Housing... check!

So late last week, I got some fantastic news -- I got approved for campus housing! I'm going to be living just a couple blocks away from campus and the rent is pretty reasonable, about equivalent to what I was paying in San Francisco. I hear that the campus housing apartments are pretty hit or miss, but the proximity to school, reasonable rent and certainty of un-homelessness are well worth the risk in my opinion! The university housing office does not do much in providing any color as to the unit you are offered aside from the address, rent and potential apartment-mates. For some units, the housing office has a floor plan which they send to you with your offer, but for me personally, I had no such luck. It was a little strange for me to commit to housing without any idea of what the unit looked like (except the Google Maps image I found of the outside of the building), but I'm still very excited at what will hopefully be a nice surprise, and to meet my new apartment-mates!

This first week post-internship really flew by. This week a few of the staff members from the Columbia Career Management Center (CMC) were in town on business and hosted a few events in San Francisco for the future class of 2013. It was great to have the opportunity to meet some of the CMC staff and some of my future classmates! As nerdy as it sounds, I was really excited to hear about all the recruiting stuff that is to come during first year. I was also super stoked to meet some genuinely cool, driven and nice people who I'm sure I'll get to know a lot better of the next two years. I was really impressed by the type of caliber of my peers -- everyone has such successful careers pre-MBA already, what comes next is sure to be amazing! It was kind of humbling, but I'm happy to be considered a peer and am starting to really look forward to meeting the rest of the class. It sounds like there were more than a handful of people who were really committed to coming back to the West Coast after school. Hopefully we'll all find a way to make it happen!

This past Thursday, I also helped host an alumni event for the RPAA, a non-profit organization that I am involved in. It turned out to be a fun and successful event, which made all our planning efforts feel well worth it.

And with July 1st comes to the end of my "no-shopping-month"! Admittedly, there were a few incidents in June where I succumbed to temptation, but as a whole, I did a pretty good job of restraining impulse and unnecessary purchases! Getting used to a student budget is going to be a challenge for me -- I am totally calling it now. The past four years, I got so used to a paycheck and being able to afford (most) of the things I wanted without having to put too much thought in it. That's going to have to seriously change for at least the next two years though -- gotta dust off my food-scavenging, bargain-hunting skills! I got my last paycheck for my internship today and depositing it felt weird, because I knew that it would be my last deposit for a while ...potentially in a year (eek!!).

My Thailand trip is fast approaching -- I leave next Wednesday! I've already dug up and dragged my suitcase from storage into my room.  I've filled it to the brim with clothes I want to wear and will have to spend some time over the weekend editing my selections to an "essential" core. I used to have a horrible habit of overpacking (i.e. 6 outfits, 4 shoes for a weekend trip to LA....), but believe that I have gotten better in the past few years! Sadly, probably a large motivator in that is the purchase of my "professional" Victorinox suitcase which, while beautiful and durable, weighs as much as a baby elephant... and that's without anything inside. Since getting the suitcase, I try to pack smartly because I can barely lift the empty suitcase over my head to stack it into the overhead compartment, much less filled with clothes. Oh, the shame!!

Till next time!
xoxo