If I had to sum up today’s week in one word it would be cancellation.  Now y’all are probably smart enough to have figured that out from the title, but it is true.  The weeks started off not looking so good because I had so much school work to do in a very limited amount of time.  Now most of this work could have been done last weekend, but I of course did not do that.  So when Monday rolled around I was panicking because I had class and meetings until 9 PM and had an important group project for Cryptology due Wednesday as well as a paper, neither of which I had started working on.  Well luckily for me one of the classes I’m taking is Film and the City and every Tuesday we have a screening for 2 hours.  This week it just so happened that the movie was on Netflix instant watch and so I could watch it later when I had more free time.  That just freed up 2 hours of my time!  Granted it wasn’t two hours from Monday, but it was still 2 more hours in my week.  Every Monday night I have an RA meeting that takes about an hour.  I ran into my RA boss during lunch on Monday and asked him if there was anyway I could get out of the meeting that night.  He thought about it and then told me that he didn’t think he actually had anything to talk about at the meeting so he was probably just going to cancel it anyway.  There was another extra hour for me.  Well those three hours were just enough extra time for me to get all of my work done.  Woot!

Those weren’t the only cancellations this week though.  On Thursday, I was supposed to report for jury duty.  Fun fact, Massachusetts is one of the few(if not the only state) that if you are a student attending college in Massachusetts you are eligible for jury duty, even if you are not a resident of Massachusetts.  Now the way jury duty works is that you are assigned a group number.  Then the day before your assigned jury duty they figure out how many people they will need for all the trials they will have the next day.  Then that evening the jurors call in to see if their group number is going to be called.  My number was not called so I did not have have to attend jury duty.  That freed up my entire day.  I did however attend classes instead so I guess I shouldn’t say that it freed up my entire day.  The final cancellation I had for the week has been confirmed as a cancellation, but it is a possibility.  Alaina and I were supposed to go to her house for the Thanksgiving Break, but do to some complications this may no longer be the case.  Luckily I have an aunt that lives close by that is an amazing cook and is more than willing to let us join her for a Thanksgiving feast.

So for anyone out there that keeps track of man cards, you can now take one of mine away.  Alaina is a huge fan of Twilight so last night she, one of her friends, and myself attended the midnight showing of New Moon.  Not only that, but the theater we went to was also showing the first movie at 9 PM so we ended up watching both of them.  I’ve never heard so many preteen girls scream so loudly.  I never knew it was possible to make a movie consisting almost entirely of awkward moments.  Seriously, if you took out all of the long awkward glances and silences that movie would be 30 minutes like.  Interestingly there are some saving moments of the movie found in the supporting characters.  They just have the most random and bizarre one liners that they are funny.  Those one liners are not enough to make the movies enjoyable for me.  The best part is that I got to bed between 3 and 3:30 AM and then had to wake up at 7:30 AM for work.  That wasn’t fun at all.

Random Fact:

An average pair of feet will sweat a pint of perspiration a day.

Hi All,

Almost of the students on campus has either left for home or went to some place nice for thanksgiving. The point is, the campus is dead unless you are an athlete of some kind. It is great because a normal Babson student get the entire week off which at other school apparently there is only a two day break. We are so lucky!  As for my plans, I am staying here until Sunday to perform some RA duties and practice for the national competition that the Cheerleading Squad is attending in January. Not to mention how great we are, but we were able to get a full house for the first Men’s Basketball game and get the crowd so excited that our team won against Curry College.  It was a great way to start of their season, but now I am really looking forward to turkey day. Usually the tradition at home is to have family over to my mom’s place, but since she is going to Texas I will be spending my thanksgiving with very close friends that I consider family. I am very excited to go home and catch up with all my friends to hear about their new adventures at school. I wish all of you a safe and filling turkey day

For my first blog I will address an issue that is near and dear to all of our hearts. It influences our lives day-in and day-out. We get questions about it here in the Admissions Office all the time. You may pretend that it doesn’t influence your choice of institution of higher learning, but it really is always in the back of our minds (or stomachs), weighing in at least a little bit.

