5/4/2018 0 Comments Well I'm ignorantI just went to my academic coach and found out that I may not be able to graduate. I currently have the grades B, C and a D in my finance electives. Since my major GPA is so low, hovering around a 2.35, I may not be able to graduate because of the current D I have in the class.
Then I calculated more and in order to get a 2.0, I need a C in my investment portfolio class. This means I need to raise my 66% grade in investment portfolio to a 73%; therefore, I need a 89% on my last exam worth 25% of my grade in the class…. Then I thought, oh well, there's option B to take an extra semester, that wouldn’t be so bad…. I could strive to go get a job in Cincinatti or be a bartender in Oxford even though my friends are graduated or pursue a minor in Entrepreneurship…. though I need to get the heck out of here. I love college as Aasher Roth sings it, but there’s a whole world out there that is waiting for me to discover. That is not going to happen with me being in Oxford, OH! I gotta pull through, keep up the mindset that I can do it vs. that I cannot. Screw it, that amount of time and effort I have put into this degree, I better be getting that diploma to frame!
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5/1/2018 0 Comments Innovator MindblockLife is hard. As in very ruff… the barking noise that dogs make while upset because they want their toy, are hungry with a grumbly stomach, or are not getting attention from their owner. At least a dog’s life is simple though. They don’t have to switch mindsets throughout the day trying to innovate ideas.
I woke up early this morning and opened the window hearing the birds chirp. The sun was shining, and it was the first actual nice day that I could wear shorts. I browsed through the news as I ate my oatmeal remembering that my techique today that I was going to just let ideating happen for my next C4 life failure. I have already gotten past step one of choosing a “more proposition”, but I got stumped on step 2 of silencing my VOJ. How can me, a goofy innovator, be more professional… in an unprofessional environment since I do not surround myself with professional business people. Irregardless, I still need to self improve this trait of mine to be confident in a professional and serious environment. Well, so much for letting it happen. I just stood in the shower and shampooed my hair twice and deep conditioned for 3 times the suggested timeframe. Off to class from 8:30 to 2:35! I have to get through step 2 of my C4 to actually get to step 3 and 4 and prove to myself that I can face this challenge, even if I make a fool of myself doing something my VOJ says I cannot! Off I went, into the depths of the dungeon King. I hate this place, but love a tasty spinach wrap. I hoped the brainfood while sitting in my cubicle would get my brain to be creative and start form convergent questions. Nope. Nope. Nope. I want to burn my VOJ. SCREW YOU. It keeps saying there’s no way I can be professional, since one of my values is humor, even though, I read an article about professional traits and one of them was humor. Ha, my VOJ is wrong! I can still be professional without jeopardizing my values. However, this “make it happen” technique is not working. I am staring at the graffiti on the inside of my cubicle wondering what its scribbles read… Here I go now. Back to letting the magic of my creative thoughts just work. La dee daaa! What a lovely day it is outside. I cannot believe I have “wasted” it all inside doing things I don’t really like. Oh wow, all my housemates are outside on the patio hanging out. Maybe they will spark my creativity and it’ll just start flowing. Nope. They’re distracting me. I’m completely off topic talking about High School Musical and graduation. Now, I’m sad that I’m old have to be a professional real adult soon and can’t just go back to being a kid again for eternity! I went upstairs to my room. Blessed my roommate was sleeping, so she wouldn’t distract my thoughts. Oh… what is that I can hear my neighbors blasting rap music. It’s not just one rap song. My other neighbors are blasting a different rapper. Believe it or not, God’s Plan by Drake mixed with Everyday by Logic do NOT sound good together. Oh how I love being surrounded by all frat houses who litter in my yard. They are the ones who should ideating about how to be decent humans living on this earth not tempting me to snitch on them. It’s 6PM on a Tuesday. Yes, it is a B-E-A-U-tiful day out, but people (like moi) have stuff to do!! Thanks diary for letting my vent to you. I am going to go back downstairs now and may consider my making it happen technique again after I walk back to the heinous library while my housemates play some New Girl drinking game called “True American”. Whatever, my life sucks. I hate having a creativity block!!! 4/20/2018 0 Comments Being CompliantI had a phone call with a recruiter at GTB which is an avertisng agency. This was something that was way different than the other types of financial firms I had been applying to. I had excitement for this phone call that I had not had in a while.
