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Name: neener
School: USC Marshall School of Business
Status: Employed...finally
E-mail: Click here!
Reason for blogging: I'm incredibly self-absorbed. |
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I'm listening to...
::"Stay Beautiful," The Last Goodnight
::"Spaceman," The Killers
::"Green Light," John Legend
::"Superstar," Lupe Fiasco
I'm watching...
::24
::The Office
I'm reading...
::Taiwan, A Political History, by Denny Roy
::The Devil and Miss Prym, by Paulo Coehlo
I've just seen...
::Slumdog Millionaire
::I Love You, Man
::The Reader
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Merry Christmas! Family Fun All Around Christmas Eve. The lights in the house are blazing bright. The house is filled with the aroma of food. Sounds of laughter and cheer reverberate through each room.
One hour later. Five teenage boys are lounging in the living room watching a bootleg version of "The Last Samurai." Two girls are in another room watching some end-of-the-year top-100 list on VH1 or E! or some other entertainment network. The "big people" are at the "big people table" yelling about Taiwanese independence or something equally polemic. I decide to hole up in my room and update my school web site. Good times, good times.
Today I did the usual Christmas thing. Lay in bed until it was rude to not get up, ate lunch with the family, lay in front of the television complaining about boredom, ate dinner with the family, attempted to play Grand Theft Auto III for the second time in my life, shut off the PlayStation 2 in disgust after I managed to get myself shot and killed by the cops after attacking some innocent bystanders. Maybe I should stick to Crazy Taxi 3. Good times, good times.
The Time-Consuming Act of Doing Nothing Dear readers, I apologize. Lately many people have been scolding me about not updating. Yes, I admit it...I have been quite remiss. However, let me point out that I am now on break! I must catch up on all the "nothing" I haven't been doing during the school year. It hasn't been easy, let me tell you.
First, after the finance final, there was the partying. Then on Tuesday, YJ and I headed up to San Francisco to visit two companies, Hewlett-Packard and Guidant. The site visits were definitely enlightening and let us learn things that we wouldn't be able to get just from surfing their web sites. YJ and I hung out with Hector, Kane, and Kane's friend Scott on Wednesday night in SF. We ended up at a bar that had a karaoke machine, and YJ and I, being the divas that we are, ROCKED THE HOUSE! We got back to Los Angeles on Thursday night. Only on Friday did the mindless vegetating begin. So far this break, I have watched three movies, watched approximately 2 hours of bad television, baked a cake, and hung out with friends. As you can guess, all this nothing has taken up a lot of my time. Plus, my siblings are now home on winter break, and they are Internet hogs. Hence the lack of updates on the site. But I have taken some steps to remedy this problem. I got a wireless router this week, so this should increase my time online. And I recently uploaded pictures to my computer, so I can now work on getting those pictures up in the galleries. Slowly but surely.
I also checked out my grades for finance and statistics. I did really, really badly on my finance final. Apparently, you CAN achieve an extremely low score when you leave three pages blank on the exam. Who knew? However, the important thing is that I don't have to retake the course. Hooray! Isn't it nice to have such low standards?
In the meantime, while you wait for me to get my butt in gear and update this site, check out this site suggested by Freddy: The Naked Chicken. Pretty weird.
Hurting So Bad, Yet Feeling So Good My finance final was very, very, very painful. There was a lot of talk amongst the class about "being violated" after we were done. To give you some idea of what went on during the final: Pete was giving each page of the exam the finger, while Pablo was cursing whenever he read a new problem. The two of them took a break to laugh at me when I reentered the classroom (after a restroom break) with an extraordinarily dejected air, Wes muttered the usual profanities and repeatedly put his head down on the desk, and I left three pages blank because I had no idea what to write. I didn't even know enough to BS anything! I have never left an exam feeling so bad about my performance (my organic chemistry final in college doesn't even come close), and yet have never cared less about it. I was just glad to be DONE. As long as I don't have to take the class again, I'm happy.
After the final, some of us headed to Little Tokyo for Akash's birthday lunch while the rest of the class headed to Margarita Jones for some boozing. After the eating and boozing, we gathered at the lawn for a mixer for some MORE boozing. Core C and Core A participated in a boat race (a drinking competition), and Core A won...HOWEVER, Pem has proof on video that Core A cheated. Those sneaky bastards. After the mixer, some people headed BACK to Margarita Jones for some more liquid refreshment. After consuming baskets of chips and beer, everyone went their separate ways so that they could prepare for the evening festivities at Rouge, a restaurant/lounge in Los Angeles. We were all in fine form and high spirits after surviving our first semester...Sarika shook her groove thang, as did stats TA John, and some people were lucky enough to see Sasha - I mean Alex - tear up the dance floor. It was pretty awesome.
