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I'm not sure how I'm going to write a zillion grad school application essays when I can't even seem to squeeze out an entire blog post about the things I actually really want to write about. Labels: blogging, Grad School
Saturday, April 28, 2007
So the last post probably makes me sound like a complete and total b*tch. Whatever. This blog is a form of catharsis for me and it was something that really needed to be released. But, that is also why I'm writing this post. To get that one off the top of the page. It's three thirty in the morning and I should be studying for a ridiculous test I have to take on Monday, but I am not. I am thinking about how the hell I'm going to study tomorrow, entertain my sister who does not deserve to be trapped in an apartment on a beautiful day in Paris, and how to control the intense crabbiness I've been feeling these last few days. Seriously. I don't know what it's all about. I just know that I feel really pissy and frustrated and I keep snapping at things that shouldn't bug me. Or at least, not enough to get snappy over. I am also still feeling totally exhausted, So exhausted that when my sister and I took a walk to the gardens near the Louvre today I completely passed out in one of the nifty lawn chairs that are distributed in Parisian gardens. So people like me can nap under a tree. Seriously, I could have been robbed, I was that asleep. Labels: Annoyances, Grad School, Life
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
I'm feeling cautiously optimistic today. Sort of. I'm not really letting myself get too excited because I've been burned before. Our term paper is almost done, a full three days ahead of schedule. Mark rocks, I swear that boy knows how to keep people on task. I'm just waiting to edit one more part and we're all good. It actually came out pretty well, if I do say so myself (and I do). I have a face-to-face set up with Big Investment Bank when I get back to California and a phone interview with Financial Software company this Friday. I've also decided my strategy for informing the Even Cooler Investment Bank that I'm going to be back soon and still want the chance to interview with them if my Dream Job is still open. Heck, even if it's not, I'll take any job with Even Cooler Investment Bank. It's funny, I decided last week that I am not going to LET myself freak out anymore. I am going to be calm and patient and not hyperventilate and imagine throwing myself off the roof every time I face an empty inbox. I am going to just trust that God didn't bring me this far in my life with no plan for me. So even if all of these job leads don't work out and I end up unemployed for months, I think I'm still going to be okay. In fact, I know it. Labels: God, Grad School, I need a job
Although studying in a foreign university system has been, I believe, a valuable experience, one of the things that has really frustrated me about the French system (or at least the system as it applies to this particular program) is how heavily our grades rely upon groupwork. I don't mind groupwork but I really do not believe that it should constitute more than 25% of your grade and certainly not 100% of it as it does in about 75% of our classes here in France. I definitely understand the importance and benefit of groupwork, particularly for business/finance students, but I think it is still important to measure individual achievement, especially in the case of students who severely under-perform in each and every class where their grade depends upon only their own work and not that of others. Say hello to the competitive freak in me once again rearing its ugly head, but I honestly believe that people who should fail out of the program due to their complete incompetence and inability to grasp even the simplest concepts relevant to our studies...well...they should actually fail out and not be propped up by the fact that for half of the program they can pretty much piggyback on group members who actually understand the information well enough to get a decent grade. In one of our classes we're writing a group term paper and guess who I got in my group? Yup, my roommate. While she was on vacation the rest of the group decided it would be best to give her something simple to do, like the history of the company, which to her credit she did turn into me for editing on schedule. But when I looked at it this morning and told her that, because it's a research paper, she needed to cite her work, she gave me this dumbfounded look and an explanation of how she'd have to go through all her work again because she wasn't sure where each part came from. Then she actually asked me if I needed her to add those in before I could turn it into the professor. UM? I choked back the urge to ask, "What kind of a stupid question is that?" and politely said, "Of course." Labels: Annoyances, Grad School, Stupidity and Ignorance
Thursday, April 05, 2007
I'm in a slightly better mood today. Amazing what a full eight hours of sleep will do for your spirits. But studying for my final tomorrow is making me want to take a nap. Labels: Grad School, Random
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
