Legal MBAyhem

Appreciating Darden's Staff

2011-12-06T21:19:00.001-05:00

One of the things that has always stood out for me at Darden is the strongly supportive attitude of the faculty, staff, and administration here. I’ve heard it said that in many ways Darden is no different from any other business functioning in the marketplace, and good businesses should have good customer service. It would be easy to say that there’s just a strong can-do “customer service” attitude here from which I, as a student customer, benefit. But I think that over-simplifies what’s actually going on at Darden. I don’t think that Darden’s staff members are simply good at or focused on customer service. I think – and their actions confirm – that Darden staff members really care about Darden’s students, both with respect to our lives at Darden and the experiences that we brought with us to grounds or that we head off to explore after graduation. They want us to enjoy our time at Darden, to succeed both here and in life, to relieve the burdens that they can so that we can focus instead on case prep/recruiting/family/etc. Yes, they’ve been tremendously helpful in keeping our facilities beautiful, resolving my occasional woes with the university’s central financial aid office, registering for classes (particularly when the law school basically just throws up its metaphorical hands with respect to that issue), putting together a brochure for a conference at break-neck speed, helping me navigate the minefields of recruiting, fixing my sandwich order with a smile even when I clearly filled out the form incorrectly, and constantly convincing my computer that it still has the will to live. And the list of ways in which I’ve benefitted from our amazing staff could go on and on. However, in my time at Darden, I’ve been truly astounded by the ways in which members of Darden’s staff have gone above and beyond even that which could be called giving their jobs 110%. The extent to which faculty open up their homes for various social functions with students (and to benefit various charitable causes) is often mentioned when students and alumni talk about their Darden experiences, but equally important to note is the willingness of staff members to stop you in the hall or to grab coffee or lunch (or sometimes even a glass of wine) to commiserate or celebrate or catch up or just to say “hello”.

The Darden student body does regularly award Outstanding Faculty and Friend of the Student Awards to recognize outstanding faculty and staff members. But yesterday, for the first time in virtually anyone’s memory, the Darden Student Association organized a Staff Appreciation Day through which students could show their appreciation on a more individual basis. Students made baked goods and set up a table in Café 67 where staff members could pick up a treat and receive a personal thank you. Students were also encouraged to stop and say thank you to staff members. [Big props to the DSA Exec Board for organizing this event!]

I know I didn’t say thank you enough yesterday (and I certainly didn’t get to see everyone who deserves my thanks), but I am definitely thankful. So “THANK YOU!” to any Darden staff members who may read this blog. You’ve been integral to making my Darden experience as wonderful as it’s been so far, and I’m sure you will continue to make my next 18 months wonderful, too.

The Last Cupcakes

2011-12-05T21:13:00.000-05:00

It’s been a while, so here’s a brief summary of what’s going on with this “cupcake” business: one of my Class of 2011 classmates at Darden has a husband who did his 1L year at the law school at the same time she and I were doing our FY at Darden. Said husband always referred to Darden as “Camp Cupcake” and insisted that the FY at Darden was much easier than the 1L year at the Law School. So I decided to do a week-by-week comparison of the two programs, awarding a cupcake each week to the school that was easier/fluffier/more sugar-coated. You can see the posts covering the first semester here, here, here, here, and here. By the end of the semester, the final cupcake tally was Darden: 5, UVa Law: 13 (meaning that I found the first semester at Darden harder than the first semester at the Law School).

And now, since I’m sure you’ve all been waiting with baited breath for the second semester cupcakes, here they are (I did actually keep a written list last semester, which I just uncovered in a heap of papers/outlines/notes/bills that I apparently just stuck on a shelf in my office…whoops):

The Week 19 Cupcake goes to: Darden

Rationale: We were technically on winter break at both schools, and since my family had started driving me absolutely insane, I was back in Cville both years. In my FY at Darden, I generally chilled out at home, did some interview prep, and spent several hours sitting in the Admissions lobby talking to prospective students who were visiting for interviews. On the whole, it was pretty fun. During my 1L winter break, I drove back and forth to DE to interview with several law firms. Since I hate driving around DC and since interviews themselves are more stressful than prepping for interviews (and since 1Ls are engaged in cutthroat competition for a tiny, tiny number of firm jobs), it was a lot less fun being a law student.

