Mitchell Krum ’19 LABB 2016-Choosing just one event to talk about in my blog is very difficult given the vast amount of things that we learned throughout the first week of the LABB Program. In the first week we learned about what qualities a good leader possesses and the various strategies leaders use to motivate their employees. We learned the good and bad aspects about each of these strategies, and when each should be used in a workplace setting. The following day, we all took the strengths quest test to determine our top five strongest qualities. Ms. Hagan came in and taught us how to interpret our test results and teach us how to properly talk about ourselves in a polite and concise manner. We practiced this by all giving an elevator pitch about ourselves, a concise summary of who we are and what we do that can be stated in the time it takes to ride an elevator. I’m confident that the exercises we did will prove extremely useful in future networking and interview situations. While all of these exercises and experiences are equally important and will most likely prove very beneficial in the future, I am going to talk about the financial boot camp that we did in the second half of the week.
Starting on Wednesday, Ms. Valerie Griffin began taking us through her financial boot camp, which would go through the end of the week. Throughout the boot camp we read multiple case studies and were exposed to the language of business. Being someone who has very little background in this, learning some of the commonly used business terms helped me understand the case studies much easier. We were also exposed to income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements. Ms. Griffin taught us everything we needed to know about each so that we could make an income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement on our own in Excel. We did multiple presentations pitching a particular business of our choice to investors. My group pitched the company Dollar Tree. The exercise generally improved my public speaking skills, but also taught me what to look for when investing in a company and how to effectively present myself in a business setting and to investors. The entire financial boot camp was an extremely useful experience. It taught me more about finances in three days than what I had learned in the rest of my previous education.
I would like to thank Ms. Griffin for taking time out of her busy schedule to come to Wabash for those three days to teach us about finances. I would also like to thank Mr. Morin for allowing me the opportunity to be a part of such an important and useful program. Furthermore, I would like to thank Wabash College for providing the opportunity, and most importantly would like to thank the Lilly Endowment for funding such a great program. Without the endowment, none of this would be possible.