When we get asked “how is the food here?”, it may seem like a standard ‘get-to-know-the-school’ inquiry. But looking into the face of a prospective student as they wait for a response is like looking into their mind and realizing they’re thinking “……No, really…… How is the food? I need to know if I’m going to starve, if I’m going to spend all my money on delivery, if I should work more hours to pay for this, if I’m going to gain 20 pounds first semester, if I should start working out more now in anticipation, if I should head to GNC to pick up some vitamins to supplement my diet. You better have the right answer or I’m taking my business elsewhere, friend!” This is, rightfully, a need-to-know subject.

In order to help write this entry, I conducted an informal survey (my marketing professors would be so proud). I asked other students what their favorite meal on campus was. While my opinion on the issue is clearly important, I realize that not everyone’s day is made 20 times better when they find out that Trim Dining Hall has make-your-own Stir Fry for dinner. I collected a good variety of responses. Answers ranged from the creative: making your own pizza bagels (I’m pretty sure you would have to utilize at least 4 different stations in Trim for this), to the excessive: taking advantage of when they serve breakfast foods at dinner by having french toast and hash browns, then moving on to pizza, followed by ice cream, to avoiding the question and taking it off campus: Pik Pow Fried Rice at Lemon Thai down the street.

Some of the highlights from my survey were, the frequency of how many people said Halloween Dinner at Trim (I agree this is a Do Not Miss), any of the sandwiches from Reynolds Campus, Lobster Bisque (”I swear they had it once!”), and when the Traveling Chef Series brought in an Australian and they served Kangaroo.

Even though I quickly became overwhelmed with a HUGE range of answers to my question, it just went to show how many options we really do have and how everyone’s taste buds can be satisfied. I won’t lie, as a senior, after four years things have gotten a little tiring. This has made me more excited to get creative (props to the pizza bagel idea) and to try more restaurants in the area: my current favorite is Not Your Average Joe’s - excellent bread, great food, not expensive for college budgets.

This idea came from one of my fellow interns here in Admissions: to shake things up, see long you can go without using your meal plan on campus. He is correct in noting that there are so many events that serve free food you may not have to break out your ONECard for quite awhile. Being at a business school, people always want opinions on their new business ideas - there is no lack of focus groups who will bribe you with food to just to hear what you think. Take advantage of this.

I will leave you with the link to the Babson Dining Services website: http://www.babsondining.com/index.html. Feel free to explore and write back with what you think I should have for dinner later; I’m now on a survey kick.

Hi Everyone,

My name is Nailah Miller and I am a senior here at Babson. Babson is such a wonderful place and it is a pity that this is my last year already. What is even more devastating is that this is my last fall semester and it is almost over. It sucks because it finally hit me today that I am a senior while talking to a family that came to visit the school. However, what I did realize is how this school prepares you for the real world. With the help of career services, faculty and the Campus staff I was able to make the most of my experience here. Although my senior year is almost over, I do plan on having some big adventures throughout my last year. Stay tuned up for updates on my Babson Adventure!
 

Hi Everyone!

My name’s John Chartier and I’m a junior here in the wonderful world of Babson College and an intern in the office of Undergraduate Admission. I’ll be blogging over the course of the year and hope to give you all a little bit of a glimpse into the world of a Babson College student and what it means to go to the #1 Entrepreneurship school.

But first, a little about myself (please hold all applause until the end of the presentation). I’m purposely leaving some activities out…I need some material for future blogs, after all!

I am originally from Andover, MA, and picked Babson not only because of its incredible reputation for entrepreneurship – which, incidentally, it surpasses like crazy – but also because of the sense of community that the school offers its students. I was really struck (and still am everyday) by the amount of resources and the support system that the faculty, staff, and administration offer students during their careers at Babson.

I started in the Admissions office as a tour guide freshman year and before you ask, yes, I could compete in the walking-backwards Olympic Games, were that not such a totally useless skill. I could tell you the student-to-faculty ratio (16:1), the average class size (29), or even the fact that Babson was named the Hottest Business School in the country…but I would never bore you with facts and figures

I’m an entrepreneurship and marketing concentration – and love all of the opportunities that Babson offers.

