Thanks, Ross!

She Bangs!

OK, it appears that by asking a question of my (five) loyal readers, I get a lot of responses! So in anticipation of my beauty industry interview on Friday, I am getting a haircut on Thursday afternoon. Should I get bangs?

And on an unrelated note, congrats to Ross, newly admitted to the Stanford and Harvard B-School classes of '08. Since I think he'll go to Harvard, I'd like to give him the skinny on a little thing we here at Wharton fear the most: grade disclosure.

Where would you rather?

A potential employer asked me today if I'd rather be in Houston or Atlanta. Talk about tough choices.

I am officially a slave to b-school, and have a meeting with the program office tomorrow where they will try to talk me into dropping one of my classes. I have eight interviews during DIP-week, here are some of the locations on the table:

Plano, TX
Atlanta, GA OR Houston, TX (one job, two humid possibilities)
Hershey, PA
New Jersey (and no, I would not be able to live in NYC for this one)
New York City (two companies here)
Bay Area
Los Angeles

For Plano or Houston, my prediction is the Southwest gate agent manning the Friday afternoon/Monday morning flights to/from Austin would know me by name by July.

I just want a job.

Feeling Dippy

Quarter three is like a collision course. I am taking two finance classes, Follies is five weeks away, and the job search is in full crunch mode. DIP (dedicated interview period) week is January 27th-February 3rd, a week with no classes so we can focus on interviewing. For many people, this time will not be when they find their jobs, either because their industries do not recruit through the formal on-campus process or because they will end up working at a firm that comes later on in the year. I am starting to get interview pre-selects, which is a good thing because it means I've cleared the first hurdle towards getting a job. However, this also means DIP will not be a fun play week for me, and there's still no guarantee I won't be joining the masses in the post-DIP scramble should my dream offer not materialize.

As an update on where I'm interviewing, I officially have two Geographically Desirable interviews (company in NYC and a company in the Bay Area-- I can hear the screams of joy all the way from SF now!), and two Geographically Undesirable. I'm hoping the odds improve as more companies release their lists.

Cross your fingers!

Give Me Some Sugar

I have become a Dunkin' Donuts convert. For coffee in the morning, they are faster and cheaper than Starbucks, and more convenient than anywhere else. Rather than doing the non-fat latte thing, I follow the natives' cues and order a regular coffee with milk and sugar. This is unbelievably good, and I finally understood why everyone was so psycho about Dunkin' Donuts coffee. That is, until this morning when I accidentally saw them putting the sugar into my coffee. They put in no fewer than three heaping soup spoons worth of real sugar into it. No wonder it's so yummy. I need to rethink this addiction, or at least switch to splenda.

Thanks, Jason!

He sent me this picture from Austin, night of the Rose Bowl. Lovely!

FYI, I got two invitaitons to interview for jobs so far (yay!) and I just added a Field Application Project with ESPN to my second semester courseload (double yay!).

Ski Lift Conversations

I'm on a ski trip with 150 of my classmates, but I've spent a lot of the time skiing by myself. This is because most of the people on the trip are either absolute beginners or jumping off cliffs, whereas I am a strong but cautious intermediate skiier. Fortunately, I love skiing by myself. I don't like stopping a whole lot, and when I go by myself I can get in a scary amount of runs in a short period of time. And the skiing here has been great.

There's one other huge benefit to solo skiing: the singles line. It not only means no waiting in line, it offers the bonus of meeting all sorts of people on the ride up. I don't always get chatty-- I usually let people take the lead. But I've encountered all sorts of interesting people up here. There are lots of Texans, so we enjoyed continuing to discuss Wednesday's game (btw, I love that my football post got the most responses I've had in a while. My friends rule.). I rode up with two women who went to Stanford back in the '60's, and insisted on introducing me to their husbands (they all met at the Farm) and telling them that I was at Wharton. I've met people who came here from South Africa and Australia, which tells you something about Colorado's skiing. And hands down my favorite conversation: two guys from Chattanooga, Tennessee debated whether the Apollo moon landing was completely faked, or whether we actually did land on the moon but were forced to recreate the photos in a sound stage because of issues with the camera equipment on the moon. The authenticity of the pictures was not subject to debate, only how deep the ruse went.

Hook 'Em

Greetings from Steamboat, Colorado, where the snow stopped dumping last night, and today brought fabulous sunshine. My legs feel like jello.

I must say as fun as this ski trip is, the highlight really was last night's Rose Bowl. I came to love UT football while a resident of Austin, and I came to hate USC while being born. These two factors combined made me the ideal fan for last night. My two favorite moments (besides any time Vince Young had the ball, oh and when Reggie Bush pitched or fumbled or whatever that was even though he already had the first down, I mean STOP SHOWBOATING this is the national championship!) were:

1. When they showed Pete Carroll on the sideline looking excited thinking they were stopping Vince Young for that last touchdown when it was like 4th and 5. He hopped three times, face lit up like a kid about to meet Santa, and then boom, disappointment.

b. After the game, Matt Leinhart was interviewed on field and said, "I mean, this was a really great win, oh I guess I mean tough loss (rough transcription, I don't have the actual quote in front of me)." Was he just so unprepared for having to give an interview after a loss? Or was he in denial over what had just happened?

I love my longhorns!

Mummer? I don't even KNOW her!

Today, I was once again introduced by awkward encounter to a Philadelphia tradition, namely the Mummers Parade. The sequential rambling of my internal monologue went a little something like this:

1. Hey, I'd like to go to Target today. Great, a car's available!
2. Hmmm, there sure are a lot of horn sounds in the distance-- bad traffic on New Years Day?
3. Wow, that fat guy with a mustache is wearing a purple silk dress and make-up. Huh.
4. Wow, so are 800 of his friends
5. Um, this parade route is blocking access to the car. It looks like I need to tack on an extra hour to my car reservation to account for all the extra circling I'm going to have to do
6. Is it just me, or does it smell more like stale beer and cigarettes than usual today?

Happy new years, readers!