Tulane University Freeman School BLOG

HOORAY!!!! Another student friend decides to blog about her summer! Thanks, Rebecca!
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Will was looking for some other first year MBAs to give updates about their summer internships so despite having never “blogged” (is that the correct term?) before, I decided to oblige.

I’m in Houston this summer working for a consulting firm’’s human capital management practice. We work with companies to help them measure people as strategic investments and not just expenses. For most hard-core business school students this might sound like a foreign concept, but believe me it’s a big business! For me it was a perfect fit with my previous experience and interests so I’m glad I found the opportunity (which by the way was through the CMC & is with a Tulane Alum).

My first week here I met up for happy hour with 4 other first year (soon to be second year!) Tulane MBAs and it was interesting to compare notes on internships.

The first thing that struck me is the differences in those in formal internship programs with specific expectations and job duties compared with others who seem to be making their own opportunity. My internship falls somewhere in the middle. My team typically has a summer intern, but just one. However, in the past they haven’t hired MBA interns so they aren’’t quite sure yet what they can expect from me. So far that’’s worked to my advantage. Last week I put together an answer to an RFI (request for information) from a Louisiana company and my boss thought I did a great job. She’’d sent me some previous examples but we hadn’’t had the time to discuss the project in great detail. I think she appreciated that I took the initiative to get something on paper for her to review since she’’s swamped at the moment and was relieved to see how close it was to a finished product.

As much as I complained at times about the team assignments in school, I must say I’’ve learned how to operate on a team more effectively and it’s been useful for this internship. I’’ve noticed my team here works collaboratively on a lot of projects so balancing that with the immediacy of the deadline is an important skill to learn.

Next week I’’m traveling to Las Vegas for our practice group’’s off-site meeting so I’m excited to meet everyone from our other offices and see Vegas for the first time! More on that later…

Rebecca

Thanks, Rebecca!

-will

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