I'm so tired I can barely function. I just spent five minutes doing and redoing a problem because I couldn't get the same answer as the corrections only to realize that I was using an interest rate of 6.5% rather than 6.25%. I think a nap is in order. Except it's already 8pm here and I have class all day tomorrow which means I have to get up at 7am and won't get home until 6pm and I have a final on Friday and I had two other projects due this week so I haven't had time to study. Until now. Ugh. I think it's partly the lack of sleep but I'm in an exceptionally crabby mood right now. Maybe it also has something to do with the fact that talking to some of my classmates has me really worried that someone who REALLY can't hack it in this program may slide by and get the degree whether or not this person deserves it. I don't know why this bothers me so much, except for the fact that I came from such a competitive academic background and having someone who I feel is so clearly incompetent getting the same degree as me is, well, kind of insulting. I mean seriously, how is someone who can't even figure out exchange rates well enough to figure out how many euros they'll get for their dollars going to pass themself off as a Master of International Finance??? How? For the love of... Told ya I was crabby today. Labels: Annoyances, Grad School, Stupidity and Ignorance
Sunday, April 01, 2007
When I got to the metro station today it occurred to me that...it's April! My last month of classes here in France. Whoa. This whole thing went by so fast it makes my head spin a little just thinking about it. I got to talk to an old friend yesterday, someone I haven't spoken to in, literally, years. Even though we don't get to talk much he's someone I've always looked up to a lot and he put it in my head that maybe I can actually make it into a top MBA program. Apparently, women on average score lower on the GMAT when compared to men - which makes my score "solid for a girl." For once in my life, affirmative action will work FOR me and not against (not that this makes AA okay, but hey if it exists I might as well take advantage of it right?). Knowing this made me feel a lot better about everything in general because now I have A Plan again. It makes me feel like there's less pressure to find The Perfect Job right away because I can instead find a Decent Job and then go back for my MBA in a year. Maybe I'm totally deluding myself. Maybe I have zero chance of getting into a "top 30" program. Maybe even if I did, it wouldn't help me find The Perfect Job. But I feel a bit more at peace now and that is what matters. Also, my group has our LBO case study handled. Booyah. Now all I have left is a Private Equity case study on Wednesday and a Firm Valuation test on Friday. P.S. I know it sounds like I'm "at peace" because I feel like I have control over things again...which is partially true, but in a way I feel like God leads me to these plans...like maybe that's why I reconnected with this person I haven't spoken to in so long - so that he could give me this information which I didn't have before. I felt the same way when I was "led" to this program I'm in right now. I strongly believe that everything happens for a reason and that God is behind those reasons. Labels: Grad School
From what I hear it's gorgeous outside. I say "I hear" because I haven't actually left the apartment at all yet today despite the fact that it's almost 6pm. Supposedly I've been working on my LBO and Private Equity cases but in reality I've been playing Brain Academy on Joe's DS. I am telling myself it's okay because, you see, it's a brain game and therefore making me smarter. Who needs schoolwork? I've now moved onto updated my myspace page (by updating I mean adding one picture and changing my album setting from "everyone" to "friends only"). This means that my brain is actually now melting. Labels: Grad School, Life, Random
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Alright, here it is. Or as much of it as I can stomach to write right now. I knew Finals Week was going to be a questionable week when on Saturday night I somehow ripped out a chunk of flesh from my right thumb knuckle as I was putting my laptop on the ground. How did I tear of flesh from the outside of my hand when I was gripping the laptop with the inside of my hand? I don't know! How the hell did I cut myself with a butter knife? Who knows how I do these things? So that's how Finals Week started (I'm starting it on Saturday just because that's when I self-mutilated my poor thumb and so therefore it seems like an appropriate beginning to one of those weeks). It ended on Friday with me running on two hours of sleep, frantically trying to finish up a project at 10:00pm in a Chinese all-in-one internet/karaoke/boba cafe that was PITCH BLACK except for the light from my monitor and a strobe light over the karaoke stage. And we can't forget about the slightly-off-key Chinese guy crooning on said stage. The whole damn time. Yeah, let's just say the quality of my work on that project? Not very high. So there you have the beginning and the end and the rest of it...maybe later. I should really get out of this same pair of sweatpants I've been wearing for I'm not sure how many days straight now and go do some wedding scouting stuff. Labels: Grad School
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