I Am Wiser Now and Stuff

And I'm back... haha after a little hiatus. A lot has been happening-- with graduation and all that good stuff, and a lot of life changes. Here are some things I've learned over the past couple weeks:

• There is a direct, inverse correlation between the amount of time left in b-school and the number of social engagements that happen. This is due to a couple of things:
• People suddenly realize that they might have messed up "the best two years of their lives" and are desperately trying to rectify that. Desperately.
• People suddenly realize they have a lot of money and by money, I mean debt. Lots of debt. But, on the upside, this is debt that has already occurred, so even though we've learned about sunk cost, we want to get the most "bang for our buck" by "spending it optimally" (read: "bang for your buck" = "as fast as possible before we graduate and loans are not something that just happens every quarter anymore and "spending it optimally" = "buying rounds of fireballs much against your better judgement")
• The school also plans a couple of these things, but I think we take it upon ourselves to make it more epic every single time than it needs to be. Because. #YOLO.
•  Breaking up kind of sucks. It brings out the worst in everyone, and it has lasting effects. It's kind of like that awkward picture of you as a tween-- you try to keep burying it (because I deal with my emotions in a healthy way) but it keeps popping up at inopportune moments like you birthday, your wedding and your funeral (yeah I just Up-movied you). Luckily, there's websites like Single Steve that assures me that I'm not alone.
• Cats know when you're sad. And then they sleep on your face and cuddle you so hard that they wake you up. It's the most adorable thing and the most annoying thing all rolled up into one. Which actually explains cats pretty accurately.
• The real estate market in San Francisco is insane. Seriously, insane. We're talking first born child in exchange for a 200 square foot efficiency studio (which is code for: sometimes you have to share a bathroom). Also, the Tenderloin district in San Francisco is not as sketchy as I remember.
• Chelsea Clinton is killin' it. She's definitely part of my generation, and she's been able to take approximately a million different roles (PhD, McKinsey, campaigner, Wall Street and more) and she's been able to handle it with grace. Now she's dedicating more of her time to her parent's foundation (now rebranded with her name prominently in the title) and she makes no excuses and has no regrets about all the changes and decisions she's made. Especially right now, I find her ability to pick up, move on and start over really inspiring.

To new beginnings.

Fun Charts and Graphs

I'm out in Vegas right now for a business trip, and man is it hot out here! ANYway, here's a roundup of some fun charts ad graphs that I've seen recently:

 

So here's an interesting article from Bloomberg about the trends of business schools. Two of the biggest ones, Wharton and HBS, have seen a decline in the number of students who are interested in going to investment banking-- interesting because they are traditionally "finance" schools, but extra interesting because the industry choice that's taken its place is technology. This shocks me only because I kind of expected that the runner-up would more likely be consulting than technology, but hey....yay for my industry!

There's also this fun interactive chart (also from Bloomberg...I'm a sucker for a slider, I have to be honest) that shows the change in unemployment rates between 2009 and 2014. Unemployment, especially in the more urban areas, has hit lows of less than 5%, which is kind of shocking. Surprises? The midwest. 

Here's an interesting map from McKinsey that details the flow of goods, services, finances, people, data and information. Not surprising? The US usually makes up the fat line in pretty much all of these scenarios. Surprising? Not nearly as much activity from China as one would expect....

I'm such a sucker for graphs and stuff....