Old friends

Since moving to Virginia, I have been truly awful at keeping in touch with my friends from back home.  There just isn't enough time in the day to feed myself, let alone make phone calls or send personal emails. However, due to some apparent oversight in the FY schedule this week (guess someone in the administration missed the "Black November" memo, but more on that later), I have had the luxury of enough free time to spend quality time on the phone with friends from college, exchange emails with a friend from work, and see a friend from home this afternoon (totally impromptu!).  Being able to catch up with these friends was exactly what I needed from a mental health perspective at this point in the semester.  The new friends I've made at Darden are great, but sometimes nothing beats being able to talk to someone who has known you for 5+ years. 

And now I'm off for a potluck with some new friends...  :-)

Exam week is the best week of the quarter

Imagine being able to sleep later than 7 am, to watch prime-time television, to spend the whole day in pajamas, to have time to go grocery shopping, to have time to cook (not just heat) dinner…

For Darden FY students, the above activities are just figments of the imagination during the first quarter. During typical school weeks, I wake up at 7 am, shower, dress, do hair and makeup so that I look presentable for company briefings later in the day, grab my first cup of coffee at 7:45 (thank goodness for timers on coffee makers!), hop in the car, get to Darden by 8 am, spend the next 5 hours in class (refilling coffee every 85 minutes), grab a quick lunch, attend a company briefing or two, meet with a career coach/attend a club function/hit up another networking event, run home, pound a diet coke, prep the three cases for the next day, zap my dinner in the microwave while I change my clothes, then head back to Darden for learning team at 8 pm, get home around 10 pm, and spend some time unwinding, paying bills, trying to keep in touch with friends (which I am really bad at doing lately), and then fall into bed exhausted around midnight or 1 am. I frequently grocery shop at 10 pm, on my way home from learning team (there are four grocery stores between Darden and my apartment, 3 miles away). I don’t have time to cook dinner unless it’s a weekend (fortunately, I made a bunch of meals in August and froze them, and between those, lean cuisines, and free food at briefings or networking events, I manage to avoid dinners consisting of chips, cookies, or other unhealthy but quick foods). It’s a brutal schedule. I thought I’d have time for naps, like I did in college, but I do not. I am literally on the go doing Darden-related activities for 14+ hours a day.

However, once exam week rolled around, I found that I actually had some time to unwind and act like a normal human being. I had time to clean my apartment. I had time to go to both dinner and brunch with friends during the weekend before exams. I woke up each day at 8 am, grabbed some coffee and a granola bar, worked on the day’s exam for 5 hours, printed it out, drove to school and dropped it off, and by no later than 3 pm each day, I was a free woman. I caught up on the shows stored on my DVR. I painted my toe nails. I cooked. I ironed a huge stack of business casual attire. I spent a lot of time on Facebook. I took naps. I read books for fun. It was amazing.

Then second quarter started….and by day 2 I found myself counting down the days until Q2 exam week.

Smörgåsbord

I have always been a huge fan of buffets. When I was a kid, one of my cousins and I used to be brunch buffet masters – we’d load up our plates with Belgian waffles, made-to-order omelets, fresh fruit, salads, freshly-carved meats, etc. And then we’d take a second, third, or fourth trip to the buffet line. I have no idea how we managed to eat so much, because I certainly cannot eat that much anymore; I just don’t have the stomach capacity for it (yes, for all you operations fans out there, my stomach is the Herbie when it comes to buffets). Now, that’s not to say that I didn’t try to relive my youth at the Darden International Food Fest…

The International Food Fest (IFF) is an annual Darden event sponsored by the International Business Society. Students form teams to represent countries or regions, and then they prepare traditional delicacies to serve from a decorated table/booth to the whole Darden community (you pay a flat fee for a wristband, and then when you show up, you get a plate and a fork and can eat all you want). After everyone has eaten themselves into food comas, many of the teams put together a performance of some sort.

While my heritage is German, there was, sadly, no Germany table at the IFF this year. Instead, I was recruited (during Orientation) by Team Italia. (Apparently, if you invite people over for a lasagna dinner during International Orientation, they will tell Irene , who will promptly recruit you.) We made a whole host of tasty food, including lasagna, tiramisu (I need to get that recipe from Irene!), polpette, bruschetta, insalata caprese, etc. My house and hands smelled like garlic for a week after my sub-team met to make the insalata and bruschetta….but it was delicious! Team Italia also sang some apparently traditional Italian songs during the performance section. Yes, even I sang, though I have a horrible signing voice and don’t speak a word of Italian. It was certainly interesting!

Although Team Italia didn’t end up winning any awards, this year’s IFF was a great chance to meet some new people, taste some new foods from around the world, and reminisce about how I used to be able to eat soooo much more food when I was younger. *sigh*

Life Outside of School...If I Could Only Remember What That Is...

