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Category Archives: Guest & Alumni Bloggers
Adventures in the Middle Kingdom- Part 1
Henry Ko is a second year MBA student from Los Angeles, CA. He is currently studying abroad at Peking University in Beijing, China. This is his adventure…
It has been a crazy couple of days but I have arrived safely in China and I’m settling into my new home for the next three months. The first 24 hours of craziness started with some delayed flight drama in Nashville, followed by a sleepless 12.5 hour flight from Chicago to Beijing, ensued by long and chaotic queues at the Beijing airport, and topped off by a frustrating search for my living accommodations on campus. Things are finally coming together now and I’m ready to enjoy my China experience.
So far, Beijing has been everything I expected and a lot of what I didn’t expect. Here are some of my observations:
- China is growing and it is painful, for me: I’m reminded every day from 5AM to 12AM that China is experiencing unrelenting growth. Example: there is a new building going up about one hundred yards right outside my window and the site never seems to shut down. Just the other day, there was a thunderstorm rolling through the area. Lightning struck not too far away. Yet, the workers kept on hammering and the crane kept on lifting. Talk about commitment. The only time it seems to be quiet is when I wake up in the middle of the night wondering why there isn’t any noise coming from outside.
Launching a Business: Rentstuff.com
Adam Albright is a second year MBA and co-founder of rentstuff.com. (www.about.me/adamalbright | )
Have you ever wanted to try something new on the weekend, like go camping or for a bike ride? As a student, opportunities such as these can be limited by minimal space to store gear or insufficient money to purchase equipment.
This problem led my co-founders and I (Adam Albright) to launch Rentstuff.com, a person-to-person rental marketplace that allows individuals and rental businesses to post items for rent. Now you can jump on RentStuff.com and rent that tent, or bike, or guitar that you want to try out. If you want to earn some extra cash, you can also lend out your stuff to others through our convenient, secure system.
Owen has been key in helping me launch this business. While being a student and entrepreneur can be extremely busy, there are some definite perks. Here are the ways Owen has helped me along the way:
- The Summer Business Plan Competition: In this annual competition students present business plans and the winner is awarded a grant to use for launching the start-up. Pitching RentStuff.com was a great experience, and the grant money was extremely helpful as we worked towards our launch in August 2011.
Posted in Guest & Alumni Bloggers, Why Owen? Tagged business school, entrepreneurship, starting a business Leave a comment
Why International Networking is Essential
Taylor Forman is a first year MBA student at the Owen Graduate School of Management. He comes to Vanderbilt from California where he worked in international human resources for an engineering company after graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill.
When I arrived at the Abu Dhabi airport a little before midnight on a Monday, I collected my luggage and walked outside to find a taxi. I only know two Arabic words so when I handed the driver the address and he looked confused, I had little recourse other than to simply point at it again. And then, after he asked me a question in Arabic, I responded with “shukran” (which means “thank you”) and again resorted to the pointing tactic. We started driving toward the city and I thought how massive and well lit and familiar it seemed, and as we passed grandiose mosques in the distance, how foreign it was. When we arrived at my new home for the next eight months, a large apartment building rising skyward in the midst of multiple similar buildings, I paid the driver, grabbed all my belongings and he sped away.
Abu Dhabi cityscape
Posted in Guest & Alumni Bloggers Tagged internationl business, owen community, traveling Leave a comment
Show Me Your…
Welcome back to “Show Me Your…” where Owen students show off their stuff. Today Mike Miles (MBA 2012) is showing off his fancy new tablet computer. Mike is a Health Care MBA candidate with concentrations in Operations and Strategy. This past summer, Mike worked in the Performance Improvement Group at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in West Hollywood, CA.
As the school year started this year at Owen, it seemed everyone was rocking an iPad. But I’m not worshiping at the Altar of Steve anymore. And since I’m one of those technology-obsessed nerdy people called “engineers,” I had to buy a tablet and see how it could change my work methods. I ended up with a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (16GB: $499, 32GB: $599, in Germany: illegal!). Its running Google’s Android 3.1 “Honeycomb” OS, with a skin on top that Samsung calls Touchwiz UX. I think this combo gives you a lot of extra functionality over an iPad, much like you’d see in an Android smartphone versus an iPhone. This comes at the expense of polish, panache, and Apple’s closed ecosphere and software platform. On to the showing, though! Here’s some great apps and a peek at some features that are useful:
Show me Your…
We’re changing it up a bit for this edition of “Show Me Your…” It is really more like “Show Me Their…” since Mary Payton (MBA 2012) will be taking us on a trip through the fridge belonging to 4 of her MBA 2012 classmates. Enjoy!
Going back to grad school for a lot of people means returning to your undergrad food habits of Ramen and poorly grilled chicken that somehow managed to turn out tasting like steak. For several of the single males, it means endless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch (you know who you are). Today we will explore the fridge of a house of four Owen second-years, and see what crazy grad school eating patterns they have. So, we ask you, Orleans house, “What’s in your fridge?”
First, we have to give major credit to the house shopper, Michael Eidsmoe, for his Costco shopping habit and weekly Publix trips. Without it, I am pretty sure the rest of his roommates (and myself) would starve. The first thing you may notice in the fridge is a well stocked wall of condiments.
Posted in Doug Midkiff '12, Graduate Life, Guest & Alumni Bloggers Leave a comment