Lauren – Oxford, England

Lauren has just completed an internship with HBK Investments in downtown Dallas. She is attending SMU-in-Oxford during July and August.

August 10, 2005

I can't believe I'm back at school. I'm excited, but I already miss Oxford (especially the 70 degree weather)!  It took a couple of days to get adjusted to the time change, and I was only home for 3 days; I’m leaving again for Mustang Corral on Friday!

Monday (August 1st) was our last high table lecture in Oxford.  Through a series of 6 lectures, each of us had the opportunity to be invited to the reception and to sit at the high table with the professors and lecturer for the formal dinners that are typical of the university.  Tuesday evening, we celebrated the end of class with a cruise on the Thames from Oxford to make up for the one that got cancelled from London during our first class trip! I also couldn't leave England without going out for tea and scones at least once...too bad I don't like tea!  We had Wednesday and Thursday off to study (I spent them with the stomach flu) and then had 6 hours of essay exams separated only by lunch on Friday.  Immediately following exams we had our final convocation and "going-down" banquet, went out, and left for the airport at 6 a.m.!

July 31, 2005

4 weeks in Oxford have flown by!  Classes are keeping me busier than I expected (I guess I thought that without all the extra-curricular activities I would have many hours free).  Instead, I spend most afternoons reading one of the 10 history books I have for my 2 classes and hand writing weekly papers.  But despite all of this, I’ve found time to visit Christ Church College in Oxford (where Harry Potter was filmed), go punting on the river, climb the stairs of St. Mary’s cathedral tower to get a beautiful view of the town, shop, eat out, watch the SMU football (soccer) team beat both UVA and Emory (the other schools studying in University College this summer), see plays, and travel every weekend!  Our class trips have taken us to the Roman Baths, Stonehenge, Windsor Castle (one of the Queen's residences), Kelmscott Manor, and Stratford-upon-Avon.

The group also went to London for the 20th and 21st of July and got a tour of the House of Lords in Parliament and saw the British Museum. Our plans the second day were altered when the second set of London bombs went off, but since we were on a private coach, my class was still able to see the Imperial War Museum (awesome!) and the Tate Modern art museum. Unfortunately, the main streets were shut down and we only moved a few feet in an hour due to heightened security, so we couldn't get to the Cabinet War Rooms that are next to the Prime Minister's residence. It surprised me how much life went on as usual for the many London residents that took public transportation to and from work. The attitude seemed to be a little more cautious, yet the terrorist acts were mostly taken in stride.

The next day, I opted to go on a class trip led by Dusty, Univ's head porter and Dr. Orlovsky, one of the SMU directors and also the professor of my CF class.  We had a very busy 2 days and spent lots of time on buses and ferries traveling through England, Belgium, and France, but I am so glad that I got to see cemeteries, monuments, museums, and beaches from the world wars that I might never have gotten to on my own!  Yesterday I went back to London to see all of the tourist-y things that we didn't get to due to the first bombings.  Now on to the last two days of class and exams....

July 9, 2005 (or as Europeans would write it: 9/7/05)

One week in Oxford has flown by! We flew into London Gatwick overnight last Saturday and got here, exhausted, at 8 a.m. ...just in time to stand in an hour-long customs line. After all 90 SMU students arrived, we took a bus to Oxford and checked into our rooms in University College. My room is in [the] "New Building" which was built sometime around the 1500s. The rooms are small and not air-conditioned (it's actually pretty warm here), but everything is so gorgeous and has so much history! My windows overlook Fellows' Garden, a sacred garden in which only Fellows of the college can walk on the grass. It's hard to explain the culture of the oldest college, but it is definitely different than SMU.

Although I was prepared for a change, Oxford still surprised me. I've never been to a school that has a library that looks like a cathedral, a dining room and chapel with original windows from the 1300s, and its own pub. We have "scouts" that make our bed and take out our trash every day, and there is a porter at the gate to the main quad (the only way to get into the school) who knows the answer to everything. Our first weekend was a whirlwind with an opening ceremony, reception, and formal banquet, tours of the town, and orientation meetings.

We have now had four days of class, and the Oxford tutorial system is taking a while to get used to. Our first class is from 8:45-11:45 each morning, with a 30-minute tea (and coffee and cookies) break in the middle. This is taught by an SMU professor and is comparable to other SMU compressed summer school classes.

