Here’s the rest of week 3 and the start of week 4 from Quinn!
Quinn Korzeniecki is a senior English major with a Pre-Business concentration. She is editor-in-chief of The Advocate, a progressive online publication at Holy Cross, and works as an assistant in the Vice President and Dean of Academic Affairs Office. As a participant in the Summer Business Program, she hopes to learn more about marketing and advertising aspects of business. Quinn aspires to enter into publishing either in the editorial, marketing, or advertising departments.
A couple of weeks have passed since my last blog, so here’s what you’ve missed:
On Tuesday, June 14, a few General Electric employees (who were all Holy Cross alumni) came to instruct us on how to use excel spreadsheets in data analysis. I honestly thought I knew all there was to know about Excel, but after a day chocked full of learning how to install hyperlinks, take the sums and averages of cells using functions, and even how to sort and filter a data set. I realized after this lesson that I didn’t know as much as I thought I did, and am grateful that I can now use a function to rearrange names into alphabetical order instead of taking hours to manually to do so. What am I going to do with all the time this lesson just saved me?
We learned how to create PowerPoint designs and presentations on Wednesday. Although this was more of a straightforward lesson for me, I did learn many new concepts as well. These three General Electric employees taught me how to paste whole internet sites into a slide, and also how to add an icon to the slide that links to a spreadsheet containing data to support the information provided on that slide. We were then able to experiment with shapes and fonts to familiarize ourselves with all the available formatting options. Later that day, after the conclusions of the PowerPoint lesson, we put on our Summer Business Program t-shirts and assembled outside Smith Labs for our group pictures. They all came out great!
Thursday was a bit of a shocker! We were instructed to come to the morning session in interview attire, but we weren’t aware that we would actually sit in a chair in the front of the class and be interviewed on camera in front of our peers. I will say that this was my first time being recorded, and as intimidating as it was, it was helpful to see myself as I interviewed: I learned that I move my head too much and that I look uptight with my hair pulled back so tightly. So, after analyzing our interview tapes, we dissembled for lunch. The afternoon session consisted of a site visit to Blue Hive, Inc. with Holy Cross alumnus, Jack Hally. This company creates large scale displays for companies such as Covidien and Liberty Mutual. This trip was amazing! The work environment was split into two sectors: very creative and very hands-on. Some staffers have to create the layout for the exhibits and others must physically build these displays in the workshops. Mr. Hally was very excited about the work being done at his company, and this excitement definitely rubbed off on us.
Bill Liesman ’72, a business consultant, came to speak with us on Friday, June 17th about international business. We learned in earlier weeks that emerging markets all over the world are looking promising in the stock world, and today we learned a little about why this is happening. Globalization is occurring on a massive scale and the world is becoming more interdependent: going global allows companies to increase their market base/share, increase profit, and better compete with other companies in their market. We learned about inventory practices and international law against corrupt global practices. In the afternoon we were assigned a natural disaster (my group received the earthquake in Chile) and were asked to create a PowerPoint revealing how the disaster affected the world’s supply chain of a specific product and what precautions the country should have taken to avoid the detrimental effects.
After an eventful weekend, the program reconvened on Monday with a visit from Michael Villa ’91 and Bob Allard ’91 explaining the process of starting a business. These innovators had us thinking like entrepreneurs and eventually being entrepreneurial! Each team had to design an iphone application and present their app to the group. We were hesitant at first, but Bob and Mike had tons of energy that was both motivating and encouraging.
We wrap up the program in a couple days with our group presentations, and I look forward to seeing what the other groups have in store for us!
Thanks again, Quinn! If you have any questions about SBP, please email us at prebusiness@holycross.edu. Don’t forget to find us on facebook!
Kaithlyn
Kaithlyn Kayer
Associate Director, Entrepreneurial Studies
David Chu
Director, Entrepreneurial Studies & Pre-business Advisor