Happy Friday and Good MBA Humor

I was sent this great blog post by Palo Alto For A While that I thought some of you fellow MBA types might find amusing. I'll share the suggested business school essay topic for Haas:

UC Berkeley Haas: What makes a hippie like you think you can succeed in business? Use the words 'sustainable' and 'green' at least twice in your response.

Check out the rest of them here.

Happy Friday!

A Painting Adventure...

So, it's been a VERY long time since I've blogged. I apologize for my radio silence. It's been a busy part of the semester. I finished school, had finals, started training for my half marathon in October, and started my internship. The commute has left me with little time for much else. However, I have started painting again.

I have a friend who recently got married and she requested that I paint something for her for her wedding present. I got into acrylic painting a few years ago in an attempt to put some nice art on the walls of my post-college apartment. I generally only paint abstract art because I am not great at drawing. This time, I branched into the slightly more realistic realm by trying to re-create an awesome sunset that I saw one night over the Puget Sound. Check out the cool clouds and sky hidden in the darkness.

For those of you out there who have never painted before, I thought I'd include photos as I make progress on the painting. Of course I thought of that brilliant (insert sarcasm here) idea after I started painting, so you're going to have to start by imagining a white canvas.

The dark bluish-black-gray at the top of the sunset was the easiest for me so I started there by mixing some almost royal blue paint with some black paint. One of my favorite things to do is not quite mix two paint colors together to give depth and artistic touch to the painting. You'll see some brighter streaks of blue along with some almost black streaks.

After starting with the top, I moved on to the bottom red portion of the sunset. I happen to already have a tube of the perfect fiery red color from my first ever painting endeavor so that's an easy one for me to add.

If you look really closely at the white portion of the canvas, you'll see that I've sketched a bit to help remind myself which colors need to go in which portions of the canvas. Of course all of this will change as I paint, but I thought I'd leave myself with a bit of direction.

At the moment, this is all of the progress I've made on the painting thus far, but I will continue to blog as I add colors and work more on it. For those of you readers who have been there for me when this started as a food blog and then became a business school blog and now continue to read as this becomes a bit of a painting blog, I appreciate your continued support and I hope you enjoy the temporary diversion from my other topics.

P.S. Perhaps blogging about my half marathon training will be coming soon as well.

Ah!!! Enjoying Second Semester!

All along, I have heard so many people talk about how relaxing and fun second semester of b-school is. Until last week, this was definitely not my experience!! Part of that I did to myself by taking two experiential learning classes that required a lot of time outside of class, but part of it just happened.

I was in full-blown internship search mode from January through April when I finally got my first offer. Let's just say that this took about 5-20 hours of my week every week. From driving to interviews to writing tons of cover letters, it was a very time consuming process. I became extremely worried when I finished the on-campus recruiting season without having had any second round interviews. In reality, it was a great thing that I didn't get a job during this period as most of the really interesting jobs with technology companies were posted after Spring Break. I'm definitely glad that I waited. I got a great offer working with Yahoo! as a product manager which is exactly the role that I wanted.

I've definitely been reminded lately that we all need a break. Haas participated in Challenge4Charity weekend at Stanford with 8 other MBA programs a couple of weeks ago. Spending two days outside in the gorgeous CA sun, running around, and playing games with classmates while not talking at all about work was definitely what I needed. I'm making a point to do this more often and take one day a weekend off from doing a ton of work.

This week has just been blissful! Meetings have calmed down. I've had time to catch up on some of my favorite tv shows that I've been very behind on and go out and socialize with my classmates before everyone heads off to their internships this summer. I even had time to bake not one but two! chocolate decadences! Fabulous!!! I can only hope the last several weeks of school are as good as this one has been!!!

ClearAdmit Best of Blogging 2009-2010 Nominee!

I was very excited to learn earlier this week that Sunnyside Up has been once again nominated by ClearAdmit for a Best of Blogging award!

While I know that I haven't been as good at posting regularly this year, I appreciate all of you who continue to visit my site and leave comments. I will work on catching up on some of the posts that I've thought of but haven't had time to write during the summer when at least the homework slows down.

Thanks again for this great honor, ClearAdmit!

Fitting In

So you'd think after 3/4 of a year of business school, I would have felt like I fit in with the rest of my classmates before now. Honestly, aside from a little bit towards the end of Fall semester, I continued to feel like I was straddling two worlds and not really fitting into either one very well.

Spending some time with my classmates and other time on the other side of the Bay has made it difficult to feel like I really have a good idea of what is going on in Berkeley or SF. I think I say no to about twice as many events as I actually attend. I was really feeling frustrated that I'd spend a weekend in Berkeley and end up sitting at home because I didn't know what was going on or constantly trying to cram in as many SF events as possible into one trip to the city.

This week, however, I managed to spend a lot more time in Berkeley and also decided to go out and hang out with people even when that wasn't the best of ideas for me getting what I needed to done. I now feel like I have a group of people that keep me clued in on what's going on around Berkeley. Also, we've started going out only once a week, but the whole class goes so it's a blast.

I don't know I'm really any more connected with my classmates, or if I just feel that way because I spent so much time studying with them for my finals last week, but it's definitely nice to not feel like I'm constantly straddling two worlds, even if it is just temporary.

Remember To Do Things For You!

It is very easy to get wrapped up in life. Class, homework, social events, group projects, papers, research easily dominate our life. We continue to focus on the things that we need to get done everyday to meet deadlines and quickly forget about the things that we need to do to take care of ourselves and ensure that we are motivated enough to continue doing all of the things that are due every day.

