MARK251

Ok, so it's my turn to brag. We had a case due in B2B today. It was an old Harvard Business Review case from the 80s about pricing strategy in the steel strapping industry. Combine the topic with 13 pages of background, company reports and pricing statistics, and you've got hours and hours of "excitement." Ok, maybe it wasn't exciting. It was just long. I started working on it on Monday, so I had plenty of time to think through the subtleties. The assignment was to decide how the company should adjust product pricing based on the increased cost of steel. Today before we started the discussion, he drew a 2x2 chart on the whiteboard and asked everyone to come up one-by-one to generally categorize their recommended strategy. I was the only one in my entire class and answered in the upper right quadrant-- meaning I was either going to be arguably correct or embarrassingly off-target. Turns out, not only was my strategy "correct" (as far as cases go), the professor said it was the only time anyone had answered that way in the 5 years he'd assigned the case. It was a somewhat meaningless assignment, but it made me feel fantastic!

The rest of the day kind of went downhill. I had to complete a marketing research study in the afternoon. I have no idea what I was being surveyed on, but we watched brief clips of "Bullitt," "Whalerider," and "Sophie's Choice." After that, I had another hour of class and finished the day in the library. For dinner I had my first experience with XO sauce. I'd give it an 7 out of 10.

Today I found out that more people are running in the marathon and half marathon on the Great Wall in May. How awesome is that?! If I had the motivation to run that far, maybe I'd join them. Or maybe they should just have an elliptical machine competition on the Great Wall. Then I'd for sure go.