Sometimes it can be tough to be a student athlete at a commuter college like IUPUI.  It can be difficult to gain recognition throughout the community. However, one way the student athletes at IUPUI have found a way to gain respect throughout Indianapolis is through community outreach programs. Last May IUPUI student athletes competed against the rest of the schools in their conference to see who could log the most community service hours. We won that challenge with ease because giving back to our community has become second nature. This year our teams have pledged to log more hours than ever before. We will not only concentrate on one month, but the entire year. Community service has always been a part of my life and I feel that it is a great way to show Indianapolis that many athletes do not take their talents for granted and they do take the time to get out in the city and give back to our community. Many people will never realize that these student athletes are very proactive in the community, but I feel that a large thank you is needed for all of the Jaguars that do partake in giving back.

Classes are well on their way.  Some courses have already had a first exam, but not mine.  My first exam comes in the first week of October.  I’m sure many of the students in my course are beginning to worry about their first exam.  Questions are starting to come in class as to the style of the exam, how many multiple choice? How many problems?  Will there be any essay?  How many questions? 

Understanding how a professor writes an exam helps students understand how to best prepared for their exams.  In F301 Financial Management the exams are generally a combination of short multiple choice and problems.  While students first entering the class frequently wish more of the exam was multiple choice, after taking the exam they frequently prefer the problems.  This is because for a multiple choice question a student either receives all the credit or none of the credit, while for problems; students can receive partial credit for their answers.  IN finance there are several areas where a student can make a mistake in solving problems, so partial credit gives credit to the student for the portions of a problem that they solve correctly. 
Some of my favorite problems for the first exam in finance are the same types of problems that everyone faces in their life.  If I take out a mortgage on a house, what will the payments be?  How does the bank determine how much I need to pay if I pay off the loan early?  What is the implied interest rate in that health club membership that has been offered to me?  How much should I save to prepare for retirement? When leasing a car, what is the interest rate that is being charged on the lease?  Is it better to lease or purchase a car?  Each of these types of problems are presented in a financial management class. 

We also cover the basics of valuing stocks and bonds.  I always wish I had more time in financial management to cover these topics in more detail.  In financial management we discuss the basics of what types of debt there are, how to value basic debt, and why firms may choose to use debt in their firms.  In stock, we look at basic valuation and how changes in growth, cash flows, or risk can change the value of a stock.  Many of the students in the class are very interested in gaining a better understanding of investing in stocks and bonds.  While we cover the basics in financial management, these topics are mainly covered in our F303 Investments course.

The key is practice!  As students prepare for the exam, I can never emphasize enough how important it is to practice by doing problems.  Many students think that just watching the professor complete problems or seeing how the professor writes the solutions for a set of problems is sufficient.  But this is like watching a Peyton Manning throw the ball and assuming you can step in a take his place on the team or watching a famous ice skater complete a championship performance can result in your entry onto the Olympic skating team.  Practice, Practice, PRACTICE! As I remember my coaches say when I played sports and so it goes for finance.  The more practice the more likely you are to understand and do great.

Best of luck on your exams!

Let’s be honest - etiquette is mostly common sense.  You don’t chew with your mouth open, say please and thank you, return phone calls in a timely manner, etc.  These are basic things most students and professionals are expected to know.  The problem is, like it or not, there is a startling deficit of common sense in the world.  And the lack of common sense – and etiquette – is readily apparent in business and industry.  What does this mean for you as a business student or professional?  It means that practicing some everyday etiquette will set you apart from your colleagues and give your career a boost (it does help to be good at your job, too).

Business etiquette is a timely subject as the Fall recruiting season kicks into high gear.  Yesterday was the annual Career Placement Office Etiquette Luncheon.  It’s a fantastic event with a genuine English butler and a four course meal here on campus.  Students had the opportunity to sit at tables and learn about etiquette alongside representatives from Slattery & Holman, Simon Property Group, Somerset CPAs, Brightpoint, Cummins, Gilchrist & Soames, Target, Ace Holding Company, Blue & Company, BKD, Ameriprise Financial and Aldering & Company.  That’s an impressive list, in addition to the fact that the entire lunch was free for students.  It’s no wonder we pack the room with 100+ students each year. Our next etiquette related event is part of the CPO's growing Issues in the Workplace series. 

While yesterday’s luncheon focused on etiquette at the dinner table and formal social functions, it’s the everyday etiquette (or lack thereof) that gets noticed on a daily basis.  Here are 3 quick examples of workplace etiquette that regularly trip people up:

1) Email signatures.  If you have never worked in a corporate environment, this may not seem like an issue, but if you have, you know exactly what I mean.  All I really need to know is who sent the email, what company you work for, your position/title and a way to get in touch with you.  No inspirational quotes or personalized graphic are necessary.  The worst offenders: smiley faces (emoticons).  It’s always best to err on the side of professionalism and nothing screams unprofessional like a bright yellow smiley face.  Check out this Wall Street Journal article on the rise of what the author call “MeMail” and some examples of signatures gone awry:

2) Cell phones.  Cell phones are great - I can’t imagine leaving home without my Treo - but they have an off button for a reason.  When you are headed into a meeting, whether it’s with the board of directors or to discuss plans for the holiday party with two of your colleagues, turn off your cell phone.  In all honesty (excluding those individuals who use their phone all day every day for business purposes), how many phone calls are truly urgent?  A loud ringer going off in the middle of a meeting shows a lack of respect for others in the room, answering the call is worse, and having a conversation (though it happens) is the worst!  Would you believe that we have had students answer their cell phones during job interviews here in the office?  That’s right, students – meaning more than one.

