I have been most excited for this class. Last semester I changed my major from marketing to supply chain management after really enjoying my business statistics class. I remember originally feeling discouraged about that class because of all the rumors I heard about it being so difficult and one of the worst classes you take while in college. I admit I thought about dropping business statistics before even going to class the first day. Thankfully I didn’t and I stuck through and showed up the first day bright and early at 9am. My professor was so helpful and made me really enjoy what I was doing and encouraged me to change my major from marketing to supply chain because of all the opportunities and how well I was doing in her class. Her encouragement truly opened a new path in my college career that I didn’t even for see.

The first few days we’ve covered basic terms such as what supply chain and sustainability are and how we can be sustainable. We went over Triple bottom line (people, power, planet 🙂 ) and we started to discuss businesses as a system that considered multiple perspectives. On our first day in class we played a game to have all of us start to grasp the concept of a supply chain and how there is so many moving parts. This name, known as the “beer game”, opened up the conversation to the concepts cradle to grave and cradle to cradle. Cradle to grave is a firms perspective on their environmental impact created by their products or activities from the beginning of its life cycle to its disposal. The C2G process focuses on reducing waste, but not entirely eliminating it. On the contrary, cradle to cradle is define as the the business strategy that regenerates products into new ones at the disposal of the original product. This means that each product although not brand new gets regenerated into a new product. This strategy focuses on eliminating waste entirely.

We had diplomat Yuri Arthur speak to us this week with two of her colleagues. She spoke about how she got into her career path and struggles she’s faced along the way. I was really intrigued to hear about the struggles she’s faced with working in government and how she balances her personal life with her career. She explained how she started her career in government and along the way has met her husband and has had a child and adopted a dog and how even though she gets relocated every 3 years to a new country, there is always hefty accommodations for her and her family. She gave us advice which was: don’t listen to others say you can’t because the only person who can say you can’t is the person who is interviewing you. Also, use your student resources as long as you can, meaning you should reach out to people in your community to discuss their path to their career and see if they can offer you advice while you’re still a student and learning your path. She gave really good advice and I was very happy to listen to all of her stories.

So far I am really enjoying this class and i’m very happy that I changed my major to supply chain.