Catching Up

Ohhh my. It has been a while. You would think I’d go on a week-long blogging hiatus during midterms or something, but nope – just spring break. It was a seriously busy time and it passed so, so fast. I’m flying back to Chicago in just a few hours, but I thought I’d take some time to catch you up on what’s been happening. Prepare for probably a long post. And a lot of pictures. Back to your regularly scheduled program tomorrow!

My first few days of break were lovely and relaxing. As I mentioned last week, I went shopping with my mom and hung out with friends on Friday. On Saturday, I saw some extended family for the celebration of both mine and my cousin’s birthdays. We ate lots of delicious food (pizza! more bundtinis! ice cream!) and I got caught up on everyone’s lives after not having seen most of them since Christmas.

{My mom reading my cousin, Mason, a favorite book}

On Sunday, my parents and I flew to New York, since I had the opportunity through school to take part in an externship, which essentially means I shadowed some employees at Bank of America Merrill Lynch from Monday through Wednesday.

Overall, the experience was a good one. I learned a lot about careers I may be interested in (and about those I am definitely not interested in), and I met a lot of really great people. The whole program was extremely unstructured, but a few nice employees very quickly put together a schedule of meetings with different people for me and the other UChicago extern so we could get a feel for as many different roles within the bank as possible. The amount of information that we were exposed to was a little overwhelming, but I’m still very grateful for the opportunity.

My externship days were pretty long, lasting from around 7:30 am to 5:30 pm, so I wasn’t overly keen on doing much “touristy” stuff in the evenings. However, as soon as I found out that the Peanut Butter & Company sandwich shop was about fifteen minutes from our hotel, I knew I wanted to go there for dinner one night.

{Peanut butter and bacon sandwich + chips + carrots}

{Toasty bagel covered in peanut butter, honey, and cinnamon}

This was easily one of the best decisions ever made in the history of decisions made. I adore peanut butter. I ordered the Mighty Maple sandwich, which has Mighty Maple peanut butter and bacon. It was perfect. My dad got Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedy Special, which is a bagel topped with peanut butter, honey, and cinnamon. We traded half of each. Ahhh they were so good. This shop is teeny-tiny, but I absolutely recommend you visit it, assuming you aren’t allergic to peanuts.

We didn’t do anything else fancy for dinner, but rather made dinner + dessert out of free appetizers and snacks from the hotel. Still, it was pretty fabulous.

{Cute little slider, crab balls, veggies and tasty dip, bread and cheese}

{Chocolate tart, mini cheesecake topped with a strawberry, macaroon}

My mom and I wandered down to Grand Central Station, since it was right near the hotel and I wanted to stretch a bit. The market down there is so cool, and there are tons of beautiful displays. I would love to spend more time there just looking around.

Our flight left around 6:00 pm on Wednesday, so I left Bank of America around 3:00 pm. We had a layover, so we didn’t get home until nearly midnight. The next few days were full of shopping and taking care of some little tasks I’ve been putting off (applications, letters, etc.).

I finally spent a little time just zoning out and relaxing on Saturday, and here we are. I’m all packed up and ready for another busy, exciting, engaging quarter of classes.

How has your week been? Anything I should know?