it's a lesson to be learned...
soooooo, a lot has happened since last my last update!!! on monday, i flew to new york for summer orientation, which started bright and early on tuesday morning. when i came, a bunch of people were waiting outside, so naturally i just stood around with them. then someone finally asked us if we were with morgan stanley and after we said yes she was like, well for goodness' sake go inside! after running around to a million different floors for id pictures and fingerprinting, we finally got things started. after a short introduction from our hr rep, and a long boring talk from compliance (y'know, don't trade on inside information, blahblahblah), we played an ice breaker. they told us a few weeks ago to send in an interesting fact about ourselves, so following epie's adivce, i said i was in the michigan marching band. well, the game we played required going around and asking people three questions about their fact and then guessing. considering i had just introduced myself and said that i attended the university of michigan, i was by far the easiest person to guess. afterwards, we had lunch with owen thomas, who is the president and coo of the morgan stanley investment management group (msim). let's just say he's a pretty big deal.
the afternoon started with it training, and concluded with a former summer intern panel (it was really interesting to get feedback from people now working at the firm). that evening, all of the msim interns went bowling at chelsea piers. being the super-cool, ultra-hip college kids we are, everyone was making fun of it at first, but i think we all had a pretty darn good time. i amazed everyone with my mad backwards-granny bowl skillz (except for tej and laurence, who were just mad that i was better than them), and we just chilled and talked. after bowling, we went back to the hotel (they put us up in the renaissance, in the heart of times square), where the kids working in chi-town and philly decided to go out on the town. we started at rose o'grady's, decided it wasn't a good name for a bar and ended up on 2nd avenue, where i got into a "fight" with three boys over the yankees/tigers game. 3 beers and 2 shots of jager later, the waitress decided it would be a good idea to check everyone's ids (yours truly doesn't have one yet), and that was the end of the evening.
tuesday morning we covered morgan stanley as a business, focusing on the other areas (institutional securities, global wealth management, and credit services). lunch was on your own, so i went out with some of the chi-town kids, and then tuesday afternoon we focused on investment management as a business. all in all, it was interesting stufff and definitely worth learning, but 8 hours of one person talking to you (i don't care how entertaining he was) was far too much for our poor little brains to handle. afterwards, we had a cocktail reception with managers across the department (here's where all those networking skills come into play), and it was good to hear from them how they got to morgan stanley and their experiences with previous interns at ms. after the cocktail party, the out-of-towners (plus princeton and gabe!) went out. it was good times- drinking and talking and even a little dancing (one of the boys is an intercollegiate ballroom dancing champion).
thursday morning brought excel training (ugh...bit all over again!!! it was surprising how many people didn't know what a pivot table was!!!), and in the afternoon we went to a workshop on presentation skills (as part of the internship, we all have to give presentations in july on what we've been doing and a lot of people in msim will be watching, so it's important to do a good job!!!). i had the yucky blonde lady who was SOOOOOO mean!!! despite the fact that she said i was very charming when i talked, she said no one would ever take me seriously because my voice raises at the end of all my sentences and i rock my feet in and out (hard to explain) and she said i look like a cute little 6-year old. it was not a happy time. but i got better towards the end, so i guess i will just have to be more aware of that. i think it didn't help that i was the only girl in my group wearing a skirt. after presentation skills, hr did a quick wrap up, and they gave us these super nifty msim bags and some itunes stuff.
then it was off to my favorite place in new york, la guardia airport. it was a horrible experience! there were four chi-town kids (tej, francisco, brian, and myself) and our planes were all leaving between 7pm and 8:30pm, and none of left before 1am because of a series of nasty thunderstorms that parked themselves over nyc. so we went to a sports bar place and just sat and watched the storm and talked (at one point there was a huge clap of thunder and i shrieked and i think i will never ever live it down (we started talk about scary movies and scaring yourself and one of the boys said to me: "what do you do? try and slam the door really loudly?"). but overall, it was really fun getting to hang out with everyone!!! i think a lot of the older people had been drinking and the flight attendants were having a hard time keeping things under control while we were waiting for over an hour on the runway before taking off, so the captain came on the speaker and literally yelled at people and said he would turn the plane around and we would never get out of new york if people didn't take their seats. haha, it definitely reminded me of when i was a kid and my parents would threaten to turn the car around when we were going out. i ended up getting to my hotel in chi-town around 3am and i was in bed by 4am, just to wake up again at 6am. it was fun, let me tell you.
yesterday was my first day of work. we had a short meeting in hr, and then we were all off to our own departments (i'm working in senior loans). as soon as i got up to my floor, i was introduced to everyone again and they put me right to work on analyzing a 10-Q for one of the companies they hold and writing a brief report on how i felt they did last quarter. i went out to lunch with howard tiffen, the head of the senior loans department, and 4 of the portfolio managers- it was nice to get to know everyone on a more informal level and they were all really interested in marching band and everything i do with that (band camp, practices, games- they wanted to know it all!!). i continued working on my report in the afternoon, and bill, the gentleman who gave me the assignment, gave me access to the company's quarterly conference call so i could continue to learn about the company's performance over the last three months. i left work around 5pm, and i was in bed as soon as i got back to the hotel.