The Week 20 Cupcake goes to: UVa Law

Rationale: While this week was also theoretically still “winter break,” at Darden, interview prep kicked up to warp speed. I spent hours doing consulting case interview prep. During my 1L year at the Law School, I managed to convince the administration to let me take a J-Week class (a one-week course that gives you a quarter’s worth of credit) at Darden. So, I spent a week taking a course on Crisis Leadership, which involved a visit to the Darden Media Lab, complete with a one-on-one on-camera interview, and a mock press conference (again videotaped) and crisis plan development exercise. I felt a little bit like Eli Gold from The Good Wife, so it was super fun. Also, all my classmates at the law school were still chillaxing.

The Week 21 Cupcake goes to: UVa Law

Rationale: At Darden, we started Q3 classes AND were doing hours of on-grounds interviews (and learning team). At the law school, we were still on winter break. I did fly up to Boston for a law firm interview (for the summer job I ended up taking), but I also got to see friends M & D and paid a visit to my former co-workers at The Consulting Firm That Shall Not Be Named, so that was much more fun than class.

The Week 22 Cupcake goes to: UVa Law

Rationale: The things that kept me fairly busy and stressed out at the law school were all non-law-school activities: the Wine & Cuisine Club Conference/Industry Day (complete will tripping over the carpeting in the PepsiCo Forum and falling flat on my face in front of Dean Bruner), alumni interviews for local applicants to Brown, a trip to Indianapolis in connection with the advising I do for the local chapter of my sorority, and a stress fracture in my foot. Awesome. During my first year at Darden, we were also doing interviews, dealing with snow storms, putting together presentations for the Management Communications course, and doing a bunch of other stuff. At the law school, we were still shopping for classes for the second semester.

The Week 23 Cupcake goes to: UVa Law

Rationale: Plain old class at the law school; class plus learning team plus recruiting at Darden.

The Week 24 Cupcake goes to: Darden

Rationale: Yes, Darden was busy, but it was the routine kind of busy to which I had become accustomed at that point. On the other hand, at the law school, I was prepping for a trial advocacy tournament, attending info sessions for tryouts for journals and to be a Dillard Fellow, and I think this was the week that a bunch of 1Ls were doing on-grounds recruiting for summer positions.

The Week 25 Cupcake goes to: Darden

Rationale: I, too, am surprised that during the month of Feb Club (there are theme parties every night of the month at the law school), Darden is earning more cupcakes. But while interviews were still underway at Darden, the stress was broken up by the SHE Auction and Gala. At the law school, typical stress was compounded by continuing trial advocacy prep and a full weekend spent on my Dillard Fellow tryout.

The Week 26 Cupcake goes to: Darden

Rationale: This week was a close call. During my first year at Darden, I spent this week in a bunch of interviews, including a trip to DC for a series of second-round interviews with a consulting firm and a branch of the federal government. However, at the law school, I was still in trial advocacy hell, and I lost the second weekend in a row to a tryout, this time for journals.

The Week 27 Cupcake goes to: Darden

Rationale: It was exam week (always my favorite week of the quarter!) at Darden, and even though that meant it was almost Spring Break at the law school, I spent the first part of the week exhausted from two weekends of tryouts and then spent the first weekend of spring break at the most mismanaged trial advocacy tournament I’ve ever attended (and this was my ninth year of mock trial competition).

The Week 28 Cupcake goes to: UVa Law

Rationale: Spring Break at both schools. At the law school, this meant total rest and relaxation. At Darden, this meant a trip to Barcelona. Barcelona was great (duh.) but it was a week of “class,” therefore making it less cupcake-y than a week spent vegging out.

