"Good Foul...Good Foul..."

Friday: 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 a.m.
Saturday: 10:00 a.m. - 10:30 p.m.
Sunday: 5:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.
Monday: 8:00 a.m. - 10:30 p.m.

The weekend was pretty slow. I mostly worked on the company profile that was due this morning (Monday morning). I made a big mistake. I came in on Sunday not to work but to do some personal things and the summer associate I was working with say me and said, "Oh, you didn't have to come in..." and WHAM! I got a load of work. Saturday was similar-- came in for what I thought would be an in-and-out afternoon, and these profiles kept us here til 10:00. The thing that was most frustrating was this summer associate didn't know much more than I did when it came to some more technical stuff. There were a couple of issues where we didn't see eye to eye, not anything serious or confrontational, more like we kept making good points, which confused the both of us.

Monday-- Started off the morning with the morning meeting. I like the morning meeting because it helps me stay connected with the markets to some extent. Honestly, I don't feel like I am as up-to-speed on the markets like I was during school.

After the meeting the summer associate and I met with the senior vice president to discuss our company profile. We met at 10:00 a.m. and had to have this profile sent to the Partner of a really well known P.E. firm at 11:00 a.m. There were a couple of things that we need to change and it didn't take too long. At 11:00 a.m. We had the conference call with the partner. One thing I would say about my experience thus far, I am surprised at how much senior exposure I have had. It was good to hear this SVP try to pitch this company to the partner. I didn't think he did that great of a job, but who knows.

Up until the afternoon things were really slow. Then all the interns got an email. We each were assigned 20 companies to spread by August 1. Now to give you an idea of how long it takes to spread one company... for me it takes about an hour. We had to do them all by hand, which means we had to look up, print out, highlight and tab all our numbers rather than link them to this database that has the numbers anyway. Sounds wasteful, but the truth is hand spread numbers are more up-to-date that the database ones. Of course you want to check and recheck your numbers, so that take a little time. Additionally, for me, its not as easy as looking through the book and POOF! there's the number, sometimes you have to dig to find out what they mean by "restricted cash" and things like that.

About 6:45 p.m. I had my mid term reviews. There is a funny story to that. I went in to the staffers office and we had the recruiter on the phone. The staffer did most the talking. He talked first about my strengths, "Initiative," "Asks the right questions," "Carry myself professionally," "Hungry for the job, want to learn." He also mentioned that people were able to notice an increase in attention to detail from the first day to the day they submitted reviews and an increase in final product submitted. They liked to see the increase and the showing of improvement.

The things they wanted me to work on included taking a step back and really trying to understand the bigger picture-- in other words, not just do it to do it, but really see where my work will come into play. Also I need to work on efficiency, making sure I can balance multiple tasks and be able to complete assignments quicker. And lastly, I need to gain more technical experience. The staffer said that was more of his fault because of the jobs he has staffed me on. He mentioned putting me on more assignments to do some modeling. To date I really haven't stretched to far in that area.

At the end he said, "Overall, good foul." In fact he said it couple of time throughout, and I didn't know what he meant by it. I didn't dare ask, I wanted to think about it more. I talked to a couple of other interns and told them what he said. They were a little confused, and then of course I get thinking (as I felt "good foul" was not a "good thing") that I should get more clarification. I mean, I am working my hardest, doing the best I know how and I get along with everyone. So I sent the staffer an email, "I just have one quick question. I have looked over my notes and was wondering what you meant by, 'Good Foul.' I think of baseball when a player connects but its not in the right direction, could you clarify?"

He writes back, "Good File..."

I felt like an idiot. The staffer is from Africa and has a pretty thick English accent. "Good File." Got it.