Speaking of marketing, I just turned in my Honors Project proposal last week, which I am totally excited about! Every student in the Honors Program here at Babson completes an honors project during their time as a student, which can focus on any area of academic research with a professor of your choice. And when they say anything, they mean anything.

One of my best friends is currently debating whether he is going to write about the psychology of the television show Lost, or do a project involving the critical analysis of the financial auditing process of institutional investing (Aghhh!!!! I think I would start crying before I even opened my laptop to write about a topic like that). Another friend is writing about the role of women in spheres that are traditionally defined as “male-centric” and how that has changed in recent times.

But, then again, that’s the really cool thing about the project – it allows you to conduct research on something that you find interesting…not something that you are assigned to write about.

My project is going to focus on the way that company reputation has an impact on service failures, and something called the service recovery paradox (basically, the idea that if a company treats a customer poorly, there are certain cases where that customer will like the company even more! Weird, right!?).

Well, that all for now! Feel free to reply to my blogs or shoot me an e-mail at jchartier1@babson.edu if you have any questions, comments, or things you’d like me to talk about.

Keep it real, prospective Beaver Believers!

John

Hello hello Babson blog readers!

I hope you all are enjoying these beautiful, crisp, but super chilly November days!
(Unless you’re reading from California or Hawaii or something, then never mind…)

November at Babson means REGISTERING FOR SPRING CLASSES!

I have just registered for my LAST semester at Babson (tears tears).

So I decided to dedicate this post to classes!  As a senior, they are pretty much all dedicated to my concentrations (Marketing and Literary/Visual Arts) and I’m definitely a huge fan of all of them!
Hopefully this will give you an idea of what kind of interesting classes we have at Babson.

Fall Semester:
MARKETING MANAGEMENT (Professor Roggeveen) - the capstone class for your Marketing Concentration that looks at marketing from a strategic, managerial perspective.
BRAND MANAGEMENT (Professor Fisher) - analyzing successful brand maintenance and brand sustainability; we talk about all the big brands across industries, everything from Puma to Heineken to Ducati.
ENLIGHTENED ENTREPRENEUR (Professor DiCarlo) - an ethnographic approach to studying and observing the social entrepreneur
LIMIT CASES (Professor Goldberg) - definitely one of my FAVORITE classes at Babson, we study international Human Rights cases that span a variety of topics, including the oil crisis in Nigeria and sex trafficking in India, mainly through literary and visual representation such as books and movies.

Spring Semester:
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT MANAGEMENT (Professor Thibodeau)
ANIMATED, EXPERIMENTAL FILM (Professor Levinson)
MANAGING THE SALES PROCESS or VALUE SELLING FOR THE ENTREPRENEUR
Finally… I’m going to GHANA over winter break, for a liberal arts project with Dean Hanno and Professor Deets!

As you can see, Babson gives us the fantastic opportunity to take classes within our business focus and creatively in a liberal arts focus - no charge (except tuition, obviously…)

Feel free to post any questions about any of these classes and more at Babson!

Have a terrific Thursday,
Vanessa

Hello to everyone out there in the internet world.  I’m Lee and I’m a junior here at Babson College and you get the pleasure of hearing about my random musings.  The reason for me writing this though is because Babson College is participating in College Week Live! *cheers* This is an online college fair where students can come and chat with Admission representatives if they have any questions.  We’ll have people in the booth chatting at the following times:

• Thursday Nov. 5th: 6-9 PM
• Friday Nov. 6th: 4-6 PM
• Saturday Nov. 7th 4-6 PM

Not only do you have those lovely times that you could come and chat with us, but on Saturday Nov. 7th we are going to have a video presentation from 1-2 PM featuring myself and Jillian Smith.  You can ask any questions you want and we’ll answer them as well as we’ll be telling stories about our experiences here at Babson, it is going to be awesome!

