Note: In order to get myself to jot down more of the stuff I’m going to forget, I’m allowing myself only five minutes to write these entries. There just isn’t enough time in a day to get everything done! I need an intern.

Last week was ridiculous. Three tests, lots of meetings, more meetings, more homework, and the realization that I have to get used to schmoozing. Oh, lets not forget the drinking. Not by me! Well, sort of.

I will never like accounting. I don’t always understand finance, but at least I find it interesting. I’m apathetic towards stats, but I know it’s going to be crucial in my next job. Accounting on the other hand goes in one ear and comes out there. Debits, credits, LIFO, FIFO, blah blah blah. It just isn’t sexy and I don’t see how I’m going to use it in the future. Isn’t that what my accountant is for? I guess now he won’t be able to pull a quick one on me.

I found out that I’m on the executive board for 100% Owen (the volunteer club), I got dumped by the Global Business Association, and that I’m probably going to be the VP of Communication for the Sports club unless there’s a major coup (a remote but probable possibility).

Did I mention that I’m going to Japan and that I need to research a Japanese company that sells security systems? Sounds like they do what I did at my previous job.

Apparently I’m a good presenter. That was a shocker. I think I got away with one because I incorporated some good jokes that didn’t fall flat. There’s another presentation coming up this week. I’m so not looking forward to it because we’re supposed to give our “elevator pitch” about our unique selling proposition. Mercy.

Crap! My laundry!

How do I survive bschool without MS Outlook (or whatever the equivalent is in Apple-land)? Answer: I can’t! From scheduling group meetings to figuring out which room my next class is in, Outlook is a mission critical component to getting through my day. I can’t believe I’m still using work speak… Anyways, the 2010 version of Outlook, although not ground breaking, has a couple of neat features. Example, every email has a picture of the people that are on the email (picture below). It’s a very useful stalking feature. There are also things like embedded Office files and a slicker meeting scheduler that makes productivity soar.

Send me an email and this is the handsome mug you'll see in Outlook 2010.

So the weekend is here and I’m quickly realizing that it means nothing more to me than not having to go to class but still having a bunch of homework and studying that needs to be done. The work is not that difficult (although it did take me and a friend seven hours to balance our first financial statement). The difficulty is balancing school work with career search obligations, club activities, and maintaining normalcy outside of school. Note to self: block off time in Outlook to do laundry on Sunday. Thankfully I’m past that age or state of mind where I want to drink/party all the time (did that even happen?) so I can concentrate on adjusting balance sheets over the weekend. It also helps that the group I hang out with most of the time is pretty well balanced in terms of doing school work and wanting to have fun. We’re talking Vegas already.

Anyhow, in tribute of lost weekends, the following song by BEP – before they became Fergilicious – popped into my head last night while thinking about debits and credits.

What a first week. So much went on that I don’t think I can remember all of it but here it goes.

For mod* 1, I’m taking managerial finance, financial accounting, stats, team leadership, and leadership communications. Despite having five classes, my schedule feels pretty light. Wednesday is the only crappy day because I have class from 800 straight to 1300. There’s a bunch of “free time”, most of which is spent studying in the library or doing group stuff.

Monday started off with much anticipation. It seemed like a lot of my classmates had trouble sleeping the night before. I had trouble sleeping as well, but I think it was more because of the coffee after dinner rather than the excitement of the first day of class. Monday kind of flew by, as did Tuesday.

The shit hit the fan on Wednesday though. As I mentioned before, Wednesday is my long day. It also happened to be the day that my group met for the first time to discuss our first case for our team leadership class (aka LTO). For LTO, we are assigned to teams of five to work on group projects. The first project is to analyze a case about a manager named Erik Peterson – who has ten million managerial problems on his plate – and write a paper on a suggested plan of action. Sounds easy, except we were given no framework to work with, which was probably part of the “fun”. We ended up spending approximately 70 man-hours on a five page paper. If you know the real Erik Peterson, please punch him in the face for all of us.

My team and I spent Thursday morning wrapping up Erik Peterson. After the final class of the week, the sober reality of doing all the homework and studying that I’m behind in hit me. Fortunately, Kegs, the end of the week social held in the Owen lobby, gave me an opportunity to temporarily forget about studying on the weekend.

The club fair was organized to coincide with Kegs. I must have signed up for all the clubs or something because this morning I got a bunch of emails regarding kick off meetings for such and such club next week. Realistically, I’m only going to fully involve myself in two or three clubs which is probably still a little too ambitious. I’m definitely going to join the Global Business Association (GBA) and Vanderbilt Marketing Association (VMA) and the Extreme Outdoor Adventure Club. The last club is more social than academic, so I’m still looking at getting involved in the Vanderbilt Entrepreneurship Association (VEA) or Operations Club.

I was supposed to go on the golf trip today but because of how long the golf trip would take, I went on the ropes course trip instead. The ropes course is basically one of those outdoor team building activities. We boarded a bus and drove into the hills of Tennessee to do some zip lining, tree climbing, and platform balancing @ Adventure Works. It was a lot of fun and there was a lot of bonding. I took pictures, but I’m going to hold off on them because I might publish them for the school via OwenBloggers. TBD on that one…

So yea, a good first week, but it’s time to shut down the brain because tomorrow is a full day of mastering the time value of money.

* A “mod” is seven weeks. Two mods make a semester, hence a total of four mods equal a school year.