"Mission: To Enjoy Life As A Hedonist"

My 4pm class got cancelled today! Now I'm at home, and I'm going to try to cross things off my to-do list.

I really enjoyed my Consumer Behavior class today. The class is very psychologically-oriented, and I feel that it helps me understand my relationships with other people better. Thus far in the class, my professor has explained how humans are hedonists by nature, where they want pleasures and avoid punishments. Today, we talked about how no two people have identical experiences, so to expect others to have your beliefs or values would be futile. What I got out of today's class was that the only way to build rapport with others is to respect people when they disagree with you.

Since I am on the Student-Faculty Relations Committee for the Marketing department at Kelley, I was excited to see that the survey we created was sent out yesterday. It asks students about their current opinions of the marketing department, and how they feel changes should best be made. Some ideas that I like a lot are a.) to create more 1.5 credit hour classes that allow marketing majors to learn about more topics, b.) to create a way for marketing majors to connect more easily with marketing Kelley alumni, and c.) to put more marketing classes as pre-requisites of I-Core, so a student does not wait until Junior year to experience marketing. I hope there can be some outstanding changes made in the department, which will result in the department becoming even more respected internationally than it already is. (U.S. News & World Report ranked Kelley's marketing program #6 overall and #5 for public universities in 2009)

I'm sorry that I haven't been posting as many fun pictures or videos lately as you may be accustomed to. I'll try to work on that.

IU College Students and Twitter Usage

One of my roommates just told me about how a guy she likes has a twitter account. She herself has a twitter account that she never updates, but instead only follows friends, news, and companies on it. It got me to think about the different ways students use Twitter that I have noticed at IU (among my friends).

I feel many of my friends follow companies such as J Crew and Forever 21 on Twitter, and are fans of them on Facebook. In that way, they can find out about any deals going on at the store. When it comes to following other people, though, I feel it's much more common just to follow one's close friends. Unlike on Facebook, you don't want to be hounded by someone's constant tweets if you've only met that person a couple of times.

Speaking of constant tweeting, I feel that relentless tweeting is more common among adults in the workforce than any of my friends here at IU. I could only name a handful of my friends who update their Twitter more than once per day. With that, many of my friends update so rarely that they have not tweeted anything new since last August (most likely from the increase of academic responsibilities). I'm more of a "couple times per month" type tweeter usually, because I don't think to go on Twitter often, or update from my phone. In fact, I still have not taken the time to figure out how to use twitpic to submit pictures from my Blackberry. I find it interesting that college students love Facebook, but are basically "late adaptors" when it comes to Twitter. You'd think that with a lifestyle so on-the-go, college students would be even more likely to use Twitter than their office drone counterparts. However, that is not the case (based on my experience of course, with no real research to back up my claims).

I've embedded the Twitter account that corresponds with this blog into the side panel on my blog page. It appears that sometimes the widget doesn't work, but hopefully the kinks have been worked out.

Back In Action

It's raining today. My roommate and I woke up this morning thinking that it must be warmer outside, since there is rain and not snow. My definition of warmer is not 33 degrees. Luckily I look at the Bloomington hour by hour on weather.com all of the time, so I was not under-dressed for the temperature. However, the funny thing is that I was wearing a white coat, holding a cup of coffee, and holding an umbrella over my head as I walked to the Union just now. When I had to sneeze, the coffee went all over the sleeve of my white coat. Typical.

I have begun all of my classes for this semester, which seem to require a lot more reading than last semester. I really miss yoga. My classes this semester are:
D302 - International Business: Operations of International Enterprises
Y335 - Western European Politics (my only PolySci class)
M405 - Marketing Strategy
M450 - Consumer Behavior
Z494 - Wells Honors Seminar in Leadership

I just ran into my friend Cale (aka the IU Homecoming King), who is sitting next to me at the computer lab right now. He says, "Peace out, Kelley School!"

It's Bid Day!

Not only is today the first day of my final semester at IU, but it's also bid day for sorority recruitment!

I don't have my first class until 2:30 today, but I woke up at 9am regardless. I ran a couple errands, printed out two of my syllabi, bought a course packet at the Union bookstore, and now I am sitting in the Kelley computer lab waiting for my class to start. I have two classes from 2:30 - 5:15...and then I plan to race back to Theta to hear the reading of who is going to be in our new pledge class!

This past week has been pretty chaotic. Not only did my computer get a blue screen and need to have its Windows operating system re-installed by IU's UITS program (thank goodness I had most of my files backed up on an external hard drive), but it was also recruitment week. I got back to IU on Tuesday, got ready for recruitment on Wednesday, and then was a senior leader at 14 party and 8 party. Yesterday my house had 3 party, and then our recruitment committee submitted our "bid list" last night to the Panhellenic Association to say who we wanted to give bids to in order to invite them to join our sorority. We plan to have a new pledge class of 39 new Theta women. I'm pretty excited to find out who they will be! There will be bid week activities this week too, which I hope the new Thetas will enjoy. Overall, this week will be pretty exciting.

My Very Last Day of Winter Break...Ever

It is difficult to believe that today is my last day of winter break. That is, until I (hopefully) get my MBA I suppose. But, suffice it to say, I am a tad melancholy. As I sit here at my desk at home eating a bowl full of Peppermint ice cream (my favorite holiday treat), I can't help but reflect on how fast my career at IU is going.

I have participated in a lot of exciting activities during this break to note. I flew to Tucson, Arizona to visit some of my family before Christmas. Then after Christmas I attended several parties to celebrate a family friends' birthday. He is a corporate CEO, and he rented the Grand Ballroom at Navy Pier to celebrate turning 50! I had a blast, not only because it was sports themed, but because the party also had a few celebrities! Neal McCoy performed with his band, and I also got to meet Bo Derek, Rob Schneider, and John Corbett. There were some Olympic medalists there as well. The party made me hope that some day I can be a successful CEO (or businesswoman in general) who can afford to fund such a fun 50th birthday celebration.

Tomorrow I am returning early to IU to finish sorority recruitment. Tomorrow afternoon I move into my new room (I will be living with three other girls this semester instead of five others). The following days consist of 14 Party, 6 Party, 3 Party, and finally...bid night. Bid night is when we get our new pledge class! It's always fun to see the bus full of new Thetas arrive at our house. Hopefully the temperatures will get warmer by then, so we can take pictures outside!

Here's some pictures of the celebrities I met this past week:

Happy New Year!

I hope you had a great New Years this year, and I hope that this new decade will bring great things.