Internship: Week 9

The penultimate week of the internship was a really busy one! I was working hard to try and wind up the project this week so that my last week would be relatively free! Looks like I've almost managed to do that. Almost!!!

I received all necessary information in the defined time lines! All too well. The consultant proved difficult right till the end, and gave us a bunch of so-so guesstimates. We already had our own bunch of guesstimates and found his set to be quite different from what we had. That meant that we had a string of meetings to try and reach mutually agreeable numbers. It took us two days!

My colleague who was working on the model needed extensive help. I did many parts of the model and redid many other things she did. There were a lot of logic questions she had no answers for and the two of us had to run around the office to get a lot of information she had missed. Overall - it was a very fun exercise, and we managed to have a satisfying model by the weekend. Even more, the model now proves that all our initial hypothesis are right - so we're quite thrilled.

With all that done, I'm working on fine tuning the presentation for the board presentation this week. I presented the content to my CEO and he's quite happy with what he saw. I have a review today evening with a few General Managers, and once i answer their questions satisfactorily - I am all set to face the board for the second time. We have addressed a lot of questions from the previous board meeting and hopefully the board will like our answers. Cant wait for Wednesday.

I'm planning to officially finish the internship on Wednesday, after the board meeting. I'll still have to drop in on Thursday and Friday to transition my work and bid adieu to all the wonderful people I've met here - but I want to do that on my schedule and not have the binding to be at the work place during work hours. I'm hoping a few lunches would help me complete the farewells.

Speaking of farewells, my CEO is out of the country on a business trip. We bid adieu after the review session on Friday. We had a mutual feedback session and it went exceedingly well. I wont be meeting him again.

I celebrated this internship with a weekend trip to Valparaíso, Viña del Mar and Isla Negra! I also completed my Chilean ambition of visiting all 3 of Pablo Neruda's homes!!! Quite a humbling experience. Last but not least, I had tonnes of fantabulous sea food from all 3 coastal towns. I'm not exaggerating, but over the weekend, I've tasted some of the best sea food I've ever had!!!

So I'm almost done, with one more week to go in this country. Hopefully everything will go smoothly over the week and I'll find myself is Chicago on Sunday noon! I just cant wait for that!!!