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.