Let's Talk Business.

Alright, so it's been a while since I've posted, but senior year is a much different animal than the rest of my college experience thus far and I'm learning to adjust to not have time to do anything as I go along. Yet, here I am, finally posting, thank god! It's been a long and stressful past two weeks, but all the work I've been putting in is finally starting to pay off, as I can now say I'm officially done with the project for my first senior seminar!

This semester, I'm taking both my MJD senior seminar and my Business Administration senior seminar at the same time (I know what you're going to say - I'm crazy. I know, but I didn't have another choice with the way my schedule worked out), but I just finished preparing my mock business plan for my Business Administrations senior seminar and handed it in yesterday. and now I'm breathing a bit easier!

Here's a screenshot of the cover page - it ended up being over 70 pages long!

So when you're a Business Administration major at Saint Mike's, once you learn about the vast and in-depth worlds of finance, advertising, marketing, management, and a bunch of other business-related topics, you enter your final class to tie it all together - Business Strategy. This class offers an in-depth examination into various different business case scenarios of actual businesses, analyzes strategies to improve upon these businesses' strategies, and to top it all off, you get to make your very own mock business plan based on an idea that's totally your own! This mock business plan has to have everything under the sun, from sample advertisements to more financial statements than you ever knew existed. It's a TON of work, there's no hiding that, but the final product is well worth the stress!

For my groups' business plan, we created a business that will refurbish and sell donated skateboards, bicycles, scooters, and 100% recycled clothing while also donating a portion of our profits to Vermont outdoor movements, organizations, and charities to promote being environmentally friendly and echo our business' values. As hard as it all was to put together on time and as accurately as possible, it was such a rewarding experience! Oh, and did I mention that a few groups from each semester this class is offered get picked to participate in a business competition in the spring for a chance to win $5,000?

Needless to say, with that motivation on top of the motivation to get a good grade, I put my all into this and I'm so proud of how it turned out! My group makes our presentation to the class on it next week and I'm really nervous I'm going to mess something up, but I'm hoping my professor will like it and it has enough potential to get into the competition!

For those of you who are interested in the business program here at Saint Mike's or are in it already, just know that this kind of class is fairly unique to Saint Mike's. Not only is it very rigorous and in-depth, but it also offers you the chance to create a final project that not a lot of other business graduates from other schools can claim that they've done. I'm definitely going to tout this business plan on my resume for future employers, so if you're looking for a business program that's both challenging and sets you apart from the average college student, I would definitely recommend looking into the one here at Saint Mike's!

Fall Adventures!

Hey y'all, happy Saturday!

Having Friday off this week has given me much more time to buckle down and get some work done, but it's also allowed more time to relax and have fun with friends! I'm often so busy this semester (being it's senior year and I'm in 2 senior seminars right now...yikes) that I hardly have as much time to hang out with friends or go out as I used to, but I've still managed to break from the stress every once in a while and have some fun. 

Fall is debatably my favorite season (it's a battle between fall and summer, I just can't decide), but this fall has been especially strange up here in Vermont because it's continued to stay pretty warm throughout October. The other night I was walking around campus in just a tank and shorts and it must've been close to 70 degrees! It was insane, but hey, I'm not complaining.

On a somewhat different yet also related note, here are some pictures of fun fall times I've had so far this semester:

I love drives home in the fall. Look at how beautiful my driveway becomes!

Minecraft paid a little visit to SMC the other day!

Fellow blogger Kathryn Miyahira becomes a soldier!

In short, what's been the most stressful time of my life has had really nice moments of hilarity and relaxation sprinkled in-between to keep me sane. As long as I have great people and even better (preferably warm) weather to live off of, I'll always be happy. That's the great thing about Saint Michael's - sure, you're stressed out sometimes, that's just college, but you're also surrounded by great people that want to see you happy.

Military Life - Senior Year Edition.

So, this past weekend was drill for both my roommate Jesse and I. For those of you who may not know what drill is, it's an essential part of being in the National Guard or Reserve in the military where you go to your assigned based one weekend per month and do the job you were hired to do. For me, that is Client Systems, which is a fancy way of saying IT Technician basically. Jesse is a Navy Hospital Corpsman, so he works down in medical in his shop helping patients who need shots, blood work, and the like.

This is the first semester both of us have gone to drill at the same time while being officially done with all training required to wear the uniform and do the job. Jesse was gone to boot camp and his training school all last semester and some of the summer, while I did my training the year before around the same time frame. We've noticed that even though he's Navy and I'm Air Force, our schedules for drills have matched up oddly enough!

Jesse and I being goofballs after drill this past Sunday - 'Merica!

One of the reasons Saint Michael's College is such a great school is because of all of the support they offer for military members. Katherine Orthman, the woman in charge of coordinating students with the Veterans' Affairs Office for the school, has done everything from submitting paperwork for my GI Bill to selecting my classes for me when I was away training, and I couldn't be more thankful. Aside from that, the Air National Guard and Army National Guard both offer the Buxton Scholarship each semester, which can pay for the cost of up to 16 credits! I've been fortunate enough to receive it for the past two semesters, and I'll find out soon if I got it for next semester as well.

If you have any questions about how Saint Mike's works with the military, feel free to ask me! Im also going to be attending a military ball next month, so stay tuned for a post about that!

Happy Tuesday!