Think Outside of the Classroom Box

It's already week five in the quarter and I have no idea where the time has gone. It seems like just the other day I was celebrating the new year. That's grad school for you!

Second-year students say that Spring quarter is the most difficult one and I can definitely see an increase in the number of projects on my list. For example, I have the E2B project in marketing that I already talked about in a previous entry. There is an individual project and group presentation in Finance. There's a group project and individual project in Accounting. And a project for Macro Economics. The individual project in Finance and the one in Econ build off of the project I completed in Accounting last quarter that looked at the profitability, solvability, and liquidity of an S&P 500 company of our choosing. I selected Nordstrom, for the obvious reasons. What?! A girl really likes to shop.

Despite the heavy workload, one major difference between this quarter and last is knowing what to expect. While I'm still sleep-deprived, my overall level of stress is a bit lower. Maybe that's because I haven't started my individual projects yet! A big part of the lower stress level is due to my effort to keep a broader perspective on the business school experience, with all of its opportunities beyond the classroom. It may not be good advice to not focus on studying 100% of the time, but business school is what you make of it. Studying is important, but don't forget to look outside of the classroom into the different clubs and activities that are constantly going on around here. For example, Net Impact is planning a volunteer trip to Guatemala over Spring break. C4C (Challenge for Charity) is organizing the Running the Waves marathon and is also getting ready for Sports Weekend at Stanford in April. Student clubs are also changing their leadership teams and many of my friends are becoming board members on many of these teams. I'm excited about this, as having already established friendships in place will make collaboration among the clubs effective.

So while my stress levels may go up over the remaining weeks in the quarter, it will definitely be balanced by the excitement of being involved in so many activities.