The Week 29 Cupcake goes to: Darden

Rationale: Darden finished up spring break and then started a quarter of mostly elective classes (3 electives plus LO and Ethics, so no learning team any more). At the law school, our LRW (legal research and writing) briefs were due, and we held our first of two admitted student weekends (which means a lot of running around, especially when one of your closest friends at the law school is one of the ASW chairs).

The Week 30 Cupcake goes to: UVa Law

Rationale: My law school friends and I had time to go grab breakfast before class and to go on a Friday shooting trip (no animals, only clays, were harmed during this outing). At Darden, I was still recruiting and attending a bazillion and a half group meetings for deliverables for various classes.

The Week 31 Cupcake goes to: UVa Law

Rationale: Finals panicking hadn’t started yet at the law school (and I had plenty of time to attend various Darden social functions), but during my FY at Darden, I had several more interviews, which meant travel, and I also took on a club leadership role, which meant transition and strategy meetings out the wazoo.

The Week 32 Cupcake goes to: Darden

Rationale: At Darden, I still had 3-4 interviews and my classmates were trying to pick their classes for the whole next year, but at the law school, I was prepping for my oral argument for LRW, doing my oral argument (on a Saturday morning), and outlining season had started.

The Week 33 Cupcake goes to: Darden

Rationale: Outlining stinks.

The Week 34 Cupcake goes to: Darden

Rationale: Outlining really, really, really stinks, even more than group meetings for LO, marketing intelligence, and data analysis and optimization.

The Week 35 Cupcake goes to: Darden

Rationale: The Landels' (my awesome operations professor and his awesome wife) annual Southern Dessert Buffet will make any week great. Darden Days, including the annual BBQ at King Family Vineyards, was just icing on the cake. Even though I also got to participate in these activities while I was doing my 1L year, outlining really does take all the joy out of everything.

The Week 36 Cupcake goes to: Darden

Rationale: Exams at Darden are so much more pleasant than at the law school.

The Week 37 Cupcake goes to: Darden

Rationale: Darden was done, so I got to go to my cousin’s wedding in CT and then fly to Cannes for the Cannes Film Festival (another GBE). While Cannes drove me nuts in many respects, it was definitely better than a second week of exams at the law school.

SECOND SEMESTER CUPCAKE SCORE:

Darden, 12; UVa Law, 7

FINAL CUPCAKE SCORE:

Darden, 17; UVa Law 20

Final Thoughts: Darden is definitely not Camp Cupcake. While the final scores were actually pretty close, the FY at Darden is generally much more consistently demanding than the 1L year at the law school. However, the month leading up to exams and the two weeks of exams themselves each semester at the law school are pretty darn miserable (and accounted for most of the cupcakes Darden earned).

Procrastination

2011-12-05T20:58:00.000-05:00

Yes, I know, I have been completely, 100% delinquent as a blogger for the last six (Seven? Maybe eight? Who’s counting?) months. However, now that it’s just about exam time at the law school (and at Darden, but that’s not nearly as unpleasant an experience, as noted here), I’m looking for ways to procrastinate. And blogging is an excellent way to procrastinate. And, you know, to do that which I should have been doing for the last ~~six~~ several months. So stay tuned, because I’ve got a few other things tee’d up for posting…

The 18 Most Awesome Hats at the Foxfield Races*

2011-05-01T19:06:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was the running of the Foxfield Spring Races, and Darden turned out in style to enjoy the day.

There was seersucker. There were bow ties. There were popped collars. There was the entire Lilly Pulitzer spring collection. There were horses (allegedly). And there were chapeaus aplenty. Here are some of my favorites:

*Title inspired by "The 18 Most Awesome Hats at the Royal Wedding." Yes, I did get up at 4 AM to view the wedding. Yes, I also had people over to view it with me. Yes, I am generally trying to insert some level of fun into the otherwise unpleasant process of studying for law school exams.

A dozen cupcakes!

