Hello, all. I’ve had a great weekend so far and I hope you have, too. On Friday our section and another section had a joint barbecue at Westwood Park and it was great. Any excuse to get together and drink beer with friends I’ll take. Then yesterday I bowled in a charity bowl-a-thon for C4C (Challenge for Charity). UCLA Challenge for Charity is the largest charitable organization at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. UCLA C4C raises money and supplies volunteer hours for two local charities: LA Works and Special Olympics. Anderson takes C4C incredibly seriously and has won the annual C4C competition among nine West Coast business schools for the past three years! We like to take advantage of any opportunity to aid our community, and it doesn’t get much better than bowling for charity. Many people showed up in funny costumes and the positive spirit of the event far outweighed the competitiveness that comes along with bowling. I, for one, enjoyed myself immensely.
Today I am preparing for the busy week I have ahead of me. I am excited because this coming Thursday and Friday, the first year directors of the Investment Finance Association have arranged for us to visit several investment banks in Palo Alto and San Francisco for what we call “DOJs,” or days on the job. DOJs are great ways to interact and learn more about the companies we are interested in pursuing. You go to the location, listen to a presentation by members of the firm, and then spend some time networking with the recruiters (the Circles of Death never end!). Then it’s off to the next company for the same type of thing. We are scheduled to visit eight banks in two days, so it should be a productive trip.
Aside from the DOJ trip, we are doing quite a bit to prepare ourselves for the internship-getting process. Tonight, a few of us will be doing some more interview prep. We will be studying frequently-asked interview questions and the valuation strategies we learned at our Training the Street workshop last weekend. The location tonight is Starbucks in Westwood, and, if I can say so, it beats the library, at least tonight when the last thing I want to do is head to school. So, with that I am signing off. I hope you all have a great week and thank you for reading!
Kelly