Wandering Through A Concrete Jungle

...the summer will be filled with long hours, sleepless nights, the occasional night club, and reading subway maps. My name is Alex and I will be moving to the grid of New York City in 23 days. While I am not in my three person dorm room not much bigger than my own current room, I will either be busy with my newly found summer internship at Bank of America - Merrill Lynch or wandering around being sure to avoid dark alleys and homeless men with long beards on the streets.

So a little more about me...I was born and raised in Atlanta, GA into a family of six. I made my way through school in Atlanta with no problems, but my real passion laid in the game of golf. After receiving a scholarship to the University of Michigan (and following the girl of my dreams - although I don't like to admit it), I ended up in the Ross School of Business. Sounds great right? What most people do not know about me is that my interests lie outside of business. I am passionate about making things, creating things, and using my hands. As of now, I plan on going to graduate school with the hope of receiving a masters degree in architecture (I know I picked a great time, the summer after my junior year, to figure out what I'm interested in). No problem though. I know now that college isn't about what you major in or how much you learn, but more about growing and maturing as a person. Every day I feel as though I learn something new about myself, that's what makes college great!

To be honest, I have my doubts about my job this summer; however, I intend to make the best of it. Besides, it gives me a solid argument to convince my mom to pay for me to live in the city (it's not expensive or anything...!). But thanks for listening to my story about my somewhat average life, but then again, what in the world is the definition of average these days??

See you guys in the concrete jungle!!

-alex

Thomson Reuters First Impressions

Amidst the flashing lights, enormous billboards, and crowds of tourists in the heart of New York City's Times Square rests the Reuters building, the setting of my summer internship at Thomson Reuters. I knew relatively little about the company before starting there, and from my conversations with peers, it seems as if I was not alone. Thomson Reuters was formed in 2008 with the merger of Thomson (known for its footprint in financial services, market data, educational tools, among other things) and Reuters (known for its global, unbiased news coverage). While the companies shared a common bond in their passion for disseminating vital information to the world's professionals, there were a lot of synergies to be made before Thomson Reuters would truly come together as one entity. Even today, the growing pains are still visible, with many aspects of the company still not fully integrated. That said, Thomson Reuters is now arguably the largest information provider in the world, rivaling Bloomberg in the financial markets and the Associated Press in the media space.

My internship is in the Strategy group, which I also knew nothing about as I entered the building on June 1st. I now know that the Strategy division is a small thinktank that reports directly to the CFO, evaluating growth opportunities, acquisition targets, and overall company strategy for each year. And it's definitely exciting work. I was very pleasantly surprised to be working on such "big picture" assignments as a mere undergraduate intern. In fact, I can't even get into detail about my work because most of it involves initiatives that 99% of Thomson Reuters employees know nothing about, pretty cool in my opinion.

But what surprised me most about my first few days as an intern were the people. When I found out that 3 of my bosses went to Yale, Stanford, and Harvard respectively, and my fellow strategy interns were undergrads at Duke, Brown, and Yale, I was pretty intimidated. But I was immediately amazed to find how cool, friendly, helpful, and down to earth everyone was without exception. All working in a big open conference room together, the interns have formed a pretty close-knit group, and each day we have grown closer as we work together on assignments, ideas, and even pranks. After work on Tuesday, the entire strategy team was treated to the ultimate team building exercise, a night out at New York's ultimate ping pong lounge, SPIN. That is a must see for any ping ping fan/player.

Thus far the company has certainly lived up to my expectations. Overall, my assignments have been pretty interesting as well. Without getting into detail, I've been doing a lot of PowerPoint work, which seems to be a theme in strategy, to create slide decks as part of presentations that will eventualy reach the CEO's desk. However interesting or boring the subject matter, it's exciting to create such meaningful work at this stage in the game. In the coming weeks, I have a few more goals:

1) To meet as many influential people as possible and develop a large company-wide network
2) To get involved in the Reuters Media side of the company, especially in such a dynamic media landscape as we see now

I look forward to keeping you posted.

Alex Weiss, BBA

Thomson Reuters Prologue

I am a BBA rising senior and will be working with the strategy group at Thomson Reuters in New York this summer. I have interned with the PGA Tour and Six Flags Inc. in the last two summers and am looking for a more strategic, well-rounded, and career building experience in my last summer before entering the workforce permenently. Having been in sports and entertainment thus far, Thomson Reuters seems like the perfect opportunity to round out my resume with a global media company with unlimited talent and resources at my disposal.

While I know that I will be working in strategy on the financial side of the company, I am not exactly certain of what the job entails. I am under the impression that I will do a lot of industry analyses, evaluate growth opportunities or areas for improvement, and work on a project of my own interests. There are supposed to be about 10 interns in the division, so I look forward to working with other college students on some of these assignments. I've also done a bit of investigating and notices that the majority of my superiors are ivy league alumni, which should be an interesting dynamic and excellent learning experience, as I find that I (like many others) strive when surrounded by smart people.

Overall I am expecting an exciting corporate environment, a unique learning experience, and an unbelievable networking opportunity that will help me wherever I choose to work in the future. It is too early to tell whether I have a future with Thomson Reuters after this summer, but I will certainly be working as hard as possible to land a full time offer out of the internship. I'm pretty excited to meet so many new and intelligent people, work on exciting new initiatives at such a globally relevant company, and for the second summer in a row, work in the heart of New York City's Times Square.