2011-04-12T21:00:00.001-04:00

For those of you who have been wondering, here are the rest of the Cupcakes for semester 1:

The Week 7 Cupcake goes to: UVa Law

Rationale: My schedule at the law school this year looks pretty crazy, but most of what made me crazy this year was still Darden-related (WACC Oktoberfest, for instance). The Law School did Fall Foxfields, which was a lot of fun, and then it was basically just class, reading, and softball.

The Week 8 Cupcake goes to: UVa Law

Rationale: 2 words: Fall Break. 'Nuff said.

The Week 9 Cupcake goes to: UVa Law

Rationale: It was exam week at Darden, and even though I still believe that was the best week of the quarter, it did involve five days straight of 5-hour exams. We had a midterm at the Law School in our small section class, but it was an hour long and ungraded. Not too bad. Definitely easier than 25 hours of spreadsheets.

The Week 10 Cupcake goes to: UVa Law

Rationale: This week was really close, and I had a hard time deciding. However, the fact that we started new classes at Darden (including Finance and Global Economies and Markets (GEM), both of which caused me much consternation at first), makes me think that Darden was harder.

The Week 11 Cupcake goes to: UVa Law

Rationale: This is another week where my schedule this year looks crazy, but that's because I was trying to do some Darden briefings in addition to my regularly schedule law school commitments. Nothing big happened at Darden last year, but I still think I was struggling more at this point last year than I was this year.

The Week 12 Cupcake goes to: Darden

Rationale: I know; you are all shocked. Darden got a cupcake! Wahoo! This week at the law school, I was prepping for a mock trial tournament and working on rewriting my major memo. At Darden, we didn't have many "academic" classes because we had Management Communications (MC), Career Management (CarMa), and a field trip. Yes, a field trip. Clearly, this was a week for rest and recuperation at Darden.

The Week 13 Cupcake goes to: Darden

Rationale: I spent a weekend in DC with my mock trial team competing in the Georgetown White Collar Crime Tournament and then turned in my major memo, plus I was behind in starting to outline for exams because of mock trial. Yes, I was doing interview prep at Darden, but we also spent two days doing StratSim, which wasn't nearly as rigorous.

The Week 14 Cupcake goes to: UVa Law

Rationale: By this point, most people at the law school were panicking about exams and spending hours outlining. I was doing stuff over at Darden instead (yes, that was maybe not the best choice). But, last year, I was doing a ton of recruiting stuff and writing customized cover letters for hours upon hours, in addition to spending more hours in class. AND, I was at Darden until 4 AM doing the Deloitte Case Challenge Friday night. Oy. It was Black November at its finest.

The Week 15 Cupcake goes to: Darden

Rationale: This was the beginning of the major outlining and exam prep panicking period at the law school. The Thanksgiving break, if anything, made this worse.

The Week 16 Cupcake goes to: UVa Law

Rationale: We only had three days of class, and then a couple days off to study for law school exams. I did write over 50 cover letters, but they were mostly form letters. At Darden, we had five full days of class, and I wrote around 25 very customized cover letters (customizing "I really enjoyed meeting Mr. X at Event Y this Fall. Our discussion about Z made me realize A, B, and C about Organization D" is a lot harder to write than "As my resume indicates, I have several years of experience working as a paralegal. I believe this experience will enable me to serve Firm X's clients.").

The Week 17 Cupcake goes to: Darden

Rationale: Exams at Darden are so much more fun than exams at the law school.

The Week 18 Cupcake goes to: Darden

Rationale: Darden was on Winter Break. The law school was suffering through another week of hellish exams.

FINAL SEMESTER 1 CUPCAKE SCORE

Darden: 5

UVa Law: 13

Even though the end of the semester at the Law School was more rigorous than the end of the semester at Darden, Darden started off a lot more difficult, and the schedule was generally more demanding.

Stay tuned for the Semester 2 Cupcake awards....

