Intersecting Minds: Education, Business and Technology at the North Carolina State Jenkins Graduate School of Management

The Home Stretch: Oodles of Work | April 8, 2010

We have three weeks of classes left.

Wow. It’s kind of hard to believe those words, but there they are all the same. Here’s a brief look at the projects I have to complete before school is out:

- New Firm Finance, Stonewall Case presentation: This project is the capstone for the class (along with an in-class final exam). In the case, Stonewall Kitchen is an up-and-coming specialty food provider who wants to expand its retail operations. Our job is to determine an overall growth strategy and an accompanying financing strategy that makes sense for the organization.

- Planning and Control Systems: There’s a lot left to take care of for this class. I’ve bulleted a few of the items below -

• Midterm #2: Coming up on Tuesday, April 13th
• ITEC: A manufacturing simulation that integrates operations strategy, master production scheduling, materials requirements planning and capacity requirements planning in one go
• Take-Home Final

- Investments: We have two more assignments left and a take-home final that no one is looking forward to. The midterm in this class was amongst the hardest I’ve taken at NC State. Since the midterm we’ve covered options (Black-Scholes, hedging and valuation) and will turn to hybrid securities next (convertible/callable bonds).

- Practicum: Last but definitely not least, our Practicum group has to put together our final presentation and recommendations as well as writing our research paper and our executive summary of the project. The SCRC presentation will happen on April 29th.

In the meantime, I’ve also picked up some consulting work that will take up about 15-20 hours/week on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Indeed, it seems like the end of the semester is near, but when I peruse my to-do list, the light at the end of the tunnel seems even further away.

But this is what we signed up for when we decided to come to business school, and if we didn’t enjoy it, we wouldn’t be here. It’s precisely this amount and type of work that is meant to prepare us for management in a corporate environment, and that’s exactly what we’re getting.

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