WORLD EXCLUSIVE, MUST CREDIT BUCKYHOO
Well placed sources inside the Pentagon have given me exclusive access to video footage taken by a coalition spy embedded in the lowest level of hell. The footage reveals that the former dictator of Iraq has adjusted quite well to his afterlife and perhaps we have not heard the last of him yet.
I decided against going to the West Coast Interview Forum. Of the four cover letters that I sent out, I received two rejections, one email telling me the company was no longer interested in hiring, and only one request for an interview. I am not going to spend $500 for a roundtrip airline ticket and at least $60-140 per night (depending if I can find someone to split the room with) for a hotel room for just one interview. Besides, if I want to get a rejection letter in the mail, I can write one myself.
Here it goes:
Dear Buckyhoo,
Thank you for your interest in (name of company) and your recent submission to our (name of position) position.
After careful review of your resume/CV and your personal interview we have decided to pursue other candidates who are better fits for this position. We encourage you to review other open positions at our career site www.lenovo.com. We wish you the best of success in your career search.
Sincerely,
(name of recruiter)
There. I just saved myself $560.
One of the more useful things I learned at UVA was the economic inefficiency of gift giving. The way to understand this concept is if I am buying you a present, what would you rather have me give you - a book that I think you’d like, a gift card for the bookstore, or the monetary equivalent of the book (or card) that I was going to buy you? If you are rational, you will probably list your preferences as cash, followed by the gift card, with the book (hopefully with a receipt) rounding out the bottom of the list.
Whether you realize it or not, what you are trying to do is to minimize the inefficiency caused by receiving a gift that you don’t want and being locked in on a preference that I have chosen for you. The way the most popular professor at UVA explains every year to his intro to microeconomics class, when he and his wife were dating, he would offer to minimize her inefficiency by giving her the choice between going out on a date with him, and receiving the monetary equivalent of the dinner and movie that he was planning on taking them to. “Most of the times, she would choose to spend the evening with me … but other times she would choose the cash,” as he said to the laughter of students in the packed Chemistry Auditorium. Saturday’s Wall Street Journal had an excellent article on just how inefficient this gift giving is.
“Economists aren't suggesting Christmas be abolished. Still, in the latest Wall Street Journal forecasting survey, more than two of three economists opined that if Christmas ceased to exist as a holiday, consumers would either spend more on themselves or spread their gift purchases more evenly across other events such as birthdays. That, in the view of some academics, would put more goods into the hands of people who truly value them and improve social welfare as a result.”
The article goes on to quote a Wharton School of Business professor who estimates this “deadweight loss” to be around $10 billion annually. I can tell you from experience that me and my cousins conduct an annual Christmas “white elephant” and in the more than ten years that we have been doing this, I have yet to receive a present I want. Just yesterday BuckySis and I were trying to figure out where to put the soothing comfort pillow and the electric ice scraper that we got this year when we opened a closet door and found something else I got three years ago from the same “white elephant” event. Earlier this afternoon, on my way back from shopping malls I tried to use up the Starbucks gift card that I won earlier this year at a Kenan-Flagler trivia contest by running into a Starbucks and waiting on line for four minutes to buy a copy of the New York Times.
Next year, my “white elephant” will be a wrapped envelope containing cash and a copy of the Wall Street Journal article.
I am sure many of you have seen the stories in the past two weeks about the record-shattering profits that financial firms have made this year and how this has affected the bonuses of finance professionals and created a trickle down effect on the businesses that cater to the consumer of ultra-luxury goods. Like a lot of Wall Street bankers who spend a good part of the year wondering about their bonuses and how they will spend it, many MBA students spend a lot of energy wondering about is how much wealth we will accumulate over the course of our careers and how we plan to do with it. I too have wondered about what my financial situation will look like once I graduate from Kenan-Flagler but what makes me different from my similarly situated classmates is that instead of thinking in terms of how more money will improve my life, I think in terms of how it results in the burden of responsible stewardship and increased obligation to society.
Even though I have more than enough money to live on for the foreseeable future and the median starting base salary for my class is expected to be in excess of $91,000 a year, I have no plans to visit the local Lexus dealership anytime soon to test drive the SC 420 that I like. I have always felt that wealth should serve a higher calling than merely increasing one’s consumption of other people’s services. Furthermore, I feel that those who are financially better off in America have an increased obligation to use their wealth (and in some cases, their fame) to influence society for the better.