Busting a CAP...CAP-M, I mean Why did I even bother studying for my marketing final? Why? Why? I heartily regret studying for the marketing final when I should have been studying for finance. Damn. I am so behind. You know it's bad when instead of studying, you start trying to figure out how badly you can do on the final and still pass. And yes, I'm at that point. I can't wait for the post-finals jubilee and am excitedly awaiting the drunken chaos that will ensue.
That Stats Exam Is Toast Or maybe not. Just had my stats final. Yuck. I blanked out a couple of times and had to redo my calculations a gazillion times because, as I learned on my finance midterm, I tend to have problems punching in numbers into my calculator. Maybe it's my fat fingers; I haven't figured out the reason yet. Anyway, I don't feel too bad about it...I had some breathing room thanks to the midterm, so I think I can mess up and still get a B+. Watch me jinx myself.
Now it's on to marketing. Product life cycles, rumors, and pioneer brand advantages. Whoo-hoo. Fun.
Oh yeah, before I forget. From time to time, I'll provide a site recommended by P for your viewing pleasure. This week's recommendation from P: mulletsgalore.com.
Kickin' Some Marketing Ass This term has been BRUTAL. After burning myself out on midterms, I've been working on school projects. I'm only able to update since we finally turned in all of our group projects. But I have only a short respite since studying for finals commences later tonight. Argh.
Anyway, about that ass-kicking. One of the big projects this term was our marketing project. Each team in the class chose a product or service in dire need of marketing help and had to create a marketing plan. My team decided to do a marketing plan for Samuel Adams Boston Lager. Luckily for us, we had Freddy, who has marketing experience, on our team, so we kinda knew what would be expected in a real marketing pitch. We went all out. We had sample print ads and storyboards for commercials and everything (btw, thanks to Jaime for showing me how to do storyboards). Our marketing presentation was awesome, even though I messed up at one point and forgot what I was saying at another. The real dealmaker was the fact that we bought enough bottles of Sam Adams Boston Lager for every student in the class. We were instantly popular. Who says you can't buy love?
Anyway, I was thoroughly impressed by my classmates' presentations. Core C is just too cool. I'll admit, I am a bit biased, but I have to say that I think my core is the best in terms of cooperation and sense of humor. We all get along really well and do our best to help each other out. Even our communications professor is awesome. She really liked our presentation and even told us that we should try to get our presentation to the Boston Beer Company so that they could see our fine, fine work. My classmates' presentations, while obviously not as good as ours (ha ha), were also really impressive.
After the marketing presentation, I headed over to a classmate's apartment for some "hammer time." After getting home in the wee hours of the morning, I got up early to go to the Marshall tailgate because I am such a dedicated Trojan, yessirree. I guess the free food was a pretty good reason to go as well. After eating my fill, I headed over to my sister's place to do some studying but got nothing done because one of her roommates put on the "Wet Hot American Summer" dvd, and I got completely distracted. No finance studying got done, suffice it to say. Later that night I headed over to Silverlake for Em's birthday dinner and then to Zip Fusion Sushi in Little Tokyo for some chatting and dancing. Although I was afraid that they would make me lose face, some Marshall pals (Wes, Kamikaze, Akash, and Pablo) pulled through and showed up so I could proudly say that I did my part in inviting people. A good time was had by all, I hope.
After getting home in the wee hours Sunday morning, I got up to go to church and then headed over to school to work on our statistics project. It took forever. We finally gave up and decided that we were done with our regression model. To give you an idea of our attitude, I basically asked each team member, "Do you think your statistics grade could take a little hit and still be ok?" When they answered yes, I decided right then and there that I wouldn't worry anymore about all the crazy variables. I spent all of last night working on the write-up (I really shouldn't be assigned these things since it takes me forever to write), and got approximately 30 minutes of sleep, if you can call lying on my bed face down with my nose in my statistics software manual "sleeping." Which reminds me, I need some sleep...I can't operate on just 30 minutes of sleep and take a final. Good night.
Get Down with the Sickness I don't know if it's the season or what, but a lot of people are sick. There is a lot of coughing and sneezing going around. I'm going to have to be extra careful. The only thing stopping me from wearing one of those face masks is the ridicule that I would get from my less health-conscious classmates. Germs are scary.
Laziness Strikes I told myself I would do schoolwork during Thanksgiving break...but did I? No. I didn't. Instead I fooled around on the web and updated my school web site.
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When I learn a new word, I'll put it here so you can learn too!
EBITAS (noun):
Abbreviation for "Earnings Before Income Tax, Amortization, and SGARA." Next week, find out what SGARA is.
Click here for previous "new words." |
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