There are no products, just solutions

Hello everyone!

I am finished with my classes for the day, and I have been since 10:30am. Isn't that amazing? If there is one thing that Charles Wright did not prepare me for it was the amount of freetime I am being provided with. I started the day with 8:30am German100 in the Main Villa with Professor Vadilonga. She's really, really nice. She's actually from Bern, and German-speaking Switzerland. She said that where she's from the pronunciation is more similar to southern Germany. Anyway, she was super nice. We just went over some basics today, like pronunication and some easy words. The first word put up on the board was Oma, of course, because it was the first one that came to mind when she asked us for a few words we already knew. She let us out of class a bit early. Books are incredibly expensive. My German book is going to cost 240 francs (!!!).

After German I had Marketing in a Global Context at 9:40am with Professor Adams. I think I'm really going to enjoy that class. I'm one of only four freshmen in it, so that's a little bit intimidating. It sounds like Professor Adams has done a bit of everything in the world of marketing, and she obviously loves her subject. She went to Yale for her graduate work, taught marketing, became a marketing consultant for companies such as Gucci and Barrilla (she just gave us a few names that we would be familiar with), started her own company down in Italy, sold it, and just came back to teaching last year. It sounds like we're going to be working with a lot of real case studies and whatnot, so I'm excited about that. It sounds like it's going to be interesting class. She also talked to us about some of the basics of marketing: for example, there are different kinds of people. They may have the same need, but they will have different wants. There are needs and there are wants. There are no products, just solutions. Apparently, Revlon started that one with something about how they do not sell cosmetics, they sell beauty and fixes.

It's also very strange how there really isn't homework. Which makes sense, I mean, it would be a whole ton of work for the professor if we had to fill out random excerises every night to be graded or whatnot. I think this makes much more sense. For Marketing we'll have case studies, two quizzes, one midterm, and one final writeup/exam. Our final exam has to do with the Kodak Funtime Festival, which was, apparently, a complete disaster. I think I'm going to like her class because it sounds like she keeps it very structured, but wants creative thinking; she kept telling us that it is important to know the process and methodology before doing the creative thinking or else you end up with disasters.

So far I'm looking forward to my classes. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with the rest of my day. It's 11:07am now, about. I don't know when lunch starts. I think I'd really prefer to do most of my meals on my own if possible, but they won't let freshmen do that. Ah well. I'm planning on eating my weekday lunches and dinners here because they're already paid for; don't want to waste that... I've been eating breakfast in my room, and I'm planning on doing my own cooking or eating out on the weekends. I do want to find a good little restaurant somewhere downtown that I can depend on. I have to go pick up my books today but I don't want to do that until right before I go down the hill. All of us "down the hill" people (as we're commonly known) try to minimize our trips up and down the hill, which can burn a lot of time. Pretty much, we all have to go up and down at least twice a day, which is fine. But no one likes to go up and down three or four times, I can tell you that much. After I get my books I'll probably go back down the hill and do some reading. I'm really anxious to start reading the Marketing book. It says on the schedule that we're going to start discussing Chapter One on Wednesday, so I might as well be super prepared with my freetime. I might need to stop at Migros too, to get some bread and flour and sugar. That way I can make Schmaan in the mornings. German spelling is a bit kooky I learned this morning. After all that I'll probably come up for dinner, go back down the hill, watch a movie, and go to bed...

All right, more soon! I'm sure this isn't the end of me for today. :-)