The second class is an Oxford tutorial, which meets for one hour a week with the entire class and one hour a week with the professor and about four other students. In the tutorial, you are expected to have read a number of books and come prepared to debate the assigned topic. Each week you write a paper and one student reads his or hers, which begins the discussion. From what I have gathered, the more you argue, the better. Afternoons are mainly free, although mine have been used up by hours of reading, researching for my second paper, and also a lot of exploring. Unfortunately, just about everything closes at 5 (in time for the numerous pubs to open).

We have also had a few class excursions so far. We have visited Blenheim Palace, Minstrel Lovell Hall, Warwick Castle, and Kenilworth Castle, and I've taken a total of 178 pictures so far, of Oxford and these awesome castles and/or ruins.

Obviously, the recent bombings in London put a hold on our class trip plans there yesterday (it's kinda scary that we were just over an hour away and had planned to head to London and use public transportation the day after the bombings), but we feel safe here and hopefully will get to see the monuments soon!

June 29, 2005

Today was my last day at HBK. Working here was a great experience I hope to be able to repeat, and I had the chance to work on a lot of different accounting projects. My group even took me out to lunch to Patrizio's (my choice) at the end of my internship! Now that I've spent a month's worth of DART commutes to and from work reading my two history books for one of my Oxford classes, I have to write my first paper for my tutorial class... and I have a LOT of packing to do!

June 13, 2005

Well the newness has worn off, and now I'm down to work. Not that I wasn't working before, but this is less glamorous, although just as important. Reanae Seth, another SMU student, Daniel Rothstein, from UT, and I (the 3 accounting interns) will be spending the week printing reports and noting every minute difference in balance sheets and journal entries from 1999 to present. HBK is in the middle of a software transition to PeopleSoft, so our job is to test and make sure everything that should have been converted to the new system was converted correctly. I'm talking like did the exact amount of each line carry over, are the 13 digit, 3-part account codes correctly interpreted, etc. This really isn't too bad, especially with 3 of us working together...plus I have my iPod to break up the monotony. The only problem is that with 3 of us running massive reports and trying to print them off the web-based program, the server gets mad at us and shuts us out frequently...which means we get to start whatever we were doing all over! But hey, I'm having fun, and as I've been told, this really is an integral part of company operations -- and someone's gotta do it!

~Lauren~

I'm certainly going to have a busy summer! Right now I'm interning in the accounting department at HBK Investments, LP, one of the largest hedge fund managers in the world. In July I will be studying abroad with the SMU-in-Oxford program. I've never been to Europe before, so I'm really excited!

On my first day at HBK (May 9th - just two days after exams ended), I definitely noticed that I was in a high-profile environment. From the location in the Crescent office complex (adjacent to an upscale hotel complete with a Starbucks, exclusive club, fancy restaurant, gorgeous courtyard, shopping, etc.) to the equipment (I'm an intern and I share a huge room overlooking downtown with 2 other interns - each of us have our own desk, filing cabinet, supplies, computer with two flat-panel monitors, phone line, fax #, etc.), I was overwhelmed. Breakfast and snacks are provided, and lunch is catered (free!) daily by a former chef at The Mansion! The perks don’t end there. For the Star Wars Episode III opening, HBK rented a theater for employees and their guests! And we can park for free just feet from the elevator in the Crescent garage. This is quite a contrast from my sister's minimum wage (although necessary for an aspiring journalist) internship at the Dallas Morning News in which she pays for her own parking and hikes several blocks to get to the office! You'd think that everyone would be overly professional in HBK's type of environment, so I was really surprised to find out that the dress code includes jeans!

Of course, to get to this cool job downtown from my parents' house in Plano requires over an hour commute. I tried driving, but the traffic on 75 was terrible... so now I take the DART lightrail and a bus, which is an adventure in itself when you consider the inconsistent schedule of the buses.

So how did I get this job? I actually was skeptical about my chances to find an internship because I chose to spend the second half of my summer studying abroad. But I applied for nearly every accounting internship listed on SMU's career center website and was lucky enough to be offered such a competitive job – the one I probably would have taken if every single one had been offered to me!

While I definitely have been spoiled by the perks of working in the financial industry, my main goal in getting an internship was to gain experience in accounting. The management accounting group I work in only has about 7 people, so I've had the opportunity to work on projects for everyone and learn a lot about the company. I've created financial documents for some of HBK's foreign entities that have 3-31 fiscal year ends, reconciled & analyzed activity in accounts, assisted with accounts payable, approved expense reports, and much more. Some of the things I've been doing can be confusing, but with a supportive boss and HBK's educational series for interns, I'm learning a lot.

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