3) Personal conversations.  A topic closely related to cell phones is personal conversations in a work environment.  Granted, it is impossible to completely avoid personal conversations considering the amount of time most of us spend in the office, but anyone who has ever had to work in a cubicle or shared office environment has a story of a neighbor who’s content to share her half of every phone conversation with the rest of the office.  While your cousin’s love life may be a soap opera worthy of a prime-time reality show on E!, remember that your co-workers don’t have the option of changing the channel.

Just know that others do notice these behaviors.  Your colleagues and supervisors notice them.  Your professors notice them.  And if you use some common sense and practice some etiquette, know that this will be recognized as well - and it’ll likely pay off in the long run. 

NFL football kicked off this past week. Thousands of people packed the streets of Indy on Thursday for the NFL kickoff party. Although, I am a Bears fan I was able to enjoy the festivities. Very few college students across the country will ever get a chance to have such an amazing event “on their campus.” Before coming to IUPUI I never really though Indy had that much to offer, but wow was I wrong. In the past four years I have attended many events that I never thought I would in my life. The two that stick out the most to me were the NFL party and the NCAA Final Four.  People travel from all over the country to attend these events, but for those of us that go to IUPUI it is just a walk away. This school and this city are growing at such an alarming rate it is hard to keep up with everything all the time.

On a side note, the IUPUI soccer team opens their home schedule this Friday at 5pm at Kuntz Stadium. Students get in free with their Jag tags. What a great opportunity to see Division I athletics in your backyard.

I don’t have any statistics to back me up, but I think it’s safe to say that most students (and alumni, for that matter) cringe when they find out they need to put together or update their resume.  While nobody really likes to work on their resume, it is still the most important document in the job search.  And when you consider the amount of time and money many organizations have spent developing sophisticated applicant tracking systems based on resumes, they look to remain essential for the foreseeable future.

One of the worst ways to build a resume is using a template available in Microsoft Word.  Microsoft is great at a lot of things, but resumes are not on the list.  These templates use unfriendly fonts in all sorts of sizes, are incredibly inflexible and difficult to edit, and have the look of a hastily thrown together document.  And the majority of resumes I have seen over the last year, despite my constant pleading to the contrary – ARE MICROSOFT WORD TEMPLATES!

So I set out to find a solution to this problem this summer and found OptimalResume, which is now officially up and running for all Kelley Indianapolis undergraduate and MPA students* (I am still working on fully customizing the software package).  OptimalResume is an online resume-builder that walks you through every step of the process, complete with suggested keywords and phrases, section titles and layouts, and overall resume formatting.  The software is web-based, so you can use it anywhere and at any time.  No more starting off by staring at a blank screen and wondering where in the world to begin.

Some of the features you can take full advantage of include:

• Alerting the Career Placement Office that you would like to have your resume reviewed and receiving your feedback online

• Publishing your resume as a webpage, so that you can simply email a link to potential employers or networking contacts

• Creating and storing unlimited versions of your resume

Access to OptimalResume is free to current Kelley undergraduate and MPA students*.  Kelley Indianapolis alumni can access the system for $25, payable to the Career Placement Office.  You’ll find the link to OptimalResume on the Student Resources page of the recently updated CPO website.

Once you’ve used the software, please let me know what you think.  Your opinions will help guide our future selections of student resources.

*MPA students must register with the CPO prior to creating an OptimalResume account.

For some of you this might be your first semester at IUPUI and you may have felt a little out of place and clueless.. which is sometimes a recipe for embarrassing moments to arise. Well, this is my senior year (last semester! Woo!) and I STILL have embarrassing moments believe it or not.

Okay, so it was my first day in my Marketing and Promotions and we were to get into groups. Our assignment was to make some sort of advertising for our class, M415. We were given poster board, markers, things of that nature. And I thought for a brief moment I had been taken back in time to elementary school. When do college kids ever get to play with markers? Never. . . it was just a weird concept to me- that’s all. Okay, so we are given an hour to come up with some sort of slogan, catchy phrase, etc. in order to entice students to take M415. We drew our catchy little phrase on our poster board and our group was done within 20 minutes. We were wondering why it was taking everyone else so long to get it done. So, we get back into class and the first group gets up and does this amazing skit. I mean amazing! My group looked at each other, and then at our dinky little sign, and then right back at each other. We were wondering what on earth we could throw together as we’re sitting there watching everyone else’s skit—knowing we hadn’t prepared a skit at all!

The second, third, and fourth groups had all prepared these amazing skits, too. So, now it was my group’s turn to get up and present our awesome slogan. We got up there and I thought I’d start out and everyone else would follow. Wrong. I said the whole slogan by myself… “We’re causing a commotion in advertising and promotion in M415.” And since no one had said it along with me I added, “And thank you group for saying it with me.” Crickets. Nothing but crickets. No one understood what we were doing. They didn’t quite understand that we were done giving our ‘non skit.’ So, the professor chimes in and said “Oh… so you’d put these signs up all over campus to promote students to take the class?” Exactly. But the worst part was afterwards when the professor tried to relate each group’s skit to what she was going over in the lecture notes. She successfully recalled what each group had done but when it got to the section over what my group had covered she drew a complete blank. She asked what our group had done and so I spoke up and said “we did the slogan.” She didn’t hear me so I said again, “we did the *awesome* slogan.” And then she heard me. It wasn’t awesome… just embarrassing.

So, if you think you had a pretty junky first week of classes… fear not.. someone had a much worse time. This was just ONE of my embarrassing moments. I've had more than my fair share.