What I have written so far may not seem like anything revolutionary. But if you look around our current culture today, very rarely do you see people living their lives in accordance to this creed. You are much more likely to see well off people using their money for hedonistic causes and their influence to achieve ends that benefit no more than themselves. If you don’t believe me you need to look no further than a Google News search on Paris Hilton. Just today I was reading about investment bankers using their bonuses to buy $250,000 Ferraris. This all reminds me of the scene from the movie Wall Street where Bud Fox asked Gordon Gekko “how many yachts can you water ski behind, how much is enough?”
As a believer in freedom, I believe people should be free to work as hard as they want, make as much money as they want, and spend their money however they wish. But I also believe that in a moral society, which I am interested in building, there should be self-imposed restraints on the excesses that such enormous wealth can produce. And in this holiday season of Christmas sharing and making resolutions for the new year, it’s something I’d like for all of us to keep in mind.
I don’t know when but sometime in the past ten years our society decided that the “C word” is no longer acceptable and you see everyone nowadays knocking themselves out to avoid using it. This is strange because I don’t remember participating in the decision making process. If a decision was made it had to have been made behind closed doors, most likely by the folks in upper management of the major broadcast, print, and cable outlets. And I suspect the folks who run most of America’s biggest business had something to do with it. I remember one time my boss at work accidentally uttered the “C word” at a team meeting and when he realized his error seconds later he immediately corrected himself and issued a humble apology.
Since I am not on the payroll of a major corporation (at least not yet) and what I write on this blog is accountable to no one except my conscience, God almighty, and AOL’s terms of service, I am going to go ahead and dare to use it. Get your tape recorders ready folks.
Merry Christmas everyone, merry Christmas.
I have blogged a while back that about one of my lifetime financial goals is to have enough money to have something at UVA named after me, preferably an academic building or the economics department. It just happens that UVA is in the process of renewing Rouss Hall. This is the building that used to house the economics department and where I had a lot of classes during my time there. I saw on the web a list of naming opportunities where you can have your name forever immortalized by donating a significant amount to the McIntire School of Commerce, which will occupy the building after its completion.
Looking at the list and the prices that the school is asking for, I am beginning to get a ballpark idea of what league I need to be in to make my contributions and secure my legacy at UVA. It also dawned on me that there really isn’t a big difference between a kid spraying his name in graffiti on the public school playground wall and a millionaire giving money to his school in return for the school naming a lobby or a study room after him.
I emailed BuckySis suggesting that instead of the usual Christmas gift, she makes a generous contribution to my bank account to start my savings effort toward the estimated $50 million that I will need to fulfill my endeavor. She replied, “why don’t you go find a rock and scratch your name on it.”
According to The Weather Channel, it’s 65 degrees in Chapel Hill right now but it feels much warmer. It’s hard to believe I am almost three quarters done with my MBA. This weekend I have to finish ateam project for leading organizational change class and a write up for brand strategy class, both due Monday. I then need to take care of a little bit of business that’s been outstanding for more than six months.
When I returned from India in May, I had to write up a response paper for the doing business in India class but between the final week of search for my internship, and actually starting that summer internship, I never got around to it. The professor was lenient and said he would give an IN (incomplete) to anyone who did not hand in the assignment by the due date but was willing to change the IN to, hopefully, a P (pass) when he finally receives a satisfactory deliverable. This has been dangling over me for the past six months, almost like an account payable, but I am going to finally get around to doing it this week so that in January when I check my grades to count how many H’s (high pass) I got for this Mod, I won’t feel guilty seeing the IN staring right back at me.
I am on the main campus right now, which is mainly deserted because most of the undergrads are gone. Their exams ended yesterday. There is a basketball game later this afternoon against UNC Ashville and there are a lot of visitors milling about. Hopefully I will be able to make some progress in the next four hours before the library closes.
Tomorrow is the last day of classes but for me my last class was yesterday when we had an in-class final exam for services marketing. There were four graded essay questions followed by two that I didn’t quite expect. The first was on a scale of one to four, how rigorous did we consider this class and the second was what grade did we expect to receive for it. Initially I began to answer by indicating that I consider the class slightly below average in rigor and expect to receive a P (pass) for it. Then I decided that since my grade has yet to be determined and the grading is such that I suspect there is a bit of subjectivity involved, it may be smarter to say that I find the material above average in rigor and I expect to receive an H (high pass) for the class. Before turning the paper in, I decided to give the “smart” answer instead of the honest answer. I hope this pays off and that I will remember to keep this “skill” in mind when I talk to potential employers and recruiters.
