Mwahaha - take that, boys!

Okay, a break from the slew of "catch-up" themed posts you've been getting lately. Wanna know what happened last night?!?

Well, we had our poster session. What was that, you ask? Each student that did an internship this summer designed a poster that highlighted their responsibilities, experiences, learnings, etc. Then, we all gathered with our fancy (and expensive) posters in the Alumni House and invited all sorts of businesses and students to come wander around and ask us questions. Wanna see my poster? Here you go:

Throughout the session, those walking around were filling out quiz sheets. Each student had submitted a trivia question about their company. If the employer/student filled out their sheet and turned it in, they won a prize (gift cards or Razorback tickets).

My trivia question: How many cups of Dannon yogurt are eaten worldwide every minute?
Answer: Ha! You'll have to read the rest of the post to find out!

Anyway, in addition to awarding prizes to the attendees, we found out what rank each of the four presentation finalists got - AND we got trophies! Well, I'm sure you're all on pins and needles to know the results (pretend you are and humor me, okay?). So, here goes:

Fourth: Issam, Third: Alex, Second:  ME!!!, First: Jamie

Excited? I was! Oh, Jamie and I LOVED that the girls got the top two! In the years they've held this competition, they've never had a girl win (though Stacy and Sarah were finalists last year), and THIS year, we took the TOP TWO SPOTS! Ha! Yay us!

That made the remainder of the poster session even better - people had something specific to come talk to me about, so it really drove traffic to my station. I met with several great employers and everyone was very encouraging. It was also really fun to walk around afterwards and look at the posters all of my classmates made. Wanna see a few? Here ya go:

In other news, the Chairman of Saatchi and Saatchi came to one of our classes today (eeeek!). His presentation was really interesting, but then again, I may be a bit biased. We also had the career fair today. I handed out several resumes and took quite a few business cards. We'll see what comes of it, there were several promising leads! I'll keep you updated, of course.

Okay, off to do more homework like a good student. I'll finish up my "catch-up" posts tomorrow. 'Til then, reader!

Oh yeah, trivia answer: 78,000 (I know, be impressed)

Congrats, you won! Now...go do it again...but for more people

Okay, recap, post 2. The next thing I wanted to tell you about was our Internship Presentations. To get credit for doing our internship this summer (yes, you can get credit for making money), we had to make a presentation about our experience with our company - what our responsibilities were, what learning objectives we set, whether we'd accomplished them, and so on. In true Walton style, they made these presentations competitive. The class was split across six rooms, with about five people assigned to a room. Each room had two or three judges who evaluated each presentation, and the student with the highest score won the room and moved on to the second and final round to be held the next week (i.e. our reward for winning was MORE work and stress...oh well)

Now, I didn't take credit for my internship (something about trying to take too many hours...who me? Never!), but, since I'm a bit of an over-achiever (and a little too competitive for my own good), I did the competition anyway. I ended up winning my room (yay!)...which means I got to participate in the final round the next week. This round was a bigger deal considering the Career Center (who organized the whole thing) invited fifteen judges and had us present in this huge auditorium on a stage...see?

We found out that day who the top four was (I made that cut, too!), but we won't find out until tonight what rank we go (i.e. first, second, etc). The top four are guaranteed a trophy, though, so that'll be fun.

What's tonight, you ask? Well, it's the final portion of our internship review. We all (even those that didn't place in the presentation competition) have created posters detailing the highlights of our internship experience. We have a networking event tonight at the Alumni House, and there will be people from tons of different companies coming to check out our posters. We get to stand there, look pretty, and talk to everyone about what we did. It should be a fun evening. There will be pictures and such available soon, so check back!

I'm gonna keep this entry short ('cause I have to go prettify myself for the event tonight), but I'll talk about one more of the things I mentioned earlier, the networking lunch with the Arkansas Executive Forum. After our first round of presentations, we were all invited to have lunch with the AEF, a group of execs from around the area that meets twice a year on the U of A campus. We all gave our "elevator pitches" (speeches that define who you are and where you're going with your life but that are short enough to be given on an elevator ride), then spent lunch talking with those in attendance. Walton always has such great networking opportunities like this, which is one of the MANY reasons I love this school.

