U of Arkansas ward on Sunday. After church, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a look around the campus. One of the coolest things is the "Senior Walk." Every name of every graduate since 1876 is carved on the sidewalk that warps around the whole campus. Pretty dang cool.

Geneva and I also liked this replica of an statue of a statue in Florence, Italy Il Porcellino The pig actually has water coming out of his mouth. We couldn't resist!


And again...a visit to the U of Arkansas would not be complete without seeing Razorback Stadium in all its glory. It truly is ginormous. It seats an astounding 76,000!! Take that, LaVell Edwards Stadium!

Wow! It's huge! Can you tell how amazed we are!!

Not so fast....

Even though finals officially ended on Tuesday...I wasn't quite done. My field study group still just had a little work to do for our final paper and presentation (or so we thought).

We arrived at the Tanner Building at 8 am on Wednesday...and in this picture, here we are still in the lounge at 11:00 p.m. (Geneva looks how we all felt)

Yep. That's right. 11:00 p.m.
Still working...

Finally done....at 12:45 p.m. Yep that is right. 17 hours in the Tanner Building. Ouch! We were officially the LAST people in the building after the semester.



But that is not all... we were back the next morning at 7 am to practice for our 8 am presentation.


All our work paid off. The clients loved it! And we got it done. Whew! We were officially done with our first year of business school.

I would like to say this kind of marathon group work was an isolated incident, but during year 1, I often found myself burning the midnight oil in a cramped study room with a group.

But these experiences are some of the most memorable so far. Even though our 17 hours in the Tanner (that has GOT to be some sort of record) were tough and long and all sorts of other hyperbolic adjectives...we also laughed as hard as I've ever laughed and forged friendships that will last for years to come. And this was the case for almost every group I've been in this year.

Really. Business school is about learning stuff. But more important is the who we are learning the stuff with.

Last Final!

Our last final was Marketing Research. Yay! We're done! We were so happy that we cheered every person coming out of the classroom! YAY! To celebrate the ending of our first year of business school, we ventured over to Costa Vida for a little food to celebrate. Yum!

Caroline is our hero!

Our fellow MBA Caroline is amazing and she is also pregnant and due this week (on the day of our last final!). So yesterday we had a little lunch to celebrate her. Even though we are all busy with finals, many of the 1st year women met at Mimi's for yummy food and some well needed time with our girls!

Here are a few of the pictures! We love you Caroline!!

My first round of golf.

The MBA program always holds a golf tournament every year during the first reading day after classes are over. I took a beginning golf class this semester so I decided to have a go on an actual course instead of just hitting balls at the driving range.

The day got off to a rough start when we arrived at 8 a.m. and there was "frost" on the grass. We had to wait until it warmed up a bit before they would let us start and that small delay turned into an almost 2 hour delay. And it was really cold! When we finally climbed into our carts and headed out, the wind kicked up and it went from really cold to absolutely freezing! The best was went snow flurries started hitting us about hole 14!

We were playing a scramble which meant it moved fast, but still took us about four hours to do all 18 holes. Together with the delay, we were out in the bitter for six hours. Ugh!

Although it was pretty much the worst day to be golfing, it was still a good time. I got to use the different strokes i learned in class and also start to learn how to choose which club to use for which shot. It was almost worth the six hours of freezing to death.

All 99 of us freezing while we waited for the frost to melt.

That's me setting up my shot. (And yes, I'm wearing a parka!)

Yep. That is me actually taking a golf shot. Nice shot!

One of my team members. Fantastic shot!

The other three members of my group putting. We made a pretty good team!