While this is definitely something that I think we will continue dealing with throughout life, business school makes it quickly apparently that you really do have to do something for yourself otherwise you will burn out. I was definitely approaching burnout last week. I had been sick for at least a week, behind in most of my classes, constantly forgetting to do the things that I needed to for school and definitely not motivated to do any of it. Despite not having the time, I made myself go and work out and decided to prioritize seeing a ballet that I had been wanting to see for years and just hadn't found time for.

It's amazing how these two small things really changed the shape of my entire week. No, technically I didn't have time for either of these activities. The mental and physical break that both made for me was crucial for me being so productive this weekend.

This just goes to show that when you're tired, worn out, and overwhelmed, you need to take time for YOU!

Haas Tech Club Blog Post

It has been a busy couple of weeks and I haven't had much time for blogging. I thought I'd share a post that I wrote for the Haas Tech Club blog about our trip to the most recent ChicMeetsGeek event.

Check it out here. Happy Reading!

Champagne Cupcakes with Champagne Buttercream Frosting

Girls applying to business school generally know that they're signing themselves up for a highly male dominated environment. However, the true impact of that statement is not something that will quite hit until you're well into your first semester and realize that you keep having conversations about South Park and video games. Sometimes all you need is just a few hours spent enjoying wine and the company of the other girls in your class to unwind and not have to attempt to understand the male dominated conversations that permeate campus.

Hence, girls night.

I offered to host the most recent girls night as it gives me an excuse to try out a new baking recipe every now and again since I also really miss having leftover cookies, cupcakes, etc in my freezer to pull out when the craving strikes. The girls unanimously wanted cupcakes and almost everyone voted for these champagne cupcakes as well.

While they weren't the easiest cupcake to make due to the whipped egg whites in the batter, they still were relatively quick. (For those of you who try this recipe on your own, note that the batter is going to seem very sticky (almost like a bread dough) until you try to add the egg whites and then it will seem very clumpy and not well mixed. Not to worry, you're on the right track.)

The frosting has a great buttercream flavor with just a hint of champagne at the very end of the bite. I recommend making it at least the night before as the flavor does change a bit.

All in all, one very tasty experience and great for any party. If you'd like to make your own Champagne Cupcakes, check out the recipe here.

Second Week Into Second Semester

I have to say that everyone has lied that second semester is easier than first semester. Yes, I'm rested after 5 weeks off. Yes, I'm more into the whole swing of school with homework and classes. Yes, I feel like I know my way around Haas and enjoy my classmates. However, the sheer magnitude of commitments seems to have doubled from first semester.

Ok, it's possible that this is my fault after securing two elected positions in clubs, taking one class that centers around an outside consulting project and another that requires a business plan. But I think all of this would be manageable if I wasn't trying to also continue my career soul searching plan.

We get notifications multiple times a day about great jobs, internships and other side projects that we can work on if we feel that we have the time. All of them sound interesting and I'm back to my original challenge when I came to b-school: learning to say "no" swiftly and decisively. After all of these great opportunities are shared with me, I find myself thinking about potential careers that I had ruled out by the end of last semester and attracted to careers I didn't even know existed. I do feel like I have some focus, but yet, the sheer quantity of possibilities once again becomes a bit overwhelming.

I can't help but think of how difficult this semester will be if I hadn't already made progress learning to say "no" and just buckle down and get work done last semester.

It's Cover Letter Season!

Luckily, we're not quite back into the full swing of the semester yet, but January is still bringing quite a lot of work for me being on break and all. We have already started applying for summer internships. Yup, that's right. We're applying for jobs that start in about 4.5 months already. Besides that, I'm not sure how broad to go in my internship search since I'm not sure how easy or difficult this whole process is going to be.

I hardly feel like I've had enough time to "explore" different career options and am finding myself heading towards an internship that I thought might be interesting prior to starting business school. Is this really the right career for me? Should I try something else? Unfortunately, it feels like I don't really have time to answer these questions as application deadlines are looming. I guess at this point, the best I can do is go with what I think I want. Hopefully, I don't end up kicking myself for not taking more time to figure out what I'd like to do in the future.

At any rate, I get to spend the last week of break making sure that I work on cover letters in addition to all of the other fun and relaxing things I have up my sleeve for the week.

Sunnyside Up's Best of 2009

In hopes of this becoming a tradition, I wanted to share with you my best of 2009 in the same fashion as my Best of 2008 post. Lots of big things happened this year and I can only hope that 2010 brings even more great and new adventures for life. (Note: These are in no particular order, nor are they all of the great things that happened this past year.)

1. Starting my MBA at Haas.
2. The end of the b-school application rollercoaster.
3. Catching up with good friends in the PNW not once, but twice this year.
4. Going to Alaska and experiencing almost 24 hours of light, even though we saw no moose.
5. Feeding a Musk Ox.
6. One of my best friend's getting engaged.
7. My good friend from college's awesome wedding and amazing macadamia nut crusted halibut.
8. Giving in and joining the iPhone craze.
9. Crazy wine bus trips to Napa and hilarious Haas costume parties.
10. Fitting back into my skinny jeans thanks to Dailey Method and walking everywhere.
11. New friends.
12. Becoming a full time student and not having conference calls 24/7.

It is very interesting to look back on 2009 and see that I have been able to get to new and better places based on all of the work that I started many years ago. I guess it's always nice to know that you're not wasting your time with all of these grand ideas. My best of lists are reminding me as well that I'm getting to be more and more of an adult as friends get married, engaged, and people start buying houses and settling into their future lives. I know that it's a very lofty goal for 2010, but it would be nice if I had a bit of a better idea of what I want in the future.

As I look back on 2009, it almost feels like two years with just one date because my pre-Haas life seems so different than my Haas life. As I regress to being a crazy social, studious grad student, everyone else continues around me while I'm off on this separate adventure. I definitely need to be sure that I'm using this time wisely, otherwise it will be just one costly adventure.