Only a few more days of class to go until finals begin on Dec 10... wow. How did we get here? As Ayush said in his recent blog post, times flies here at Anderson.
I'll do a more academic focused post pre (or post) finals, but until then, here's what's been going on recently...
Deloitte Case Competition
Deloitte Consulting's Strategy & Operations practice hosted a case competition at Anderson. Team's of four were given case documents on Thursday afternoon, and had a set amount of time prior to team presentations on Saturday to analyze the case and prepare recommendations.
Since people who worked full-time at Deloitte prior to starting at Anderson weren't allowed to compete, I volunteered to help the Student Affairs office with logistics during the presentations. It was an amazing opportunity to watch my classmates in action and see the diverse set of ideas and recommendations they came up with.
The winning team, shown above (from L to R, Cameron Bunce, Smita Madhur, Celia Xue, Zach Goldman), now have the opportunity to compete at Deloitte University in early January for an array of prizes including cash and internship offers. Congrats again guys!
As I mentioned in my first post, I worked in Deloitte's Human Capital practice focusing on HR Transformation prior to starting at Anderson. Once school started and I began taking advantage of the Parker Career Center's resources such as the Career Series class and Anderson Career Teams (ACT), I made the decision to further my HR experience by pursuing an internship in corporate HR.
Unlike the majority of my classmates, who will go through recruiting in January and February, this meant that I would either be interviewing in October/November for companies that have very structured HR internship programs or in April/May for companies that do just-in-time internship hiring.
I was fortunate enough to combine my HR interest with my technology industry interest and land the opportunity to interview with Hewlett-Packard. While visiting HP in Palo Alto, all the intern candidates got to go on an awesome trip to the museum of Computer History. Some photos below of the trip...
This is the PDP-1, which was used in developing the first computer game, Spacewar!
The HP-35 was the first pocket calculator that could perform functions that, up until that point, could only be done on desktop size calculators. According to our tour guide, the quality control performed by one of HP's founders consisted of throwing the calculator against the wall to see if it would break!
Chart showing the exponential growth of micro-processor power...
And my favorite, a look back at some of the video game systems I used to play on and some I had never seen before.
Japanese Anderson Business Association Dinner
As the quarter draws to a close, one of the the things I'm most excited about is the annual Japan trip that takes place over spring break. The trip is organized by first-year students from Japan, and includes visits to places like Tokyo and Kyoto, and events such as a sumo wrestling match, traditional tea ceremony, and several others.
I went to dinner recently with members of the Japan Business Association, who gave me a glimpse into what the trip will be like by ordering authentic cuisine for a group to try.
Microbrew Club
Of course, I couldn't have a blog post that didn't mention the latest Microbrew club event. Hangar 24 came to campus and walked the club through their history and recent industry trends that they are taking into consideration as they continue to grow.
The event wasn't complete without a beer tasting, and we had seven different kinds to try! It's really cool to be in LA while craft beer is burgeoning, because unlike San Francisco (~200 plus craft breweries) and San Diego (~80 plus), the craft beer scene is quite small but experiencing explosive growth.
RIVALRY WEEK WITH USC!!
I'll end this post with one of the things that was a big draw for me in choosing to attend Anderson - being affiliated with an extremely successful sports program. I loved my time at Rice University for undergrad, but sports at UCLA are on an entirely different level.
A block of 150+ Anderson students sat together at the UCLA vs. USC game, which UCLA won! Incredible game to watch in perosn, and unbelievable experience being at the Rose Bowl, surrounded by 80,000 fans of both teams going wild at some of the back and forth moments late in the game.
Not only did UCLA beat USC at the bowl game, but we also dominated the We Run the City 5k earlier in the week. Over 1000 runners from both schools came to UCLA. Anderson had strong representation, with a group of runners pictured above.
With that, it's time for me to get ready to watch UCLA vs. Stanford in the PAC-12 conference championship later today - Go Bruins!!
Until next time,
~Kyle Forrest, follow on Twitter and follow UCLAMBA
