| The last few months…. |
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| Thursday, 20 March 2008 08:09 | |
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Starting from December, the last three months were my busiest and most interesting months in Darden. I was in New York for winter break to meet some school friends and had a great time over there, but ended up burning a big hole in my pocket. Came back to Darden in January to find that closed lists for companies were already out and this resulted in a period of ups and downs nearly every day. I had my interviews in Jan and Feb and was happy to end the interview season with an offer in a business development role. After Q3 exams, I had gone to Argentina for the spring break as part of the GBE program. The week long exchange program proved to be more than a study tour. Argentina has some of the best wine and meat options available and I made the best out of my time out there. Argentina is different when it comes to dinner and clubbing timings. People usually have dinner around 11 pm and it took us a day or two to get used to this. Often after dinner we ended up going to a club only to find out that we were first ones. Clubbing usually picks up around 2-3 am and goes on till 6 am. Not wanting to miss on the action, we stayed on till wee hours on most of the days. The only good sleep we got was on the way to the school/company visits every morning. But all said and done, the trip was an amazing experience and fun. Some of the memorable things of the trip were the tango show, soccer match, and ofcourse the wine and food. The company visits were well planned and by the end of the tour we had a good sense of what it takes to do business in Argentina. The Argentinean economy has gone through cycles of growth and depression and currently is experiencing high GDP growth rates in the range 8-9%. That said, our visits to the local companies revealed a high uncertainly around the energy situation in the country. The gas prices are fixed by the government and this has deterred the development and exploration of further energy resources. Adding to the complexity is the pegged exchange rate. While the currencies of other nations are experiencing a significant appreciation of the dollar, the Argentinean peso is pegged 3:1 against the dollar which infact made us shop and drink a lot as things turned out to be significantly cheaper out there. This may sound like a lot of economies stuff, but believe me that if I have to remember Argentina for something, it would be the crazy night-outs and partying. Now back in school, it’s the first time that we have got elective options and I have taken the courses that would be helpful in my internship and also for full time recruitment. I am specially looking forward to the Data Analysis and Optimization (DAO) class, which I think would be somewhat like the optimization class that I had in my undergrad. Also, my summer project would involve a lot of data and market analysis work and the tools from the DAO course could come in handy. I have also taken Valuations, which is a pre-requisite for any second year finance class. Though this course is also available in second year, I decided to take it now as my other classes are more qualitative in Q4 as compared to the previous quarters. Looking forward: There are a ton of activities lined up in April. Specially, the Bhangra Blowout in Washington D.C on April 12th and the Building Goodness Event in April (where we would be building houses for needy people form the money we raised earlier in a charity auction) are expected to be great ones. My internship starts from May 26th and since Q4 ends on May 8th, I am thinking of going home, Bombay, for couple of weeks. My internship would be based out of the Dallas office and the weather out there is expected to be somewhat similar to Bombay climate (except the humidity part). This would be a good time to catch up with folks back home as we are planning to move to a new house and I might as well pick my room before my sis does :). |