Darden has a reputation for having a very rigorous First Year program. Do not underestimate the implications of that reputation. I have class for five hours a day, starting at 8 AM, then I go to company briefings, then I prep my cases, go to club meetings, meet with my learning team, and come home to work on my resume or finish prepping cases. I get maybe, if I'm lucky, 6 hours of sleep. I can survive on that, but if you knew me in high school, you know what a lack of sleep does to me after a while. To head off those effects, I try to get a lot of sleep on weekends, but there are always tons of social events, more cases to prep, more job search stuff to be done....and a new town to explore!

While I haven't had a ton of time to really explore, when S came down to visit before classes started, we did go to Monticello (very cool!). J and A and I also drove over to the Williamsburg Outlets during Orientation (to stock up on lightweight business casual attire at discount prices). Beyond that, I've been spending most of my free time entertaining (I love having people over for dinner/drinks/apps/whatever), hanging out watching movies or playing Cranium, or just trying to find some time to catch up on everything I've got stored on my DVR (darn learning team meetings during prime time!). I'm hoping that now that I sort of know what's going on with school, I'll have a little bit more time to go do things like hike, drive Skyline Drive, etc. We also start getting random Reading Days (like last Friday, this coming Wednesday, and October 9!). Unfortunately, Reading Days are usually claimed by such fun school-related activities as company briefings, case prep, Career Coach meetings, conferences, etc., so I'm not sure how much of a respite they'll be. There's some talk of getting in a round of golf on Wednesday morning before company briefings, but we'll see if that plays out...(haha...punny!).

On that note, it's off to bed for me. Gotta get in that 6 hours of sleep, you know!

Retrospective: The Dreaded Career Search

Another thing I did not anticipate about Darden when I arrived: you have exactly 2.5 days to enjoy being unemployed, and then you start panicking about finding a new job. Surprisingly, this isn't because you are destitute; it's because the Career Development Center (CDC) will put the fear of God into you by immediately convincing you that you will never have a job ever again because there is a recession/you are a career switcher/nobody is hiring/the sky is falling/run, Chicken Little, run! OK, slight exaggeration. But still....

The doom and gloom and career-centric mindset started during International Student Orientation, continued through regular Orientation, became more intense during the first few CarMa sessions, and reached a fever pitch with the onslaught of company briefings, networking events, etc. that started a few weeks ago. To be fair, I think they really just wanted us to get on top of the job search sooner rather than later, but I thought I'd have a little while to just chill. Wrong.

We're currently in the midst of preparing our resumes (although resume drops don't happen until December, I've already been asked for mine a couple times). I'm having a bit of a hard time moving from a "look, I'm a great paralegal, hire me to work in the legal field!"-focus to a "look, I'm a great MBA student, hire me to consult/crunch numbers/develop a marketing plan/etc."-focus. I met with two second-year career coaches (one who was assigned to me when I picked the consulting industry as a focus, and one who will be working at McKinsey next year and had a similar non-quantitative, short pre-school career) and the consulting Career Coach last week, and I have a meeting with the "non-traditional careers" Career Coach tomorrow. Basically, my resume doesn't do a great job showing "results" right now, and I'm struggling to figure out how much I should/can (legally) share about what my jobs have entailed. I guess the good thing is that there are tons of resources available to me, so I'm going to keep taking advantage of them and "trusting the process," and hopefully it will all work out in the end.

Retrospective: Family Weekend

Last weekend was Family Weekend at Darden. On Friday, parents, spouses, fiancees, friends, whomever could visit a class with their associated student, come to First Coffee, hear from the Dean and the Director of Student Services, and (if they registered early enough to get seats) attend a mock class led by my LO professor, Scott Snell. The day ended with a Family Weekend Cold Call.

My parents came down for Family Weekend, arriving Thursday and staying until around 3:30 on Sunday. On Friday, they came to class (although they were scheduled to come to MC with me, and we were videotaping our 2-minute stories in small groups, so I prohibited them from actually attending that portion), went to the presentations, chilled with me at home in the afternoon, went to the Cold Call, and then took me to dinner. On Saturday, we hit up several wineries southwest of Charlottesville (Wintergreen, Cardinal Point (yep, trip 2 for me - but they have rieslings, which my family love), and Hill Top Berry Farm & Winery) stopped at a delicious roadside bbq shack in the middle of nowheresville, VA, and then came home to do random odd bits of home improvement (e.g., install latch for my screen door, hook up new television that was my early b-day present, install dimmer for the dining room light, replace all the lightbulbs in my house with CFLs, etc.) and eat dinner (homemade crabcakes, which I unfortunately over-Old Bay'ed, and sweet potato fries, which they actually sell in the freezer section of the grocery store down here - sometimes the South is wonderful!). On Sunday, we went to brunch, my mother altered a sundress for me so that it no longer fits like a tent, and then we got into a huge fight about installing a programmable thermostat (I swear my mother broke my A/C....but the landlord fixed it the next day). They left, and I scrambled to prep cases before meeting with my LT.

