まず、アントレ(企業)の授業では、 Wal-Martのビジネスモデルとして、「Big sotre in Small Town!」が紹介される。 小さな町にスーパーを出してもマーケットが小さいという既成概念を覆し、 アメリカ中の小さな町というマーケットは大きい、ということを、見出したのがWal-Martなのだ。
マーケティングの授業では、 「Wal-Martに来ればどこよりも安い商品が常に手に入りますよ」、 というマインドを消費者に植えつけた最初の小売店舗だ。 言い換えると、EDLP戦略(Every Day Low Price)を最初にはじめたのだ。
=============================================== Hi. My name is Ken, you know, like Barbie’s boy friend. Thank you for coming! I am running for VP of diversity & Global Relations.
My vision is very simple. As an international student, I would like to serve as a bridge between International students and American students to help the Tepper Community become global leaders who will embrace and utilize diversity. As a matter of fact, 30% of Tepper students are comprised of international students. The voices of the international students should be heard in the GBA(Global Business Associasion)!!
Why you should choose me? First of all, I am really passionate about this position because I am one of the struggling international students. Second, I am third generation Korean resident in Japan and therefore I know a lot of pains as a minority. Third, most importantly, I have strong relationships both with international and American students. I rigorously participated in social and sports events such as, Beers, case competitions(I won the Microsoft competition), the MBA soccer tournament, intramutual dodge ball tournament, and so on.
Let me talk about my goals, Increase, Embrace, and Utilize Diversity & Global Relations.
Increase Diversity. I am going to work with Admissions committee to increase the diversity of the student body to enrich our experience.
Embrace diversity. I am going to assemble a team of volunteers to assist First year International students. Many things that American students take for granted are things that can be VERY difficult for International students. By supporting international students we will create stronger bonds within our community.
Utilize diversity. In addition to International Festival and Connection Weekend, I will be happy to organize additional international and diversity opportunities. One of my ideas is to cooperate with the Tepper diversity Clubs in order to create informational Country Sessions. We came from 25 countries!
Again, I am really passionate about serving as a bridge between International and American students to help Tepper students become global leaders who will embrace and utilize diversity! Thank you!! Arigato! ===============================================
Today, I made a speech for the election. While I was talking in the speech, I felt a lot of friends were supporting and helping me. That was happy. I felt I did my best. After the speech, I was totally exhausted and took a long nap. However, I feel still sleepy. I will write about this tomorrow. Good night.
================================================ Executive Board President – Colin Raney Vice President – John McClain VP of Communications & Marketing – Elizabeth Paolillo Treasurer – Ariel Rubin
Senate VP of Academics – Matthew Ciuca VP of Admissions – Markita Staples VP of Alumni Relations – Vishwas Shringi VP of Clubs – Jackie Colorado VP of COC – Abhishek Jain VP of Community Outreach – Christine Tai-Schwerin Flex-Time Representatives – Geoffrey Bent and Sachal Lakhavani VP of Global Relations – Dongkyun Kim GSA Representative – Omer Chaudhri VP of MBA Networks – Brian Ulrey MSCF Representative – Prashant Radhakrishnan VP of Technology – Raju Gupta ================================================
今年から、 VP of Global Relationsが、 VP of Diversity and Global Relationsに名前を変える。いま、真剣にこのポジションに立候補するかどうか考えている。
Today, I had a practice session for the final presentation for presentation class. Today is Sunday, isn't it? It doesn't matter in Tepper... Anyway, after that session, we went to Kiku, a Japanese cuisine, with an American couple. They seemed to enjoy Japanese food. However, they couldn't endure the bad smell of Natto.
"Actually, we failed to manage our time at the last minutes. However, if we did the same thing in a real business situation, what will happen? We are in Tepper Business School in order to challenge new things, as our dean said at our ceremony. We got a really good experience through this case competition." (最後の最後で、時間管理で失敗したけど、もし本当のビジネスで同じ失敗をしてたらどうなる?学長が入学式で言ってたように、新しいことにチャレンジするためにTepperビジネススクールにいるんだ。俺らはすごいいい経験を得たよ。)
Today was Black Friday. A lot of shops try to attract customers with drastic rate reductions, but, in general, really attractive staffs are limited. If we want to get them, we have to get early. We easily gave up getting up early and went to a shopping mall from afternoon. How lazy we were... However we found a really good multi functional printer and bought it. Thank you, Black Friday!
