Going to Spain...

Hello world! I have made a commitment to start blogging again - especially because I will be blogging from across the ocean! I am spending my final MBA semester at ESADE in Barcelona. This means that I leave in one week, assuming my visa gets here in time. *fingers tightly crossed.*

I thought as a primer to the experience, I would share what I used for my interview earlier this year.  It pretty much sums up why I chose this program.  (FYI - We were asked to come in to answer questions. I prepared a take-away, complete with a photoshopped picture of myself + Bevo at ESADE, and surely had the cheesiest interview ever. It worked.)

Top Five Reasons to Send Erin to ESADE

 

5. I love international experiences! ESADE is an international student mecca, with 45 countries represented. Speaking of, have I proved that I love international experiences while at UT? Some examples: starting an international speaking group, mentoring international students, being an exchange-student buddy, TA'ing for a global marketing class, doing a Global Exchange program...

4. My career goal: Consulting on global projects from a European base.  My original intention was to get my MBA in Europe, but my plans evolved and I came to McCombs with a goal to get to Europe ASAP! I plan to transfer to Europe with BCG within a few years and work on projects of a global scale. Barcelona is the perfect hub to establish a European base.  (BCG has a Barcelona office!)

3. Culture! Language! Spain! I've traveled around the world, but Spain has always eluded me. I feel this is the perfect opportunity to explore the country, specifically Barcelona, on a prolonged basis. Being an art history minor in undergrad, I've always imagined being in Gaudi, Picasso, and Miro's backyard.  I'm also excited to practice my rusty Spanish and learn some Catalan.  

2. Represent McCombs on an International Scale.  I've already spent my time at McCombs actively promoting the school: MBA Student Blog, CCIMS Marketing Fellows, Twitter, Texas Enterprise.... I will continue to do this and share my ESADE Study Abroad experience for McCombs. 

And last but not least...

1. Risk. Adapt. Change. After 13 years in Austin, I want to try something completely different.  Try a new lifestyle, meet completely different people, immerse myself in a different way of living. I believe ESADE is an amazing option to do this, and I am so excited for the opportunity. 

~Thank You!!~

Lucky

Wow, it's been a while since I've blogged! Trust me, I've wanted to... however this crazy MBA life has got me focused on other things....

However, I did want to hop on for a minute because I am feeling particularly happy and lucky today.  Warning: mushiness is about to ensue.  As I write this (and take a much needed break from performing conjoint analysis for my pricing & revenue optimization class), I am sipping some Trader Joe's Vanilla & Cinnamon hot tea... which was made for me by Joe... who not only stopped watching NFL to heat up water for me, but then brought in over ten different boxes of tea so I wouldn't have to leave my desk and go to the kitchen to pick out a flavor...I swear, he is so good at the little things!

And also the big things! Yesterday on my way to an adventure race, I got a flat tire about 1.5 miles from home. Joe not only stayed with my car and handled changing the flat while I got a ride to the race (thanks K!), but then he went to Discount Tire and bought me two new tires! My car was back to new once I got home. I wasn't expecting this at all, but gosh it made my life so much easier to have everything taken care of.

People ask me all the time how Joe & I are doing, how things are going with me being in school, and how things are going living together.  The answer is easy - we couldn't be better!  When I say I don't know how I would have made it so far without him, I am being totally serious. Sure I could have made it, but he sure makes my life so much easier and so much better.  I am one seriously lucky girl.

And with that bundle of mushiness, I'm back to some conjoint analysis. :)

Hanging out in California last weekend. :)

Travel...

I just realized... this has been an awesome year for travel!

Hawaii + Colorado + INDIA!!!+ Roadtrip (Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, DC) + Switzerland & Italy!

Not bad for going back to school, right?

Almost done...

I can't believe that I am about to be done with my first year of graduate school.

I just wrote a post for the McCombs student blog about "Lessons for a First Year" and it reminded me of this post I wrote back in October.

I'm halfway there, and I couldn't be more confident that I did the right thing. :)

A weekend! And horrible blogging!

This probably sounds ridiculous, but I just had my first "real" weekend since I started the MBA program. I still had MBA commitments... (I mean, let's not get crazy here!) but I also got the chance to hang out in Austin, doing what I wanted, with people who I wanted, and it was frankly quite awesome.  What exactly has been taking up so much time since August!?

I digress. I will say the weekend officially started on Thursday, when I got out of class at 9:30 and called up my good buddy Rob to see if he could ditch work and meet me for coffee. He could! So we did! And it was so fun and refreshing. I love friends like that - the ones who just inspire you when you hang out. Anyway, I next spent the ENTIRE DAY at home doing nothing. I thought about working on a paper, but I didn't. I mainly played online and hung out with the pups.

On Friday, I met my buddy Kevin for a run around Mueller, and then headed to campus for lunch. With my college ex-boyfriend. Who I actually like now. (I say that because when you awkwardly break up with someone, and then you have nearly 10 years of silence, and then you meet up and can be normal adults... well it's fun!) From there I did MBA stuff... working an org. fair table at Preview Weekend and then hanging out at the Red McCombs Red Zone with my buddies. Tough, yeah, I know. Then a smaller group of us went to Hopfields and caught up, which was so relaxing and nice and lacking the dreaded b-school chatter that usually follows a group of MBA students hanging out. I don't think I heard "benchmarking" or "core competencies" or "differentiation-based pricing" once!

This reminds me - I need to learn what beers I like. The Hopfields menu was way too overwhelming for me. Water please? That's the surefire answer at this state of my beer-knowledge base.

Saturday was equally lazy as Thursday! I didn't even leave the house until 2, and that was just to go to a preview weekend happy hour for the graduate consulting group. I met a girl who was exactly in the same shoes I was in last year, and it was interesting (for me at least) to sell UT as much as I did. I wish a future Erin could have been there last year to help me out. It worked out of course... always does... but still.... Anyway, from there I met the wonderful Tanya and again left feeling so inspired and happy. Did I mention how much I love the friends that warm the soul?  Lastly, Joe & I met up with our buddies Jon & Leslie for dinner and games. (We missed P+M!!) I shall just say...who knew the chicken-dance could elicit such laughs?!

And then... Sunday came! And it was still busy as ever! I took the pups hiking with some MBA friends. It is always easy to get people to meet me when we start at Taco Deli. :) The hike was especially exciting because June went swimming for the very first time. I was so proud. And amused... because she hops like a bunny when she swims. :)  The hike made Sam tired... but not too tired not to safeguard her bone. :)

Then... I rushed home, got ready, and met more friends for a brunch at Moonshine. Delicious! And then... I went to Laguna Gloria with Joe's sister and her kids to play artistic miniature golf. Cute, huh?

 

From there, I went home and proceeded to realize that my naive "I have nothing to do for school" way of thinking was horribly wrong. And in fact, I did have a lot to do for school. So I watched TV for an hour. Yay for procrastination. ;) I did eventually get everything done, and enjoyed an amazing home-cooked meal by Joe. (Because of course, anything home-cooked would not be from me.) And we hung out on the hammock for a while at sunset, admiring his hard weekend's work of landscaping, and for a while I thought... I don't need any more than this. (Here he is last weekend... in search of palm trees. Love.)

So... I suppose my main point of putting this on my blog was to demonstrate to myself that I still remember how to have a fun weekend in Austin. It can happen! School does not have to eat my life away!

And... another thing. I am starting my "Things to Do in Austin Before I Move" list. It is entirely possible that I have the months of April, May, September, October, November, December 2012 left in Austin... and then I will be living elsewhere. Kinda crazy. So it's time to get working on seeing it all!