My new term

My new term started very slowly. I have only three classes this term and am starting on my business project which we all have to do instead of writing a thesis. A fact, that I appreciate a lot. The best of all is that I only have one core class left, so the majority of classes I do this term are all chosen by me. That makes a bit of a difference. I’m especially excited about my business project. We are five people in our team. We work for a small company, Hinge Digital, which was founded last year by three animators who decided that they had enough of California and moved to Portland. Our main task will be to give them recommendations in relation to how they should position and market themselves being a brand new start-up company. It is very exciting since I have never worked with a start-up company and I have no idea about the entertainment industry especially the wide field of animation. Apart from my business project I’m doing the “Cases in Financial Analysis” and “Introduction to Entrepreneurship” classes. Don’t ask me how I came up with this combination. So far I like both classes very much. Although I assume that I will definitely be fed up with case studies after this finance class, since that is all we do. I sometimes feel lost with all the finance specialists, but I’m fighting my way through it. For the other elective we have to work on our individual business ideas, which is a very interesting process and one I have never done before. Let’s see, maybe I will end up as an entrepreneur. Hey, I hope I do not hear anyone laughing at this point. I have no new pictures to add for you today, but I have a big birthday bash coming up and hopefully some good pictures that come with it.

The break

After a long term I packed my bags and was looking forward to a nice, relaxed Christmas with Sören and my family back home. It was definitely very nice and I had tons of fun seeing Sören, my friends and family again, although I’m not 100% sure about the relaxing part. ;) I stayed at my parent’s house for a night, then in Nuremberg for four days, came back to my parent’s place for the Christmas days and then went on to Hamburg from the 26^th till the 1^st to stay with Sören again. On the 1^st we went back to my parent’s place before I took off on the 2^nd. However, it was wonderful to see everyone again. My roommates Vanessa and Max came to see me in Hamburg. I should probably mention at this point that Max did a semester abroad in Copenhagen and went back to the US on the 2^nd as well. And I had a fantastic New Years’ eve with some of my closest friends. I uploaded some impressions from my time back in Germany.

Christmas break 2009

My old term

The last term went by so fast that I hardly had begun writing for my blog, before it was over. Well, I guess true is that it was a busy term, but that should not serve as an excuse. After coming back from my awesome road trip with Sören, I had three weeks of leisure time, before my so far craziest term in this MBA started. Next to finishing up 13 credits of core classes, I had the insanity to choose an elective. Everything went well, however, and I had some interesting classes such as business strategy, organizational management and new product management. As a proof though that I was not only studying the whole time, I attached pictures of some fun activities that I did during the fall. Most importantly, of course, I moved into my new home. Since September I have been living in a big house on the East side of Portland owned by Max and Vanessa. Max is a classmate of mine. Apart from Max and Vanessa, another roommate, Nate, is living in the house. And of course I should not forget the coolest cat in town ‘Vino’ (see pictures). The house is very pretty as you can see in the pictures and it is located right in the middle of a lovely neighbourhood. I just love the East side. It is very unique and there are a lot of really good bars, restaurants and cafes. We have a $3 movie theatre a couple of blocks away and a local bar that shows German soccer. What do you want more? Another highlight was my attendance of the 2009 Net Impact Conference in Ithaca, New York. Net Impact, I should probably explain to those who don’t know, is an international non-profit organization whose goal is to use the power of businesses to create a more socially and environmentally sustainable world. The membership is made up of student and professional chapters. I’m a member of our Net Impact student chapter at PSU. As a member of this chapter I got a stipend to attend the conference with the overall subject “Advancing Sustainable Global Enterprises”. Not only that I got the chance to travel to the East Coast of which I have only seen New York so far, there were also a lot of really interesting speakers. I spear you with details, but the most prominent was probably the CEO of General Electrics, Jeffrey Immelt, although he was definitely not the most impressive one. So far so good, here are some pictures from my fall 2009 in Portland.

Fall Term