It was good to see The Fam, but over this past week, I realized that I really count on having some downtime on weekends; since I missed that over Family Weekend, I was realllly dragging this last week. But I managed to sleep for 14 hours straight on Friday night, and I followed that up by 12 hours straight last night...so I should be nicely rejuvenated for this coming week!

Retrospective: I Thank God Every Day That I Have an Apparently Functional Learning Team

Learning teams (LTs) are a huge part of the Darden experience. Basically, it is an assigned group of 5-6 people who meet each evening to prepare and discuss the next day's cases. Most LTs meet between 7 pm and 10 pm each evening, although that schedule can vary. My LT, for instance, used to meet at 7 and now meets at 8. Also, I don't think it has ever taken us 3 hours to prep our cases; we're usually done much faster.

Basically, the LT serves a couple purposes:
1.) It helps everyone prepare for class. The cases are not always (or ever) the easiest things to figure out on your own, and by meeting as a team, you're able to share insights, resolve questions, and generally come closer to "cracking the case" (or at least being able to discuss it or ask intelligent questions in class the next morning). Also, once company briefings and networking receptions start (around the middle of Septembre) and you have less time to prepare on your own, your LT should be able to help you get through the material.

2.) It gives you experience working in teams. Basically, this is the point of business school. If you are going to be an effective manager, you need to be able to work in and/or lead teams, and Darden especially is big on having you learn how to do this in a hands-on way.

As I said, my LT is highly functional, and we all seem to get along pretty well (we had dinner together tonight, we've done Wednesday trivia night at the Mellow Mushroom, there's talk of LT apple picking, etc.); not all LTs are running so smoothly. There are some interpersonal conflicts, some conflicts regarding goals for evening meetings (always getting the "right" answer vs. gaining some insight/focusing on the big picture, etc.), some scheduling issues (remember that a decent number of Darden students are married/have children), and other conflicts. While LTs are supposed to stick together through Q3, if your LT is completely disfunctional, you can disband (although apparently you still have to do StratSim together in November... I still don't know what this is, so more on that later). There are also various resources available to LTs that are having problems so that they can try to work through those problems. For instance, our LO professors have offered their assistance, and each LT has an assigned 2nd Year LT Mentor, who are 2nd Year students enrolled in a class on leading teams. They come observe our LT meetings periodically, and they are a resource to whom we can turn to confidentially discuss any team problems.

Like I said, though, my LT pretty much rocks, and I am quite, quite thankful for that, having been on some atrocious teams in the past. Here's to hoping we continue to get along!

Retrospective: Section E is AwesomE

Darden divides the approximately 310 students in each class into five sections (A-E) of around 62 students per section. Apparently, this is done rather randomly. Within your section, you are also assigned (randomly) to a particular seat for the quarter (or maybe the next two quarters...I don't quite know yet). For Q3, you are assigned to a different section (I-V). Your section is the group of people that you sit with for 5+ hours a day in class (you're basically assigned to a homeroom, and the faculty for each course come to you), hang out with socially, and are generally forced to bond with. Fortunately, given my section, this is not too much of a burden for me. :-)

I am in Section E. In case you didn't know, E is for awesomE. We are the reigning Darden Cup champs (more on this later, I promise), and we are generally awesomE. As far as I can tell from the scuttlebut around grounds, Section E is the chill, non-gunner section. I am a big fan of that reputation. Also, apparently we rock at softball. And at convincing our profs to show up and root for us when we play softball. And at things like keg/case races, flip-cup, beirut, etc. (Now, those of you who know me know that I generally play flip-cup or beirut with water, and I am not a fan of keg races. However, all of these activities have perhaps a larger prevalence at Darden than they did at Brown (which was a wee bit shocking to me). I'm sure I'll talk more about my feelings about that later, too.)

Perhaps the most awesomE things about section E this year, however, is that there is a gentleman in our section named Asim (pronounced pretty close to "Awesome."). He has generously permitted us to emphasize this similarity in pronounciation at every opportunity we get (in fact, he is the first person who brought this up), and he has, in effect, become the section mascot.

Also, each section has various traditions. We found that the Section E traditions from last year's Section E were fairly lame, so we invented some of our own, which we and our faculty seem to be getting a big kick out of every day. Want to know more? Well, come to Darden and hope you have the good fortune to visit Section E.