The past month has been a whirlwind.  I thought surely the second quarter would be easier than the first quarter, but I now have to laugh at that thought. Class workload is still high, but now we’re really getting involved with things outside class, like the MBA+ project, recruiting events, career fairs, case challenges, networking, club activities, etc… I never quite understood the power of my Outlook calendar until this month – but it now dictates my every move, and I am lost without it!

I didn’t realize we only two days of classes last week until I consulted Outlook on Sunday night.  Why only two days of classes? Because McCombs is on top of things! They want us out and networking and learning about potential career opportunities.  This week, my fellow classmates headed out to New York City, Houston, and Portland to learn about corporate finance, energy consulting, marketing, investment banking, and clean energy. Those interested in entrepreneurship stayed in Austin – we are, after all, a start-up capital city!

I chose to attend the Dallas Marketing Trek and had the opportunity to visit the headquarters of Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, Yum! Brands, and Frito Lay. More impressive was the ability to meet the marketing teams behind these companies.  Hearing from the Chief Marketing Officer of Pizza Hut, the Brand Manager responsible for Cheeto’s, and the Shopper Marketing Director for Dr. Pepper Snapple is clearly not an opportunity one gets every day. (I could go on for quite a while about the various people we met – there were a ton of of amazing people with great insights into their jobs.)

Here are a few pictures. Can you guess where we are?

Pretty cool, huh? I’ll let you in on a little business school secret.  When you start school, you don’t have to know exactly what you want to be when you grow up. However, if you can narrow it down to one or two specializations, and then focus your attention on capitalizing on opportunities within McCombs related to those specializations, you will be amazed at how much you can learn even in just a few months.

Even if you know exactly what you want to do, you should still take advantage of the multitude of resources McCombs offers. When else will you be able to make your non-b-school friends jealous about things like visiting the flavor labs for Dr. Pepper? (The answer – probably never! So take advantage while you can!)