Abbey Santanello
Welcome back to "My Week in ESTEEM" where students reflect upon their experiences in our program. This week's blog is brought to us by Abbey Santanello, a 2015 Notre Dame undergraduate. She discusses exams, presentations, and the ESTEEM Tailgate.
With three exams (or more for some students!), two projects, a presentation, and an oral exam, we had our work cut out for us. Fortunately, though, we could see the light at the end of the tunnel – FALL BREAK!Week 8 brings a busy week of exams and presentations for the ESTEEM students! After a day tailgating and a classic football matchup between Notre Dame and Navy, Sunday brought an early morning and a late night to complete assignments due this coming week. Sundays are always a good day to revitalize our minds and focus our efforts on our projects and goals for the coming week. I like to do this by attending Mass in Cavanaugh Hall on Sunday nights with my fellow women, as well as the men of Zahm House who celebrated Mass in our chapel this week.
On Monday, we had our first exam in Technical Marketing. Our professor tested us on branding, the STP acronym, the 4 P’s, and the 5 C’s of marketing, which are all topics that we have been discussing in detail during the first half of our class. After the exam, he introduced our project for the remainder of the semester. It is a team marketing competition where we compete against our classmates to make the best marketing decisions for our particular companies.
Since our Business Modeling course ended a few weeks prior, we only had our Business Presentations class on Tuesday with an exam covering the book we have been reading in combination with our speeches. As Professor O’Rourke stressed, there were 51 brief chapters in the book, each with a lesson, and we would be tested on 50 of them on the test. For me, Tuesday nights are big dorm nights as an Assistant Rector. We have a Hall Council Cabinet meeting, section meetings on each floor, and our general Hall Council meeting, where the commissioners are making important decisions on our Signature Event – Cavanaugh Corn Hole -- this Friday.
For many of us, Wednesday was a big day with a Statistics exam, Statistics project due, a Data Analytics project due and a presentation to the Indiana State Police on our findings from our Data Analytics course. Additionally, for me, I started my day with a job interview that successfully moved me on to the next round! With our Data Analytics project completed and presentation ready, I spent most of my day studying for the statistics exam and adding the finishing touches on my project. The exam went well, and I managed to turn my project in four minutes before the deadline!
The presentations to Major White and the representatives from Notre Dame’s College of Science, College of Engineering, Indiana’s Management Performance Hub, and SAP was a terrific showcasing of our hard work with the Indiana car collision data and SAP software. Our project was to work with the data to uncover potential correlations between variables thus explaining car collision numbers, injuries and results. My group recognized that many car accident deaths are the result of vehicles crossing center on 2-lane, 2-direction rural roads, so we proposed that centerline rumble strips should be implemented to decrease collisions and increase awareness on the roads.
Thursday at 9:15 AM – I had been counting down to that time all week long. My Oral Exam with Sunny, Matt Ravosa, my faculty advisor, and Feranmi Okanlami, my technical advisor, was scheduled for 75 minutes, beginning at 8 AM. Throughout our semester, we have been preparing for our Oral Defense, which is a technical, overview of our technology that was presented in Chapter One of our thesis. After my advisors’ deliberation, I passed the exam, and they had some great advice for me on executing the customer validation and proof of concept research for the next two months.
With the conclusion of my Oral Exam, I had completed everything and could finally enjoy a few days off with family and friends who were in town for the USC football game. We had a group of ESTEEM students put on an awesome tailgate for ESTEEM students, past and present, as well as other friends of the program. It was a great way to celebrate a challenging week and to savor a beautiful fall day at Notre Dame before the much anticipated football game against our storied rival, USC. Go Irish and enjoy break, ESTEEMers!