The second quarter at Darden is dreaded for its heavy work load with the November month infamously referred to as the ‘Black November’. It certainly did live up to expectations but I will add that end of the day, everyone in our class is alive, well and kicking.
We had hardly recovered from our 1st quarter exams when we received bundle of new case materials in our mailbox. With Finance, Economics, Accounting, Operations and Marketing as our subjects we were in for a quantitative treat! Company briefings and networking events definetly added to our busy schedule.
Typical day was something like this
7:15 – Get up
8:00 – First class
9:25 – First coffee (Some people relaxed and got heir dose of caffeine, others setup meetings with 2nd year/Career coaches for advice on job search/networking/courses etc
10:00 – Second Class
11:25 – Second coffee
11:40 – Third class
1:15 – Done with classes
1:30 – 2:30 Company Briefings
3:30 – 6:30 – Case preparation for next day
6:30 – 7:30 Company Briefings
8:00 – 10:00 (or 11:00) learning team
Games we played
This quarter was as much about simulations as it was about case discussions. First, we had a 2 day long marketing simulation game where we got together in our learning teams to manage companies manufacturing cars. We had to come up with our product portfolio, strategic position for each product and compete with other teams to sell our cars over 6 periods. Team with best stock price and profitability won. We also had a ‘Beer game’, a combined marketing and operations game about supply chain and another operations game about strategic souring. Games were well designed and enjoyable and really added to this quarter’s fun.
Darden cup – real games!
Darden cup continued with soccer, “Darden cares 5k run” and blood drive with sections competing for points gained not only by winning but also extent of participation. Darden also had it own football and soccer teams play in the intra-mural leagues.
Events and competitions
Lots of us for some reason decided that it would be fun and challenging to go out and participate in various case competitions and events. We had several contests that Dardenites participated in such as the Deloitte case challenge, Pepsi case competition, Coke case competition, IPO challenge, Innovation challenge and couple of other names I cannot recall. Darden came in third in Coke case completion final and had team go out to final of IPO challenge, 2 teams in the Innovation challenge finals and other competitions too. I am sure the Darden website has a more accurate report on these events, mine are just from memory.
Cover letter and resume drops
This was when we put the results of our soul searching, career search and networking to test. Condense all these into 3 paragraphs on the cover letter; add your resume and you are ready to apply for a summer internship position. The only catch is that you have to repeat it 5 to 10 times varying on the number of companies you may wish to apply. The resume drop deadline in the first week of December is what makes our November, ‘Black November’.
Fun times continue
Whatever the workload, people were always out for TNDC. (Thursday night drinking club). We might have got our cases the very day exams ended but for the next few days only cases we picked up, let’s just say had a liquid with fantastic healing power. This quarter saw some big parties such as the 80’s theme party, Halloween, karaoke night and the Darden Ball. The cold call weekly family events continued with my favorite one being “Screen on the Green” an outdoor movie showing on our very own Darden lawn.
Some Charitable work
Between all these we all found some time for charitable work. Lot of classmate contributed several hours to ‘habitat for humanity’ and other efforts. Towards the end of the quarter we had auction event for to raise money for “Building goodness in april” . Read more here. We managed to raise over $50,000 for this cause
All in all a crazy quarter! Glad I’m done and looking forward to my vacation.
