Day in the Life
Hannah Johnson

A longtime resident of Southern California, Hannah jokes that she came to Vanderbilt to spot a new crop of celebrities. And while she saw plenty of stars, Hannah also added a strong dose of marketing to her science background. She’s now putting her skills to use as a manager with Deloitte in Los Angeles.

8:00 am

Wake up! As the first year progresses, you can start to set your own schedule. I like to schedule my first class for 9:40 AM. It allows me to keep my usual late hours, but still get to school at a decent time to maximize the day.

9:20 am

Arrive at school, put lunch in the refrigerator, drop extra gear in my locker.

9:40 am

In Strategy class, we discuss Blue Ocean Strategy and the latest results from our Capstone simulated business competition.

11:10 am

Off to Starbucks across the street before settling down in the library.

1:00 pm

Take a break to eat lunch. My classmates are milling about, heading across the street to Panera or Mellow Mushroom or dashing off to meetings.

2:00 pm

New Product Development with David Owens. One of my favorite classes in B-school so far. The class takes you from brainstorming through prototyping and launching a product. We’re working with a technology company to develop an iPad peripheral. Today we learned about product costs and watched a video of a guy putting an iPad in a blender.

3:30 pm

Done with class! Off to the library to work on deliverables for tomorrow’s Survey Design and Managerial Accounting classes.

5:00 pm

Meet with Strategy team to discuss Capstone and make our R&D, production, marketing, finance, HR and TQM decisions for the day. At 8:00 pm, the instructor will advance the simulation one year, and we will find out how our strategies paid off.

7:00 pm

Walk home. Eat dinner and take a break.

8:00 pm

Check Capstone results and start to email my team incessantly.

8:30 pm

Finish stuff for tomorrow, scour internship postings, write cover letters, reach out to alumni via email, go to the gym, pay bills and do laundry.

12:15 am

Put away books. Get ready for bed. Skype with family and friends in far-off time zones. Hit the sack.