The COW

Another IESE tradition is the COW - the Comment Of the Week. How does this work:

Throughout the week one designated person records all natural "pearls" and funny comments we make during classes. At the end of the week, this person presents the best few which are rated by the whole class during a short 5 min. presentation on Friday afternoon. The comment which gets the most applauses and laughter, wins the COW! The person who wins the COW will present at the end of the next week. The trophy, a stuffs cow is handed over every week from proud IESE student to another!

So, this Friday we had our first COW presentation. There were four nominations, with two of them by the same student! I wonder if our class has broken a record with that!

First: in accounting, talking about inventories, our dear Argentinian colleague G tried to inquire about a particular situation in a "risky business". What we hear is "Would it be the same for a wisky business??"

Second: in marketing, professor asks N, what could he tell about the customer segmentation. N's reply: "Well we know that there are 80% women buying the product." Professor: "Great. What else." N: "Hmmm... and 20% men!"

Third: in marketing, S from India talking about cannibalization (this was my favorite). "If we pursue this strategy we will eat ourselves!"

...and the COW trophy went to... N our Portuguese friend, who made the following comment in ABP. Professor: "What should we be worried about?" N wanted to say - the plan change; We hear: "The planet change!"

Bar Crawl!!

As promised, a small sample of the Bar Crawl 2007!!! I don't have to tell you it was AWESOME!!

Busy!!!

As Noel kindly noticed, there has been no recent post on this blog. The reality hit me in the face about three weeks ago when school started. Since then, I only sleep about 6 hours per night (at best), work on cases, go to classes, do career services events and try to enjoy every "free" moment I have.

To break the monotony I went to London last weekend, following a trail of MBA students eager to find an IB (investment banking) job opportunity. The London Banking Tour was organized by our brave and restless Finance Club, run by all-knowledgeable and highly sought after second year colleagues. It was a banking marathon which started at 7:45AM and went on until 9PM. Some staid even later to party but I had to retire to the hotel room and rest as my feet were killing me! No one sent a memo telling us not to wear high hills! That's what happens when you have a lot of guys in the finance club. Next year I'll make sure to send a memo out for the ladies! So, you must be wondering what we did the whole day! We saw six banks: Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Citi, Barclays, Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank. We walked around, listened to presentations, did some job shadowing and asked a bunch of questions. As expected, the banks put their best foot forward trying to convince us why should we consider one IB over the other. We also did our best to impress them so when they come to the career forum next week they will remember us!

In terms of partying, there’s plenty! We just need to decide what and how to choose. Hmmm… should I build a decision three for that or do a alternatives/criteria matrix…

The sad part is we cannot party as much as we would like, but we have second year to look forward to, right Noel!? As in a business situation we prioritize and do as much as we can with limited resources! But tonight is the BAR CRAWL and I truly look forward to it. Our section team is "policeman", which means we all have to dress up in policeman outfits, go out to preselected bars and PARTY!!! However, I should not forget to mention that the second year students will be testing and scoring us on all sorts of bar crawling competitions! One thing I expect... we all be crawling by the end of the night. I’ll be taking lots of pictures and post on facebook to somehow preserve the privacy of the bar crawlers!