It ended up being kind of a weird call because she had to hang up 10 minutes into the call to attend an 'urgent' company wide meeting. That seemed so unprofessional. I was speechless. Anyways, she called me back about an hour later and I found out that the job was in Dearborn, MI and I would have to work overtime for half the year working as a financial analyst. I realized I kept hitting home all the negatives of the company. The CEO is from Mumbai, India and he pursued a degree in chemical engineering but decided to swerve his career into the advertising industry. I find that risk he took very inspiring and the mere act that he is leading the company in the HQ in Dearborn is a good sign of a leader. However, me being an analytical person that I am kept seeing all the disadvantages of this position as opposed to the advantages for opportunity within the role. I spoke to my dad after about my career search. I respect him a lot and look up to him as one of my most important role models, but I sometimes think that he is very old-school and traditional in his thinking. He told me harsh words thatI didn’t want to hear. I need to stop overweighing the cons of a job and look at the pros of a company that would be willing to pay me. I am trying to take this advice with a grain of salt though. He said that I need to put my head down, pay my dues, be compliant and do the work that nobody else wants to do in order to ultimately earn their respect. My VOJ is just screaming about why the HELL would I want to do work that nobody else wants to do. Yes, my whole life I have been a compliant daughter and done as my parents wanted of me since they created me and pay for my existence still. I am sick of being indebted to them though. I have always being challenge driven and tricked myself into doing things the hardest way to prove I can do it even though results never help my ego. For instance I studied for many more days for an exam I had on Wednesday, asked my friends for help, went to my professors office for help; yet, I saw my exam score posted yesterday and got he worst exam score I had gotten this whole year (19/30 questions). I felt the extra time I put in studying just tripped me up and made me more anxious. I immediately started bawling and realized that I have never done “well” on any of my finance exams. It just doesn’t come easy to me and is not at all a strength. Why would I want to pursue a career at something that I am not “good” at. I spoke to my brother after and he tried to console me but just kept saying it’s just one exam and that the real world won’t have exams like that. He doesn’t realize that it’s a reoccurring theme of currently having to set the bar lower for myself to achieve in school. I’m sick of it. His way of consoling me is saying that “I’m fine” and blow everything out of the water dramatically, but I know I’m not fine. Anyways, Professor Friedman told the story of his father passing and how he peacefully fell asleep for eternity and spoke his final words that he had prepared for the life that he was proud of living. I want to do this but I do not know how to. I am sick of being compliant, but that is all I know. I don’t want to be disrespectful, but I fear that by not doing what others want of me than I am doing something for myself but what if I regret that and end up not pleasing myself or others. I don’t want a lose-lose situation. At least being compliant means the other person is happy. So my Aunt Linda loves talking on the phone, and I have been reaching out to her more often than I typically would because she is a family members that knows me well and pursued a career in business consulting prior to having my 2 cousins. She has been helping to coach me in simple ways of being more professional in my phone interviews and forwarding me options for job opportunities. I feel guilty sometimes that I ask her for help instead of my mom, but she reads too much into these things and takes too personal of a viewpoint as I get job interviews that are "too far" away from home. My Aunt Linda offers a more unbiased point of view and is very opportunistic like me.
Anyways, as I called her the other day to chat about an upcoming job interview, she could tell I wasn’t stressed. she was correct because I wasn’t stressed because it would be pretty conversational and more of a cultural fit phone call for a smaller company. I told her I don’t get stressed out about those. That’s the way part for me selling my interests in meeting the team and excitement to learn about what they do. It’s more so the phone call that is about my technical skills and quizzing me on past experiences to prove myself that gets me stressed. I know I have had ample experiences to answer those questions but verbalizing them in the proper way on the spot is where I get stumped. My Aunt Linda could tell when I was smiling though the phone as I talked to her. I have been trying to recognize this as well to see if I can. With my phone interview yesterday with 2 different women from NXT Capital, I could tell that their emotions were very serious and would not ease up much at all. This gave me the sense that the culture was very serious and I am unsure (at this point in my life) if I can take myself that seriously dealing with administrative and contractual work. This morning with Capgemini, I could tell that woman I spoke to was very passionate about what she pursued in the business transformation program. She made projects for herself outside of her mainstream financial work to fulfill her diverse interests. I could tell that Keimia was smiling as she told me she chose this career path because she was unsure coming out of her uni where she wanted to go in business. There was an opening for a position in the North American Operations so she pursed that since she wanted to work abroad. She is such go getter. She figured out what she wanted to do and then decided to go to a foreign place to master it and expand on her set of skills. I think we are very similar, me and her, except she has discovered her passions and I am still in the process of discovering mine and how they submerge together. I hope I make it to the second round because this i she first job in a long time that I feel nervously excited about. I just felt blindsided with the questions of what my biggest challenge was and when I progressed a relationship with a client to help me in the future. Eep! Fingers crossed that she can overlook if I didn’t give the most insightful answers to those questions and could read my enthusiasm on the call through all my questions to her. 3/26/2018 0 Comments OverwhelmedSo many things to do and not enough time. I applied to a bunch (4-6 jobs) on Saturday and now they have been reaching out to me. I was honestly surprised that so many of them reached back out to me because I felt I didn’t have enough qualifications…. Now they all want phone calls with me, and I just don’t even know if the jobs I applied to are worth my time because what if I’m not actually interested and waste both of our time (me and the company).