So, that's about it for today. I have to go get ready for tonight, but I'll take pictures and let you all know how it goes! (fingers crossed, right? Thanks). 'Til then, readers. Happy Monday!

Ragweed is mean. End of story.

Yeah, I know I told y'all to "check back tomorrow" like a week ago for another update. As you probably noticed, there wasn't one. The ragweed in the area decided to attack my sinuses and rendered me a bit... loopy to be honest. Well, I guess it was actually the meds that caused the loopieness...either way, I was not in a blogging state of mind.

I'm a bit better today - or at least I've tricked myself into thinking that. So, here's an update:

Let's start with our first India class. As I've mentioned before, I'll be spending Christmas break in India with about nineteen other students. As part of the prep work for that trip, we attend five Saturday classes to learn more about Indian culture, business practices, geography, history, and other fun stuff. During our first class, we did the perfunctory "go around the room and introduce yourselves" bit, followed by some informational presentations by Dr. Anand and Dr. Ellstrand (what will happen in the classes, what to expect, etc). Then, we walked over to Ella's (a restaurant on campus) for lunch. On Saturdays, they do an Indian themed menu, so it fit perfectly into the class. After lunch, we spent the remainder of the afternoon watching a Bollywood movie (which we will do every class in order to better familiarize ourselves with the culture). I LOVE Bollywood, so this was probably my favorite part. This week's movie was 3 Idiots - it tells the story, largely through flashbacks, of three engineering students trying to get through college. It was a nice blend of funny and moving (and had a few of those dance scenes Bollywood is famous for) - I'd recommend it if you can find a copy.

Okay, next...oh yeah, our first Professional Development class. Every semester, Walton hosts several PD Seminars (speakers come in every couple of weeks and speak on a topic for a few hours). This semester, our first opportunity was with Adam Arroyos. He's doing a series on networking. We spent the first session (there are four in all) focusing on our elevator speech - a short schpeel about yourself that you can deliver in the time it takes to ride an elevator with someone. We had our second session Wednesday and focused more on the "how to" of networking and its importance in our future careers. The next two sessions will be on organizational culture - I'll let you know how they go.

Last for today: the Supplier Joint Business Plan Summit at Walmart. Every year, each supplier has to submit this gigantic excel file detailing their plans for the upcoming business year (sales, store promotions, new businesses, etc). International suppliers (so...people like Dannon), have to submit a report for EACH country they sell product in (for us, that's 15) and EACH business unit within that country (taking our total business units up to around, oh, 45 or so). Guess who gets to compile all this info? Yup, me. Anyway, before we have access to these files, we have to attend the summit where we get all the instructions, details, and changes for this JBP file. This year, the meeting was at the new Sam's Home Office (which is NIIICE, by the way). It took about two and a half hours, and we got some good information (some of which means we have some changes to make to the files we've already started working on...oh well). It was an interesting experience - I'm glad I got to tag along.

Okay, now I have about three tons of homework to get through before tomorrow morning, so I need to stop procrastinating. I'll post another update...tomorrow? (fingers crossed). Til then, readers.

Wondering where I went?

Confession: I have been a bad blogger…I’m sorry. I promise to do better from now on.

So, as you might have guessed from the lack of updates, I’ve been a bit busy as of late. In order to give you a better picture as to what has kept me so busy, I’m going to give you the hi-lights in this post, and further elaborate in subsequent posts throughout the week. Good plan? I thought so, too.

Okay, highlights:

¨      First India class

¨      First Professional Development Class

¨      Supplier Joint Business Plan Summit at Walmart

¨      Internship Experience Presentations, Round One

¨      Networking Lunch with the Arkansas Executive Forum

¨      FOOTBALL

¨      Forest Gump and Pancakes

¨      Internship Experience Presentations, Final Round

¨      Farmers’ Market and Ozark Harvest Food Festival (oh, and more football!)

So, any of the above have you intrigued? Even if it doesn’t, you should check back tomorrow. Plenty of fun-packed posts to come. ‘Til then, readers, and welcome to September!