I can't believe the winter quarter has already come to an end! It feels spectacular to just sit around watching march madness (Illinois vs. Virginia Tech)...BTW go Fighting Illini! Please don't break my bracket! I already guessed wrong on BC, Old Dominion, and Duke (still can't believe that one), but I don't think my chances of coming away with the $620 GSB pot are looking good right now. It is just the first round, and I have all my final four seeds still in play, but then again, so does everyone else.

Well, I'm glad to announce that internship recruiting has finally come to an end for me. Boy that was a brutal process, although I'm quite happy with my results. I received five offers and ended up having to choose between Apple, P&G, and United Airlines. All great companies, and it was a very difficult decision, but I'll be going to United Airlines for the summer. It's nice because they're located in Chicago, I really liked everyone I met during my interviews, and the benefits are...should I say AWESOME? I can't wait to spend my weekends laying on the beach in Sao Paulo or Santiago...the options seem limitless.

Speaking of which my fiance and I are headed to St. Croix (U.S. Virgin Islands) for spring break. We leave tomorrow flying first class through Charlotte, and there's a huge noreaster coming through Pennsylvania right now, which I hope doesn't impact our flight tomorrow.

Let's see the classes during winter quarter have all been good, with the exception of investments, which was both difficult (I still confuse myself with bond duration and convexity problems), and recruiting took a lot of time away from studying. My favorite class this quarter was Harry Davis's Business Policy class. I can sum up how awesome this class in one sentence: During week seven, Prof Davis opened class with a Jazz trio (alto sax, upright bass, and drums) playing for 10 min!! We spent the next hour and a half discussing the origins and process of creativity and how to foster creativity in organizations. The subject matter might seem nebulous to some, but I took away so much from that class. Putting structure to creativity seems like a futile task, but I feel like I have a much better grasp of the subject than I ever have. Thinking about creativity from the standpoint that to be creative you need to have 1) A thinking person, 2) An instrument that provides and "encounter," for that creative energy, and 3) Constraints or limitations that help focus your thought. What truly drives creativity is the intensity of thought, which brings about an encounter (possibly the instrument), and then leads to the generation of new ideas.

The example that I took away from that class was of Warren Buffett. Apparently, Buffett didn't come up with most of his best ideas and insights until he had been working under Benjamin Graham and later on his own for a number of years. Only after 10 years did Buffett realize that there were assets a company owned, but were not included its balance sheet. These assets were "intangible" in the sense that they involved brand equity, which is worth a great deal, but was considered difficult to value at the time, and hence was not kept on the balance sheet. Companies like Disney (at the time) had a valuable brand and also had many popular characters (like Mickey Mouse, Daffy Duck, etc.) and numerous movies that would generate tons of future revenue because people adored these characters; so much so that they had been woven into the fabric of American pop culture. Obviously, Disney's brand and cartoon characters held significant value, but were not captured on its balance sheet - an extremely undervalued investment!

Probably the best thing that I took away from the quarter was being selected as a GSB Wine Club Co-Chair. The GSB Wine Club is HUGE (biggest on campus) and there is a ton of interest in the club at school, so I'm really excited about working on events and functions for the club over the next year or so. This was the only club I really wanted to be a student leader in. For the final selection dinner I brought a bottle of 2000 Los Vascos "Le Dix," which was absolutely phenomenal and blew us away, best wine at the dinner by far!