So i guess it would prudent to tell a little about myself.  As I said I’m a junior here at Babson.  I’m originally from Kansas and couldn’t be happier to be living in Massachusetts instead.  I am engaged to a lovely girl named Alaina and I’ll probably mention her several times my blogging so just giving you the heads up.  I’m concentrating in Quantitative Analysis and want to be an actuary after I graduate, so if there is anyone working in at an insurance company reading this let me know so I can try to get an internship, looking for any connections I can find.  I’m involved in the theater organization here on campus and I happen to both act as well as run tech. Well that’s enough of the biography stuff.  This weekend my plans are pretty simple because I have to work everyday except for Sunday so that leaves Sunday as my homework day…what fun.  Oh well just 2 weeks and then it is Thanksgiving break.  Huzzah.

Oh and I’m going to close every blog with a random fact and a random picture.

Random fact: If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.

So here we are, about half way through the Fall semester at Babson!  The campus is gorgeous with the New England fall leaves dusting the ground and the air getting crispy and cooler by the hour.  This weekend is FALL WEEKEND, one of the highlight weekends of the year, as Babson students flock to a ton of really fun, interesting events and activities… specifically HALLOWEEN PEPSICO PARTY on Saturday night, one of the biggest parties of the year. Every student on this campus is decked out in their most creative costume attire for this extravaganza. Can’t wait!

Another really unique event is this weekend that goes to show that YES, you can have EXPERIMENTAL THEATER at a Business School - and pretty good theater too.

I am the President of the Babson Players and a CommUnity Educator, and this semester I have teamed up with Origins of Necessary Equality (ONE Tower) and Black Student Union to collaborate on an epic theater event, produced by yours truly, directed by Arts & Humanities Professor Jon Dietrick, and starring two current seniors - Terence Musto and Pichon Duplan.

Student Clubs and Organizations

TOPDOG / UNDERDOG
A dramatic play by Suzan Lorie-Parks

The idea that sparked this event began in my Modern Drama class with Professor Dietrick last Spring. Terence and Pichon had performed a scene from the play for a class project - they had never acted before and we were all blown away by the performance!  I immediately thought that these two should have the opportunity to showcase their (hidden!) talents to the campus wide community. Thus initiated this play!

Another cool aspect of this event is that it is the FIRST EVER BLACK BOX PRODUCTION! We have converted the dance studio of Sorenson Center for the Arts into a make-shift black box that allows the audience to feel completely connected to the setting and the characters.  The play takes place in the tiny apartment of the two characters, thus the audience feels completely drawn into the time and place.

Sorenson Center for the Arts

The guys have done a fantastic job and I can’t wait for all of our friends and favorite staff members to see it tonight and tomorrow!!!

Have an awesome and safe Halloween!

High fives,
Vanessa

I know it has been a great travel season when my office is a huge mess!  Well, that seems crazy to say, but it is quite true.  I wish I had a camera so that you all could understand what I mean.  I have profiles from high schools, inquiry cards, receipts and business cards among other things placed in piles around my office.  Also, I have transfer folders that I continue to read and evaluate right on my desk for our Spring of 2010 cohort so that I can get a head start on those before I begin reading ED and EA files.

That is truly the theme- this time of October is a time of transition for the admission counselor.  We return from our travels, hyped up about all the super kids we have met and all the exciting places that we have been.  Fall cleaning ensues, and then, we move into hibernation mode, otherwise know as reading season. For now, I will clean through my materials, catch up on email and get organized so that I feel refreshed and ready for your applications.

At this time tomorrow, I will be landing at Heathrow, readying myself for the first leg of my European journey.  I have read applications from the UK for the past three admission cycles, but I have yet to visit these schools.  Needless to say, I am quite excited to visits with students at TASIS, the American School of London and Southbank International School.

Of course, I am tying up loose ends here at the office before I head out for the day.  There are intern meetings to plan, transfer application review days to set and emails to answer.  But, they are all good problems to have.  I love this busy time of the year.

One thing I have not had time to do is plan where I will run in London.  As many blog readers know, I fancy myself as quite the runner.  So, as soon as I am at the Marriot, I am sure I will be logging on to the British version of mapmyrun.com to see where I should venture to.