the parental units drove up today, and it is sooooooo nice to have a car and a computer!!!! they were going to a graduation party tomorrow, so they left early in the afternoon, so i'm alone again in chi-town. i'm really excited to see what the rest of the summer has in store. i'm going back to nyc the week of june 26th to working with the senior loans department there, which should be fun (denise- we have to hang out then!!! i've already talked to laurie, and she's in!!!). i just hope i live up to everyone's expectations and learn as much as i can this summer!!! until next time...
the afternoon started with it training, and concluded with a former summer intern panel (it was really interesting to get feedback from people now working at the firm). that evening, all of the msim interns went bowling at chelsea piers. being the super-cool, ultra-hip college kids we are, everyone was making fun of it at first, but i think we all had a pretty darn good time. i amazed everyone with my mad backwards-granny bowl skillz (except for tej and laurence, who were just mad that i was better than them), and we just chilled and talked. after bowling, we went back to the hotel (they put us up in the renaissance, in the heart of times square), where the kids working in chi-town and philly decided to go out on the town. we started at rose o'grady's, decided it wasn't a good name for a bar and ended up on 2nd avenue, where i got into a "fight" with three boys over the yankees/tigers game. 3 beers and 2 shots of jager later, the waitress decided it would be a good idea to check everyone's ids (yours truly doesn't have one yet), and that was the end of the evening.
tuesday morning we covered morgan stanley as a business, focusing on the other areas (institutional securities, global wealth management, and credit services). lunch was on your own, so i went out with some of the chi-town kids, and then tuesday afternoon we focused on investment management as a business. all in all, it was interesting stufff and definitely worth learning, but 8 hours of one person talking to you (i don't care how entertaining he was) was far too much for our poor little brains to handle. afterwards, we had a cocktail reception with managers across the department (here's where all those networking skills come into play), and it was good to hear from them how they got to morgan stanley and their experiences with previous interns at ms. after the cocktail party, the out-of-towners (plus princeton and gabe!) went out. it was good times- drinking and talking and even a little dancing (one of the boys is an intercollegiate ballroom dancing champion).
thursday morning brought excel training (ugh...bit all over again!!! it was surprising how many people didn't know what a pivot table was!!!), and in the afternoon we went to a workshop on presentation skills (as part of the internship, we all have to give presentations in july on what we've been doing and a lot of people in msim will be watching, so it's important to do a good job!!!). i had the yucky blonde lady who was SOOOOOO mean!!! despite the fact that she said i was very charming when i talked, she said no one would ever take me seriously because my voice raises at the end of all my sentences and i rock my feet in and out (hard to explain) and she said i look like a cute little 6-year old. it was not a happy time. but i got better towards the end, so i guess i will just have to be more aware of that. i think it didn't help that i was the only girl in my group wearing a skirt. after presentation skills, hr did a quick wrap up, and they gave us these super nifty msim bags and some itunes stuff.
then it was off to my favorite place in new york, la guardia airport. it was a horrible experience! there were four chi-town kids (tej, francisco, brian, and myself) and our planes were all leaving between 7pm and 8:30pm, and none of left before 1am because of a series of nasty thunderstorms that parked themselves over nyc. so we went to a sports bar place and just sat and watched the storm and talked (at one point there was a huge clap of thunder and i shrieked and i think i will never ever live it down (we started talk about scary movies and scaring yourself and one of the boys said to me: "what do you do? try and slam the door really loudly?"). but overall, it was really fun getting to hang out with everyone!!! i think a lot of the older people had been drinking and the flight attendants were having a hard time keeping things under control while we were waiting for over an hour on the runway before taking off, so the captain came on the speaker and literally yelled at people and said he would turn the plane around and we would never get out of new york if people didn't take their seats. haha, it definitely reminded me of when i was a kid and my parents would threaten to turn the car around when we were going out. i ended up getting to my hotel in chi-town around 3am and i was in bed by 4am, just to wake up again at 6am. it was fun, let me tell you.
yesterday was my first day of work. we had a short meeting in hr, and then we were all off to our own departments (i'm working in senior loans). as soon as i got up to my floor, i was introduced to everyone again and they put me right to work on analyzing a 10-Q for one of the companies they hold and writing a brief report on how i felt they did last quarter. i went out to lunch with howard tiffen, the head of the senior loans department, and 4 of the portfolio managers- it was nice to get to know everyone on a more informal level and they were all really interested in marching band and everything i do with that (band camp, practices, games- they wanted to know it all!!). i continued working on my report in the afternoon, and bill, the gentleman who gave me the assignment, gave me access to the company's quarterly conference call so i could continue to learn about the company's performance over the last three months. i left work around 5pm, and i was in bed as soon as i got back to the hotel.
the parental units drove up today, and it is sooooooo nice to have a car and a computer!!!! they were going to a graduation party tomorrow, so they left early in the afternoon, so i'm alone again in chi-town. i'm really excited to see what the rest of the summer has in store. i'm going back to nyc the week of june 26th to working with the senior loans department there, which should be fun (denise- we have to hang out then!!! i've already talked to laurie, and she's in!!!). i just hope i live up to everyone's expectations and learn as much as i can this summer!!! until next time...