A Day in the Life of Menna Mulugetta
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Year: Sophomore
Age: 19
Major: Business Administration
Hometown: Ithaca, NY
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8:30 AM
Sipping a cup o’ joe from the Barista Café, Menna is sitting in Finance, the first of her five classes today. While learning about analytical models for improving the decision-making process, in typical Menna-fashion she is charting out her weekend activities (in her head). Fortunately, she is the master of time management and always fits in the fun stuff.
9:30 AM
Business Communications is always pleasant because her favorite professor, Dr. [Claudia] Kirkpatrick, teaches it. Even if Dr. Kirkpatrick is a really tough grader, she always leaves Bus Comm feeling more prepared for the ‘real world.’ Isn’t that what college is for? Dr. Kirkpatrick also advises Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) —an organization for which Menna handles Public Relations—so they know each other pretty well by now. SIFE is dedicated to business-oriented outreach projects that disseminate knowledge about market economics, entrepreneurship, and personal financial success.
12:25 PM
On her way to Marketing, she runs into Dean [Kenneth] Dunn, of the Tepper School of Business. They exchange hellos and he asks how she did at the regional SIFE competition in Cleveland, Ohio last weekend. Although she’s in a hurry, she gives him the highlights: they secured a spot at nationals and picked up several individual awards for best projects. The Carnegie Mellon chapter was the only team to make a sweep like that. They totally killed! In late May they’ll be headed to Kansas City, Kansas for the national competition. “Gotta run,” she says with an apologetic shrug, but Dean Dunn is all smiles and she’s off to class, arriving in the nick of time.
2:30 PM
After grabbing a custom-made sandwich at Ginger’s Deli in Posner Hall, Menna is at her Student College (StuCo) meeting. She serves on the StuCo Executive Board and will be moving into the President’s seat next year. StuCo runs student-taught courses for elective credit on subjects ranging from Sketch Comedy for Beginners to Discovering Forensics to Learning about the Stock Market to Gardening Practices!
3:45 PM
Aaah… finally some time to breathe and respond to the e-mails filling up her inbox. There are already some from the StuCo members, a few from friends about weekend plans, and several about community service projects from Rotaract and Lambda Sigma honor society. There are more still from some of her Mudge Hall residents (Menna is a Resident’s Assistant (RA)) and from classmates about coordinating meeting times to work on their group projects.
5:30 PM
Dinner meeting at the Underground with her Marketing group about their semester-long market research project on the cold medicine industry. Each group/company maintains a marketing campaign and competes over nine months for the largest profit margin. Who needs “The Apprentice” when Menna has the Tepper School?! However, that doesn’t mean that she won’t be catching “The Bachelor” this week… she has a salad and onion rings (they cancel each other out, right?) and shares a slice of Gullifty’s famous cheesecake with a buddy. After figuring out their game plan for the next few weeks, the group decides that they’d better start acting like it’s Friday. So they put away the books and play a couple games of pool.
10:30 PM
Menna and her friends are blowing off some steam at an 18 and over club in the Strip District. As she shakes her groove thing under the blue lights of the dance floor, she smiles at having the long-overdue opportunity to sleep in tomorrow morning!