I had a spontaneous phone call between classes today already, and it had a glamorous title of a entrepreneurship- management training program. Her name was Jennifer, and she invited me out in two weeks to Glen Ellyn, Chicago after I told her I’d be gone this upcoming week for Easter at home in Detroit. It’s a startup smaller company but the job she described to me seemed more so of marketing. It sounded interesting and fun nevertheless, I would be willing to try. However, the weekend that Connected Concepts wants me to come out is the same weekend that my mom has been counting down in her calendar to visit Oxford. I have two conflicting high priorities at stake and I feel that either option is a lose- lose with no “wins” involved. This is because I just need to be employed to stop feeling so anxious and relax about life, but I might not like the company or might screw up the interview. If my mom doesn’t get to visit she’ll be bummed she missed it last year and never get another time to visit and hold it over my head for eternity. Otherwise, she’ll come to Oxford and probably just keep reminding me that I have an unknown future since it’s a crucial talking point nowadays. It’s exhausting being a people pleaser. Heck, how am I supposed to figure out what I want to do with my life if the whole time I’m just trying to make sure everyone else is okay. I feel as though my parents always want something from me that I do not give them. I try my best to involve them in my life, and their own way they try to help the best they can. In the end, it backfires and consumes my time that I need to spend elsewhere not lagging too far behind in school because I am always playing catchup. Though, the whole reason I am in school is because of them. It is quite a bizarre thing honestly. I am going home this weekend for easter to “relax” and I already feel overwhelmed with how much I have to do. I was pretty much guilted into it because my grandma is declining very fast and hopefully will at least recognize my face or still know some English. I love her to death but it’s not uplifting for me anymore to see her since she is not person I have known my whole life. On the other hand, the mere thought of losing her is the absolute worse thought to have. 3/23/2018 0 Comments Last Day of SB 2k18Wow, it is quite a weird thought to have that today during lunch none of my friends wanted to talk about our futures and where we will be. We were all hitting the reset button on the beach this past week trying to avoid reality. I hated it and honestly probably drank a handful too many coronas and popsicle cocktail concoctions.
I hate not being forward- looking or focused on my next step in life. I think about it all the time but it is like a endless black hole in space that goes on for eternity with all the options that I have. Yes, options are good, BUT with too many I feel paralyzed and sometimes just wish someone would tell me what to do or “something” like my hurt pushing me in a direction. Some days my gutt tells me go jump into the labor market and try things out and fail. other days it tells me to go spend more money and pursue a grad degree in international business or disruptive innovation to see if that sparks an opportunity for a job I can know that I have a passion for going into or gets my foot in the door for jobs I currently am unaware of. This option disregards my other plan of waiting to pursue another degree and studying for the gmat this summer to possibly get my mba “down the road” whenever that is. There’s also the option that is the “easy” route which I feel like may be most comfortable but I won’t be facing a fear if I go home and take another job at a company I was already dissatisfied at while saving money living at home surrounded by people who already know me and do not challenge me to grow more. 3/15/2018 0 Comments Links to a WatchWhen will I need the extra links to my watch? I could take some off for right now but where do I store them later on if my wrist gets fat again?