Sorry, sorry, sorry

2011-04-12T20:58:00.000-04:00

Yup, I'm the most delinquent Darden blogger ever. Thank you to everyone who has pointed that out to me (that includes the receptionist at a law firm where I interviewed over winter break and the admitted student at the Law School Admitted Students Open House student life panel!). But, in positive news, I'm busy working on cupcake-awarding RIGHT NOW. And, since it's final exam study period and my house is already spotlessly clean, I should be using posting as a procrastination tactic in the coming weeks! Stay tuned!

We interrupt your regularly scheduled Darden programming....

2010-12-03T15:16:00.001-05:00

...to bring you an update from the law school. Yes, I know I'm months behind on awarding cupcakes. And weeks behind on posting anything interesting. But right now, I'm stuck in the third circle of hell (i.e., law school exam studying period). So, I'll just leave you with the following, which have made me laugh recently, even though this part of the first semester is generally pretty gloomy:

1.) A few weeks ago, the whole UVa internet system experienced problems due to a cable problem 40 or so miles north of Charlottesville. Darden sent out a very succinct, bare-bones email right away letting students know. A few hours later, the law school tech folks sent out the message below (originally available at http://lawnotes2.law.virginia.edu/lawweb/event1.nsf/0/4524CE42561A03AD852577E3006736FB?Open, which I don't know if everyone can access).

An Open Letter to the Law School student body from The Internet
Date Posted: Monday, November 22, 2010
Submitted By: Law ITC/General
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Students,

It's not you, it's me. I know that we have had our troubles before but this time, it's serious. I bet that a lot of you have been blaming yourselves but, the truth is, it's me that has changed. You see, my main fiber optic connection in Culpeper was cut this morning and things just haven't been the same since. If I thought that we could get past this by talking things out, then we would. But it's gone too far and clearly I just need some time. I never meant for anyone to get hurt and I know this was sudden, but that's just the breaks. I know that you are still spending time with our mutual friends Facebook, Gchat, and Pandora but it's just not going to be the way that you remember until I can get my act back together.

I will try to take this journey of discovery as quickly as I can but it looks like it's just going to take some time to get things back to the way they used to be.

I'm sorry that I let you down.

Sincerely,
The Internet

I was amused.

2.) Today, the law students also got an email full of exam reminders. Written "Buddy-the-Elf Style." A-mazing. (Originally available at http://lawnotes2.law.virginia.edu/lawweb/event1.nsf/0/8BA9252DFBF6ADF2852577EE006B20BE?Open)

Final Exam Best Practices, Fall 2010
Date Posted: Friday, December 3, 2010
Submitted By: Law ITC/General

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Good afternoon Law School boys and girls,

It is that time of year again when Jack Frost nips at your nose and the sublime thrill of the exam season electrifies the very air around us. As a public service we are again presenting a jolly recounting of all of your favorite Exam Best Practices in order to allow all of the good boys and girls of UVa Law to stay off of the Naughty List. And, before I begin, let me share one very important administrative note. To better serve the student body, we are moving the entirety of our student Help Desk down to the exam table in the Withers-Brown hall for the duration of the exam period. So, starting on Saturday, if you have any technical questions or concerns either exam or non-exam related, please don’t trundle yourselves up to WB399 but instead just come by WB exam table for help of any sort. Without further interruption, come with me as we walk together through the seven levels of the Candy Cane forest, through the sea of swirly, twirly gum drops, and then emerge in a mystical land known as “Law School Exams – Buddy the Elf style.”

"First we'll make snow angels for two hours, then we'll go ice skating, then we'll eat a whole roll of Tollhouse cookie dough as fast as we can, and then we'll snuggle."

