Fuck Econ in general

Glad to hear that emoinacloset is having such a good time at school right now.

I on the other hand, just received my second below average grade on an econ 100A midterm. I studied my ass off for this second midterm after having not taken the first one very seriously and all I get for my efforts is an even lower score. Now the best grade I can get in the class is a B- or C+ which is only possible if I ace my final. The worst part is that my friends Diane and Michelle got 48 and 50 respectively (the midterm is out of 50), I hate being beaten, especially by this much!

What I need to do at this point is pull myself out of this hole that I have dug. I must get over the fact that I am not going to do well in this class and start doing the best that I can. But damn is it hard, I really just want to give up like my roommate. He has no qualms about failing a class. Though it is probably a blessing that I do not give in so easily.

Update: I fucked up on my econ 120 A this time too, fucking 18.5 out of 30
-muffinman

Presentations And Fancy Dinners

I finally did my IAG presentation on Friday. For those who don't remember what IAG does, we do equity research on a company and try to pitch it to the club to get it added to the portfolio. My teammates and I presented on a Brazilian pulp manufacturer called Fibria, and the presentation itself was very good -- we got compliments from everyone (including the veterans) on how well we did -- but unfortunately, when it came time for the numbers and the valuation to come up, that's when our presentation went to hell.

I think Tik put it best when he said, "For the first half of the presentation, I was thinking, 'wow, this is a really great company'. But then as I kept hearing more, I started to wonder, 'damn this company is just too perfect.' In the last quarter of the presentation I realized there was a catch when you talked about the company's massive debt load and shitty valuation."

To be fair, the company was just involved in a huge merger two months ago and acquired $2 billion in debt in the the process. That really screwed up our numbers for us, so while our presentation and the company's fundamentals were excellent, we got fucked in the valuation. Right before the presentation, my groupmates and I were freaking out about how badly the numbers made our company looked and we were all sure that the company would lose the vote. Well, we did lose the vote, but it was a lot closer than we thought it would be, 21-25.

It was a good experience though, and it was definately interesting to research a company that had recently been in a merger with a massive $5 billion worth of total debt. I've posted the link to the presentation below for anyone who wants to check it out; even though it wasn't put into the portfolio, they also show the return on the stock so it'll be interesting to see how much it'll go up or down. I also heard from someone that this was the first time a presentation was ever video recorded(?) but it hasn't been uploaded yet so I don't know if that's true. If it ever comes up I'll post it for you guys.

http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~iag/presentations.php



Anyways, after the presentation, I went out to a fancy dinner with my fancily dressed friends to celebrate Mark and Ana's fancy birthday! It was fun seeing everyone dressed up in suits and nice dresses. We were even able to get a bottle of champagne for the table and make a toast for Mark and Ana, thanks to our generous host.

A fancy toast!

The fancy restaurant

The food was delicious, the waitress was excellent and the restaurant owner was incredibly nice and friendly. The dinner and all made this an excellent night for the fancy person's club (well, we can at least pretend we're legit). We finally documented this night in front of the NYU arch, despite the fact the girls were freezing. But I think the picture came out well -- it was definately worth it.

A fancy picture for fancy people

-Emoinacloset

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Oh yeah, although this isn't really that important I made a hand turkey during BAP community service this morning. The community service was part of a mentoring program where we do bible study and play with kids from not-so-good neighborhoods. Anyways, I liked my hand turkey so much that I just had to take a picture of my rock star turkey and post it. Doing hand turkeys brought me back to the old days when I was still in first grade and the only thing I had to worry about was being able to color in between the lines. Enjoy my work of art, and happy early Thanksgiving!

Indoor Soccer

Last week I accompanied GG, Milan and Ashley to one of their indoor soccer games. They play in the single A intramural league and are at the top of their group. They have not lost a game. To be honest, their team (Ballbusters) really should not be playing in the single A league, which is the beginner league.

The score of this game was 7-2 for Ballbusters.
A girl's goal counts as 2 points.



-muffinman

This Is Pathetic

It’s now 4 AM, I still haven’t finished studying for my marketing midterm today and I haven’t started writing my Chinese composition. But after watching endless music videos, surfing the net reading uninteresting articles, and repeatedly going on Facebook looking at the same damn pictures over and over again, I’ve decided to be somewhat productive by blogging. I know it’s been awhile since my last post but there hasn’t been much to blog about! Once Fed Challenge ended I had about two weeks where all I had to worry about was school. I was able to go home right after classes and bum around the rest of the day watching Mad Men, catching up on sleep, eating cheap Chinese takeout, and playing PSP all snuggled up in my bed.

But now things are starting to get busy again.

1) I’m going do a presentation on a company called Fibria (Brazilian pulp/paper manufacturer) for my club, Investment Analysis Group (IAG) this Friday. I’ll basically be doing equity research and then pitch the stock to the club to be added into the club portfolio. It’s not as time consuming or hard to understand as the U.S. economy, but it’s a lot of reading. We still have to make the PowerPoint, do a valuation (mostly done by the seniors presenting with me), and practice presenting.

2) Companies will start recruiting for summer analyst positions this week, so going to these presentations is going to take up a significant amount of time. I'm a little worried about the whole summer internship situation because I’ll be abroad in the spring, making it more inconvenient to find myself something. I also need to buy some new dress shirts because I feel sorry for the only one I have – I’ve been wearing it every time I’ve suit-ed up and I think it’s tired of the abuse.

3) I’ve been making preparations to go to London by applying for my student visa. It actually doesn’t take much time, but I procrastinated on applying for my visa (pff typical) and it turns out I have to do a fingerprint scan. The earliest appointment I could get was sometime next week, after which I need to old-school mail in my actual visa application to the U.K. Embassy. Unfortunately, the whole process is supposed to take 4 weeks in itself so I’m wondering if I’ll be able to get my visa before I leave for London.

4) I also had to replace my phone because the charger didn’t connect with it. For about three days I felt completely isolated from the rest of the world (kinda sad how reliant on technology we've become). However, I was able to “fix” my problem temporarily by using Nick’s old phone to charge the battery, and then switch the battery with the battery in my phone whenever I needed to (His screen is broken. And it’s missing a few buttons, not to mention there’s a huge crack down his phone. Effectively useless). My mom eventually sent me her old phone, which is decent (at least it has color!). I was a little disappointed though – I wanted a Blackberry so I could look more like a business bitch, but since I’ll be going international eight out of the next twelve months, getting a expensive new phone didn’t seem practical.

Now that I’ve caught up I can blog in more detail about individual events. What sucks about getting behind on life is that you just end up procrastinating even more because you don’t want to write so much. I’m going to have to get back to studying now. Geez, most of marketing is common sense but they come up with funky names that only a marketer could think of (cash cows anyone?). Just means more work for me and extended boring-ness in my life. Sigh.

-Emoinacloset