It’s similar with saving a pair of jeans that are a size too tight but having them in my drawer is a good reminder of how I used to be and that I could strive to fit in them again if I tried. However, links on a watch are more permanent of an adjustment and more crucial of a place to store since they are one-of-a-kind to each watch. Metaphorically speaking, I’m at a stage in life where I have a lot of jeans in my drawer from classes I’ve taken that I could potentially use again, but I have forgotten about over time. 3/12/2018 0 Comments Challenge the ProcessLaird Hamilton is the definition of continually challenging the process. I became aware of who he was today during class, and I had never heard of this top notch dare-devil surfer guy before. Man, oh man, is he inspirational. When he was a little boy, he came across his step-dad on the beach of Hawaii. What are the odds? Laird knew what he wanted and pursued it without questioning.
He innovated the sport of surfing to be something completely new by getting pulled up to waves behind a jet ski. Nobody said it was a rule that could not be broken, and even if there was, Laird would not have listened because some rules are worth breaking. He didn't care that this wasn't the traditional way, you get to reach the speed of faster waves and get to become a better surfer in doing so. Others viewed his new method as cheating, but since Laird never entered a surf competition himself, he didn't have to play by other peoples' rules. Ingenious! He also created the Stand-up paddle board (SUP) and a foil board. He never stopped ideating and seemed to never be content with the process that other pursued on the ocean while surfing. There was a movie made about his life last year in 2017 called "Take Every Wave", and now I really want to see it. This guy is so impressive. His wife said that Laird still does have fears even though he comes off as fearless when looking at the face of a mountain of surging water; he just handles his fears differently than the typical person. As Laird Hamilton says, "A little adrenaline every day keeps the boredom away." 3/8/2018 0 Comments Stress RelieverRecently, I have come to the realization that I mostly listen to music when I am stressed. I like to walk and listen to music. That is what I do when I walk to exams. When I am am driving in scary weather. When I am skiing down a steep mountainish hill. It was always just a habit because it made me feel less lonely when I felt lonely. I used to think that when I was stressed I would swim or go running, but that is typically after a long build-up of stress because for the amount I stress I endure daily, my amount of swimming in a pool doesn't begin to compensate.
The consistency of the song continuing allows me to know that life goes on. Once the song ends, life isn’t over just like how problems don’t end your life. When I was scared for my life each day all by self in Amsterdam with a bunch of strangers I made a playlist titled "Happy Vibes" and it starts with a song by Two Door Cinema Club called “this is the life”. Once I started singing that (with my awful voice) I basically talked myself into thinking I was living the life. I obviously am a person that can be easily convinced. Many of the songs on this playlist cause fleeting moments of nostalgia when I listen to these songs with friends over hte years. This gave me sanity to remember they are still there even when I felt deprived of social interactions and the feeling of constant comfort. All these songs on this playlist are horrendously overplayed and I have a new playlist entitled "Happy Hits!" Wow, I am so original. 3/5/2018 0 Comments FormulasI’m a calculative and analytical person. For Pete’s sake, I chose to be a finance major and follow strict formulas on the daily to complete homework for class. If you don’t follow the formula, you don’t get the right answer and you don’t do well. I used to love the aspect of only one right answer because it’s clear and defined. Now, I don’t know. I’ve changed. I don’t know when this transformation took place but it did.
I just learned in my finance class that the CAPM formula, which helps to formulate growth rates has many theories against it that prove it is not a testable theory. What? My mind is blown, like a marshmallow in a microwave. Four years later, and I learn this formula may not even be accurate according to "famous" researchers. However, I am taught and have used it so much because it’s the best formula we’ve got for the unknown growth rate. I mean I have always been skeptical of the formula because the variable of the risk free rate seems fake. Is there really something that is risk free? I find that hard to believe. This realization is literally like telling me green beans are bad for me even though I was raised to eat them irregardless. Long story short, my grandma locked me in the basement once until I ate them because she thought I was spoiled and ungrateful. I love green beans now, so you can't trick me into not eating them now. In conclusion, I do not know if I am passionate about finance. I could be maybe somewhere at some point in time. It's just so practical that I haven't seen the exciting part of it. I know there is one because my dad is a stock broker and he pursues it as his hobby on the weekends outside of dentistry. There has already been so much time and money put into getting this business degree that I might as well dive straight into the deep end and see if I could see myself doing that; if not, I can fail and quit and not live life without knowing. This is too much opportunity cost I have dealt with to not actually pursue a career in finance. |
AuthorI am a senior business student at Miami University. Here are some of my random thoughts CategoriesArchives
May 2018
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