I came to school today for a Career Management Center workshop on how to conduct an off-campus second year job search. As I said before, from this point forward, less of the job search effort will be on the part of recruiter coming to campus and more on the part of students looking off campus. The counselor said that “unofficially” the CMC believes that approximately 47% of the second year class has an offer, I am not sure whether this number represents the number of students who have received an offer or have accepted one. I was out in the hallway earlier talking on the phone with a friend of mine, one who would kill me if he ever finds out that I blog about him but I have no worry about that because as he has said many times “I stopped reading your blog long ago because it sucks, you should delete the darn thing.” I was telling him my next steps in the job search process and he said “well, sounds like you are in the driver’s seat.” To which I replied, “no more like I am in the passenger seat but at least I am enjoying the ride.”
As we were talking out in the hallway, I paced around looking into several classrooms where there was a class was in session (the classroom doors have a small glass window that you can look through). I saw the fixed income professor teaching the advanced derivatives class, the first year finance professor lecturing about stock options, and saw a lot of faces that I have not seen in a while. It dawned on me that since I had only Monday and Wednesday afternoon classes this year (except for the negotiations class which met an entire day on three Fridays), I had missed out on a large part of the daily life at Kenan-Flagler and had almost become a stranger in my own building.
Hopefully the next two Mods will let me spend more time during the day at Kenan-Flagler and still allow me to go to the main campus at least twice a week to enjoy the festive atmosphere there.
I was a bit disappointed I didn’t have my camera on me Thursday night when I was at the House Undergraduate Library and the streakers came by. But I knew somewhere out there was a video and it was only a matter of time before someone caught put it on YouTube.
Here it is! (The video's owner has disabled the embedding option.) Turn the sound up and if you are in an office, you may want to use a set of headphones.
Some of you who are home today may want to try to catch Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC at 5pm eastern. The show will be broadcasting from UNC’s Memorial Hall as part of the Hardball College Tour. Today’s guests include former U.S Senator John Edwards and yours truly will be in the audience.
The show repeats at 3am eastern.
I made a tax move today that was so smart I am tempted to tell the professor who teaches taxes in finance and ask for extra credit when I take his class in Mod IV.
When I worked at AOL, I participated in the employee stock purchasing plan. This means that every six months I purchased a chunk of stock at a 15% discount from the market price. Normally I would sell all the ESPP shares the next day because I didn’t want to invest too much money in my employer. But there was one time when I kept a couple of hundred shares. Those shares have been lying around my brokerage account until this morning, when I sold.
This is a good move for three reasons. First, the stock is trading at a four year high. Second, the sale qualifies for the lower long term capital gains tax rate instead of the higher short term rate in the event I sell within one year. Thirdly, the difference between the discounted price you purchase the stock at and the market price on the day you receive the stock is taxed as ordinary income but that portion is not incurred until you actually sell the shares. So by waiting until now to sell the shares, I deferred their associated income taxes into 2006 and since I am in a very low tax bracket this year, it works out very well for me.
It’s kind of late and normally I would hold off writing this until later today but I need to write this now while it’s still fresh in my mind and I am still giddy over it. Earlier tonight I witnessed the most unusual things I have seen in my entire life, a group of students streaking through the House Undergraduate Library in front of nearly a hundred cheering classmates.
I spend a lot of weeknights at the Undergraduate Library. The library is open all hours but between midnight and 6am, there is a police officer stationed by the front door who makes sure that everyone has a valid student identification. Tonight was not different than any other nights, except that exams begin tomorrow (for undergrads) and there are much more students here than usual.
At around five minutes before midnight I trying to finish a reading assignment when I started hearing a lot of commotions outside in the main foyer. Immediately the girls in the next table began giggling, looked at one another, and ran out. Others followed. Ten seconds later, the only ones remaining in the room were myself, a couple of freshmen who looked like they were international students, and one other grad student. Not wanting to miss anything, we too went outside.
In the foyer there was an atmosphere of anticipation and confusion. Some students were asking “what’s going on” and others were just looking around waiting. The foyer is two floors high and when I looked up I could see students gathering around the railing on the second floor, many of them were looking down on the ground floor as though the were expecting something to happen. I asked the library clerk, who looked like there was nothing out of the ordinary happening around him, what was up. “They streak the library the night before the first exam.”
Oh.
As we got closer to midnight, more and more people began looking at their watches, looking around, taking out their cell phones. There were more people running into the library. The police officer was pacing around and talking into his radio.
Then it started.
