Today we turned in and presented our first big project: PowerPoints on different hotel companies. I may have said this in an earlier post, but just as a reminder, my group had Choice Hotels International, Inc. which includes brands like Quality and Comfort Inn. They are most known for their midscale brands, and are a pure franchising company.... This is how everyone's presentations went today; we got through all twenty in six hours.
Yesterday I was up until about 3 AM redoing my research on stocks and finances (my part of the slide show), as well as helping out my other group members. Unsurprisingly, I overslept my alarm clock a bit, but I was still able to make it to class early. Everyone was dressed very professionally, and I felt like I was at another ILC event. All of the presentations were good, but I was surprised at how many people brought a script up with them to read from while occaisionally looking up. They may not have made as many mistakes, but sometimes it felt too structured. I did not go up with any script, as a couple other kids also chose to either memorize a script or just to go by the basics. Although I forgot to add some of the exact percentages, my presentation went over really well, and I was able to cover them later when a finance question was asked. While most groups covering finances pointed out incomes, I decided to show the profit margin (a company's efficiency) and quarterly revenue growth year-over-year (a company's improvement of sales each year) of Choice Hotels compared to its competitors. I don't know if that's what Mark wanted, but it is an accurate representation of how a company is doing, and investors heavily rely on those two statistics to make their decisions.
Before we went back to the classroom after lunch, we all took a group photo in our business attire. The first one was just a normal, smiling picture; for the second one, Mark told us to "show our right-click fingers." Basically, hold up the finger you use to right-click with a computer mouse, and you will know what I mean. As a reward for working hard and doing well with this project, Mark and Reneta cancelled office hours as well. I used my extra time to take a nap; grab a later, unrushed dinner; and finish my homework. I also got to see the fireworks by sitting on a hill behind the Arts and Sciences buildings. Ithaca puts on its July 4th fireworks early, though I don't know why. It was really nice to just sit there without having to stress about homework; unfortunately, tomorrow is probably another story, with hotel business as usual.
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