Thursday, June 21
Working Again
Yo. Long time, no post. The second half of spring semester kind of kicked my ass. Last summer, I heard/read/believed a number of warnings advising me that an MBA student’s first semester (fall 2006 for me) would be his/her hardest. What a load of crap. Personally, spring semester was much more demanding than the fall semester. I think this resulted from a combination of the following: (1) I was preoccupied with finding an internship the first half of the semester; (2) I had a tougher class schedule in the spring; (3) an extra-curricular team competition and a separate extra-curricular team project added to the workload; and (4) going to UT basketball games, especially Durant’s last home game, cut into my studying time.
That last reason is no joke, btw. Durant’s last home game, a nationally televised double overtime win over a higher-ranked Texas A&M team, was the night before my toughest mid-term. I know of only one other 1st-year MBA student who went to that game. Everyone else was studying. On the one hand, I really should have skipped the game in favor of studying because I bombed the mid-term. I mean BOMBED. But on the other hand, no one in real estate cares about grades (except for my hiring manager nemesis at Wells Fargo), my GPA was still high enough to ensure the great state of Texas’ continued mone-fiscal benevolence, and the fact I’m talking about bombing a mid-term makes me feel 10 years younger. (And I didn’t even bomb a mid-term 10 years ago!)
Alright, enough about that crap. Moving on...
I landed an internship at the highly-respected real estate subsidiary of a likewise highly-respected insurance company based in San Antonio. We’ll call the company “InsureCo.” These guys do a little bit of everything (development, investment, acquisitions, fund management, asset management) for a bunch of different property types: office, industrial, retail, hotel, multi-family. I’m in the development group for the summer.
I’m not going to name the company by name because they’re Big Brother-ish when it comes to the internets. (But there aren't too many major insurance companies based in San Antone, so you can figure it out very easily if you so desire.) A number of websites are blocked at work: personal email sites, YouTube, and the like. I’ve also heard rumblings of corporate software that processes what people send out via email or view in their Web browser. Due to some of the too-hot-for-San-Antonio headlines found at SFGate.com, I expect I am already on someone’s watch list. I mean, I came across a headline today titled Who Loves Designer Vaginas?. (Obviously, I do. But what the hell, SFGate?!! Are you trying to get me fired?)
InsureCo employs 13,000+ in one building in San Antonio. It is the largest office building in the country; larger than the Pentagon. I believe InsureCo has gone Orwellian in order to ensure these employees, the majority of which work in customer service call centers, answer phone calls instead of wasting time on the Web. Even though the real estate subsidiary is in a building a cross the freeway from the main campus, we get our access to the internets from InsureCo. So we suffer from the same suffocating rules as the main campus. Weak.
Poop. It’s getting late and I have a whole mess of other stuff to cover:
Wow. That's a lot. Check back for more tomorrow. (That's code for next month.)
That last reason is no joke, btw. Durant’s last home game, a nationally televised double overtime win over a higher-ranked Texas A&M team, was the night before my toughest mid-term. I know of only one other 1st-year MBA student who went to that game. Everyone else was studying. On the one hand, I really should have skipped the game in favor of studying because I bombed the mid-term. I mean BOMBED. But on the other hand, no one in real estate cares about grades (except for my hiring manager nemesis at Wells Fargo), my GPA was still high enough to ensure the great state of Texas’ continued mone-fiscal benevolence, and the fact I’m talking about bombing a mid-term makes me feel 10 years younger. (And I didn’t even bomb a mid-term 10 years ago!)
Alright, enough about that crap. Moving on...
I landed an internship at the highly-respected real estate subsidiary of a likewise highly-respected insurance company based in San Antonio. We’ll call the company “InsureCo.” These guys do a little bit of everything (development, investment, acquisitions, fund management, asset management) for a bunch of different property types: office, industrial, retail, hotel, multi-family. I’m in the development group for the summer.
I’m not going to name the company by name because they’re Big Brother-ish when it comes to the internets. (But there aren't too many major insurance companies based in San Antone, so you can figure it out very easily if you so desire.) A number of websites are blocked at work: personal email sites, YouTube, and the like. I’ve also heard rumblings of corporate software that processes what people send out via email or view in their Web browser. Due to some of the too-hot-for-San-Antonio headlines found at SFGate.com, I expect I am already on someone’s watch list. I mean, I came across a headline today titled Who Loves Designer Vaginas?. (Obviously, I do. But what the hell, SFGate?!! Are you trying to get me fired?)
InsureCo employs 13,000+ in one building in San Antonio. It is the largest office building in the country; larger than the Pentagon. I believe InsureCo has gone Orwellian in order to ensure these employees, the majority of which work in customer service call centers, answer phone calls instead of wasting time on the Web. Even though the real estate subsidiary is in a building a cross the freeway from the main campus, we get our access to the internets from InsureCo. So we suffer from the same suffocating rules as the main campus. Weak.
Poop. It’s getting late and I have a whole mess of other stuff to cover:
- Date and venue set for making Tania an honest woman
- Texans’ odd habit of loving their hometown and thinking the rest of Texas blows (at least they’re half-right)
- Vacation in San Diego
- “Class” for a week in DC
- San Antonio: extremely conducive to road rage
- Go Spurs Go: a sleepy town beats a dead horse because there is nothing else to do
- Large chunks of arboria continue to fall on and around our home
- The missus and I see our breath at 1pm in early June: a San Francisco story
- Some other things I don’t remember, but may remember in the future
Wow. That's a lot. Check back for more tomorrow. (That's code for next month.)