It began with the people on the second floor screaming, everyone looked up and saw legs running around. After having completed the “square” on the second floor, the streakers came down the stairs. There were about seven of them, at least one was a woman, and they all had their faces covered with something. By the time they got to the foyer, there were about three rows of students on either side and between the rows the students had opened up a path of about fifteen feet wide. The cheering continued but soon there was a loud gasp coming from spectators on the second when they realized what was about to ensue.
The police officer was attempting to make an arrest.
The officer, who was coming from the opposite direction as the streakers, ran up into the direct path of the streakers, stopped, straddled, and tried to grab a streaker by wrapping both his arms around him (I assume it was a “him”). That streaker got away. The officer then grab the next streaker. He had a firmer grip on this second streaker but the streaker kept moving and both fell onto the ground, falling two feet in front of me and taking down with them four spectators. Both men broke free of one another, and both ran for the entrance. I believe what happened next was the police officer found a clear path to the entrance while the streaker ran into a cloud of spectators who did not get out of the way quick enough but the officer beat the streaker to the front door and the last many of us saw was the officer standing between the double doors and the metal detectors, blocking the streaker’s exit out of the building, and earning his pay for the evening.
The crowd began closing in toward the duo, chanting “let him go, let him go!” Not wanting to contribute to a mob scene, I returned to my books but it was hard to get any reading done. Others in the room were pressing their faces against the windows to see if they could make out what was going on. Others were on the phone. One student said “I have never laughed so hard in my entire life.” Another said "their clothes must be nearby, it's freezing outside." We heard booing from those who had remained to witness the spectacle followed by cheering two minutes later. Some students said they felt sorry for the streaker who was apprehended, there was talk that he got caught because he fell or he was the last streaker and was significantly later than the others.
I finally finished my reading and left the library at around fifteen past midnight. In the main foyer, I saw that two additional officers have since arrived. One was debriefing the arresting officer while the other was standing by the door, exactly where I last saw the apprehended streaker. Next to this officer was a student lying on the ground in fetal position, clothed, hands unhandcuffed and his eyes were closed. As I walked by, I looked at him and said, “have a good night.”
Neither man responded.
I took this picture yesterday at a parking lot on the corner of Franklin (which I found out recently was named after Benjamin Franklin, who died three years before the founding of UNC) and Graham Streets. If this is what conservatives mean when they talk about reverse discrimination, then not only am I all for it, I think it should be instituted in every parking lot at UNC, starting with the Kenan-Flagler garage.
I think “return to ‘square one’” sounds much more positive than “back to ‘square one.’” I got the news earlier today via email that I will not be receiving an offer from the credit card division of the major financial firm.
While I am a disappointed, it’s not the end of the world. In preparing for the interview, I finally got around to flipping through a particular book I have been meaning to look at on how to do well on interviews. I will spend a part of my Christmas break drilling down on a couple of chapters that I found to be particularly useful.
It’s safe to say at this point that the majority of companies that will be coming to campus have already made their visits. This means from now on, my search will shift from me going to companies that come to Kenan-Flagler to me contacting companies that I want to work for. There is an event the first week of January in San Francisco sponsored by Kenan-Flagler and three other business schools. The West Coast Forum is an opportunity for west coast companies to interview business school students. Unlike the “black MBA” or the National Society of Hispanic MBA (pronounced nar-SHIMMM-bar) events that I attended, this is not a job fair but an event for interviewers to interview students they have selected ahead of time. I was not planning on going but this past weekend I saw that the companies that will be interviewing there include the two of the bigger names in the internet industry.
On a lighter note, I was driving through campus earlier today and spotted a fellow Virginian who felt the need to broadcast to the entire world his feelings about one of the finest schools in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Ironically, this picture was taken in almost the exact same spot where I took the other picture last month.
Monday is normally my busiest day with three classes between 2 and 8pm. But today is turning out to be a very good day because there are no classes today and tomorrow. All MBA students get today and tomorrow off so that first years who are looking to go into investment banking can spend these two days going to New York City for their informational interviews.
I went to the gym this morning before meeting with some people for lunch at this place called Hector’s. Hector’s located on Henderson Street at where Off Franklin used to be. As I was putting in my order for a double cheeseburger with large fries, it was hard to not notice the contrast that a year ago, this was the same spot where I would go on Thursday or Friday nights to order a beer and hang out with the post-docs who work at the Linenberger Cancer Center.
Earlier this morning I was feeling kind of bad that my four day weekend was about to come to an end. That was until I realized that since my all day negotiations class met for the last time on Friday, all I have this week are two Wednesday classes followed by another four day weekend.
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