and then it rained !!

Yeah….yesterday it did rain like the sky was coming down but this post is not about rain in Pittsburgh because had this blog been about the instances of unexpected precipitation in Pittsburgh, there would have been way too many posts.

Last I wrote, it must have been some rant about the lack of interviews in my life. Well, I was going through the dry spell and then it rained interviews. One week, I had first round interviews every single day and even more than one on some days. The next week, I had a second round every single day. Now in the third week its raining offers with conflicting deadlines. So, now I am going crazy writing to recruiters to extend the deadline, speed up the process and just give me an answer asap meanwhile looking for apartments in the Bay area. I still am not sure about how many of these efforts are going to go down the drain but then again, if there is one thing this experience has taught me, it’s that an honest effort never goes down the drain.

Amidst all the prevailing uncertainties and ongoing negotiations (and negotiate I must after all wisdom I got from Sheryl Sandberg’s ted video about how women in business end up getting a poorer deal because they don’t negotiate enough), there is one thing I am sure of – that I am going to the Bay area this summer.

Today’s been okay

Well….I have been watching Grey’s Anatomy a lot and that explains the title. Yesterday was a great day after long. I got up at 8 which is pretty early for me. Had my tea and talked to an alumnus. It was awesome talking to him and I felt my mood lifting through the call. As soon as I was done, I saw this post from a another alumnus about some Market and Competitive Analysis position. I reached out to him and setup a call in the afternoon. Then I had a wonderful lunch with one of my sweetest classmates. My second call of the day was also awesome. I learned a great deal about functional programming and that was one awesome conversation. Right after, I noticed this email inviting me for my dream gob. Then I went to school, talked to Wendy and Steve, setup few more calls and came back home. I was beat by the time I came back but I anyways completed my application to a super cool games company. Finally went to sleep to the song by Emiliana Torrini. Good day I say !!

And the search continues

They say now is not the time to get too worried about things. The thing to do is to keep your head up, keep applying and keep networking. I had two phone calls in the past two days. I have noticed that I try to evade talking to people with some specific purpose in mind. That just disturbs me on a very deep level. I think that it’s high time for me to accept that it’s OK. I checked out a bunch of companies and they seem to be super cool.
Aside from that, my biological clock again seems to have undergone the dreaded 180 degree phase shift. I need to fix that. As the weather is improving, I think it’s time to start running again.

Lost

I thought that once I am out of my old job, my life will take a turn and things will become all cheerful and rosy. I thought that I will love the classes and just glide through everything. Nothing of that sort happened. Here, I am …trying hard to stay afloat. I want to study and learn but there is no time amid the whole recruiting-networking-interviewing cycle and right now….I feel lost.

Random rant

Well well well….a lot of time has passed. Things have changed. Mini three is half over. I have regally bombed the midterms. And I still don’t have an internship and that sucks. Some speculate that the economy is not doing that great and that has some bearing on this but some of my friends do have internships. So, this can’t be completely attributed to external factors. That’s what I hate the most about this situation. I need to be on my toes all the time and that is more a lifestyle change that I need to learn here. Apparently, that’s the whole point of business  school…..becoming a better person……but right now, I just want to go back to bed and never get up.

You’re Not Invited to the Party

Well….it’s the hear-back-from-the-firms-you-applied-to time and I not so happily report that I didn’t get calls from my dream firms. That said, the game is not over yet. I still need to do that application to my number one firm and have a few other firms to hear back from. I do have an interview invite but it’s a difficult job to keep your spirits up when one after the other , your ‘Applied’ label changes to ‘Not Invited’. Here is some healthy dose of bitter realism from Alex Baldwin to keep going.

Why I love Tepper so much

Dec 12, 2012: It was my birthday and we had the most hated final on the very next day. This has been the thing about my birthday since my childhood…..it always overlaps with one exam or the other. I knew that none of my friends will have the time to do anything. So, I came back home from school, cooked some food and went to my room to listen to the lecture videos. I found it intriguing that my roommate (of the cleaning-and-cooking-is-a-waste-of time school of thought) was meticulously cleaning the kitchen and the hall. Anyways, I took my dinner and went to my room.

Around midnight, I just went to the kitchen to dump my dirty dishes in the sink to find the surprise party my friend were hurriedly putting together. Surprised I was…and however cheesy it may sound…it did feel great that they had braved the final-exam-times and decided to celebrate my birthday.
Dec 13, 2012: The next day I went to my school and found that almost everyone in my class knew that it’s my birthday (I have it on FB, ha!). One of my friends treated me with lunch and then we wolfed-down desserts till we hated ourselves. It was time for the last Finance-I class after that. Just wishing me in the corridors was not enough for the awesome Teperronis. So, the moment our Finance Prof stepped out of the class to let us complete the course evaluation, my lovely classmates decided to wish me kindergarten style, that is, by singing Happy Birthday out loud while clapping and all. It was nice and a bit embarrassing.

But that was not the end of Tepper awesomeness for the day. Before leaving the class, the professor joked saying, “May be I should go out and get a cup of coffee so that I don’t influence your evaluation” to which one of my classmates replied -”May be you should get two while you are at it.” Guess what…. once the lovely b’day song was over, the professor entered with two cups of coffee, walked over to the student and handed him the coffee saying, “I got two sugars….didn’t know your milk preference.”

Everyday I spend at Tepper, I fall more in love with the school and the people and feel happy about the day I decided to come to Tepper. It’s the applications season now. I have applied for four internships already and have been talking to our alumni in the companies I am interested in. I hope that we all get cool internships asap so that the parties and the Tepper awesomeness can ensue.