Today, I was invited by Darren's parents to their Thanksgiving party. That was really fantastic. I ate real Turkey for the first time, and that was very tasty. We enjoyed a lot of conversation and the time passed very quickly. His mother showed a lot of kitchen staffs to my wife and she is really interested in those staffs. Only that was a bad thing.
B:"No, I am going to Accoungting class to sleep." (いや、アカウンティングに出て寝る予定。) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today, in a presentation class, I had an "impromptu presentation". This is one type of presentation. You go to a stage, and then the professor gives you a question. You have to make a 30 seconds presentation answering the question as soon as possible. This class consists of about 20 students.
I tried to raise my hand as soon as possible, but the first native speaker was so good. I hesitated to do just after him. Then, I couldn't raise my hand again and again. Finally, almost native speakers finished their presentation, and the rest of students were only international students. Absolute silence, silence, silence...
Interestingly, one common understanding was formed. That is "the order of a speaker is based on student's English skill." Naturally, an Indian student raised his hand because everybody was looking at him. Next, a Chinese student, he had been working in Canada for 7 years. Next, a Korean girl, she lived in the US for about 10 years when she was youth. I realized that the next was me from the context though there are still some international students in the pool.
I went to the stage. I hoped the question was easy, but not. The question is "If you were Bush, what would you do against the evil countries (which Bush says) like North Korea and Iraq?"
I tried to say the following story. "I (Bush) should spend money into NPOs and NGOs which try to educate Korean and Iraqi people because people in those countries don't know much about the world except for their countries because of the political tyranny government.”
I don't know whether I was able to tell it correctly, but I know the warm shower of applause now. That's enough.
Today, my life in the US had 25 hours in a day because of Daylight Saving Time (Summer Time). According to the article below, the system has continued since 1966 in the US.
Refer to: http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/b.html "Since 1966, most of the United States has observed Daylight Saving Time from at 2:00 a.m. on the first Sunday of April to 2:00 a.m. on the last Sunday of October. "
Also, from the beginning of 2007, most of the US plans to extend the applied period. In the European Union, Daylight Saving Time is already introduced.
"Beginning in 2007, most of the U.S. will begin Daylight Saving Time at 2:00 a.m. on the second Sunday in March and revert to standard time on the first Sunday in November. In the U.S., each time zone switches at a different time."
On the other hand, Japan doesn't apply this though there has been a lot of discussion about this in Japan. In summary, the countries that have fewer hours of sunlight can advance by Summer Time, and also the countries which are close to the US can get advantage on business. In the sense of the merit, the pros and cons of the issue are controversial in Japan.
Refer to: http://www.gene.ne.jp/~lagoon/st/index.html http://www.eccj.or.jp/SummerTime/info/index.html
Anyway, I enjoyed the moment of the change from Summer Time to non-Summer Time because it was 9:30 though I got up at 10:30 today.:-) More importantly, I felt that the Sun goes around the earth without thinking of people on the earth. I felt the nature doesn't change. People dance on the earth. This kind of intuition is what I want to treasure.
In mini-2, I have 5 required classes. They say that this semester is the most demanding one. I think that this is partly because the wether is getting colder. A lot of students start feeling depressed without sunshine... Anyway, this is the mini-2 schedule.
Let me talk about these classes briefly.
1. Presenting and Decision Making Although Tepper business school is famous for the quantitative nature, this is class for soft skills, following "Writing and Decision Making" class in Mini-1. We will have 6 individual and group presentation in our class to train our presentation skills. For me, this class is going to be the toughest class, even though I like a presentation in Japanese.
2. Accounting for Decision Making and Control This course is about managerial uses of accounting information. This course will mainly use case-method and require us to work on some assignments by a group. Though I was not good at "Accounting" in Mini-1, I would like to try to work on this course hard.
3. Managerial Economics This is about Microeconomics. This course will be about demand curves, cross price demand curves, production factions, and market demand / supply curve. Every week, we have to work on the problem sets individually.
4. Finance Finance is the efficient allocation of resources (Equity, Bonds, Foreign Exchange and so on) across time and risk. This class also requires a group work every week. I didn't know the difference between accounting and finance before MBA. But, I have understood the importance of financial skills in our business world.
5. Statistics and Decision Making This is the following course of "Probability and Decision Making" in Mini-1. We will learn Hypothesis testing, simple regression, multiple regressions, and Model Building, by using software, "Eview".