Take it from Buddy…it’s important to have a plan. In the mystical world of exams, much of your advance planning can benefit from a thorough review of the Exam Calendar. Now you might say to yourself “Oooooooooo….what’s an exam calendar? I want one!” But the beauty of it is that the Student Records Office has already created one and you can review it online or in poster form in the WB Hallway. The calendar lays out all of the exam dates and times for the next two weeks. You can see that 1L exams are Fixed on Monday and Thursday morning during both weeks which means that no Flex exams can be checked out during those times. You will also see that there is no Flex exam period available on Thursday, December 16 so the last available Flex exam checkout is Wednesday afternoon. Finally, you will note that Flex exam checkout is available from 8:30-9:30 and 1:00-2:00 on eligible days and that Flex exams longer than 4 hours MUST be taken in the morning Flex period. So grab a plate of cookies with milk and start hatching your plans for a successful exam season.

"OK people, tomorrow morning, 10 am, Santa is coming to town!
SSSAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNTTTTTTTTTTTTAAAAAAAAA! Santa, here?! I know him. I KNOW him!"

For 2Ls and 3Ls picking up Flex exams, there is one important goodie that you need to bring to the exam checkout area and that is your UVa ID card. That’s the best way to make sure that none of you are South Pole elves. With your UVa ID you can just swipe the card, request your exam, and go. Anyone with only a driver’s license will be asked to go to the end of the line and will have to be checked out manually. No driver’s license and no UVa ID means no exam so please remember to bring that and Student Records will be happy to verify your existence and get out going. Especially if your name is Francisco. Frannnnncisco. Fraaaancisssscooooooooo.

"I've been to New York thousands of times.
Really?
Mm-hmm.
What's it like?
Well, there are some things you should know. First off, if you see gum on the street, leave it there. It isn't free candy.
Oh.
Second, there are, like, thirty Ray's Pizzas. They all claim to be the original. But the real one's on 11th. And if you see a sign that says "Peep Show", that doesn't mean that they're letting you look at the new toys before Christmas."

Just like New York City, there is something you should know about each exam that you take. Fortunately much of that information is shared through the magic of the Exam Cover Sheet! While many cover sheets might look the same, each one has been specifically crafted for you by your professor and often contains specific information such as preferred font and spacing, word limits, and allowed resources. Please take a few minutes to read each cover sheet before you dive into the hustle and bustle of your exam answers.

"We elves try to stick to the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corns, and syrup."

We ITC types try to stick to one document format and that format is Microsoft Word. Feel free to use OpenOffice or another word processing program if you don’t like Word, but when you are saving for submission, please save as a Microsoft Word compatible format (.doc or .docx). Please don’t submit documents in PDF, WPS, WKS, or ODT format because that grinds the automated print system to a halt and then those documents then have to be printed manually. If you are using Microsoft Office on a Mac, just verify that the “Append File Extension” option is checked on the File\Save As menu in Word. And feel free to use document headers and footers to include such information as the course, instructor, your blind grading number, and page numbers. If you don’t know how to manage headers and footers, feel free to stop by the exam table for a quick demo, well in advance of your exam.

"This is the North Pole.
No it isn't.
Yes it is.
No it isn't.
Yes it is!
No it isn't! Where's the snow?!"

We would all love to trust your beloved laptops not to lead you astray or crash outright. But bad things happen to good people so you know that you should always be saving your document during the course of your exam to prevent a major catastrophe. Just like the manager at Gimbel’s, you can’t let your computer decide what is important to save in the case of a computer failure. Your laptop hard drive is the most reliable save location but you should be using Save As every 15 minutes to save to your hard drive AND a backup location (i.e. USB flash drive or Home Directory). Autosave sometimes helps if your computer locks up but often it doesn’t and is not a replacement for regular saving to multiple locations. If you find yourself wondering when your last save was and pondering whether or not it is time to save again, just ask yourself “Is there sugar in syrup?” And your answer will always be YES!

[whispering] "I think we should call security.
[whispering] Good idea.
[whispering] I like to whisper too!"

If you do encounter some sort of trouble during the work or submission portions of your exam, please don’t sit and whisper silently to yourself in the classroom. Come to the exam table so that we can try to help you to keep a small problem from becoming a big problem. If your wireless conks out during submission or you can’t seem to find the final version of your document to submit, please come and see us. We can stop your exam clock and assist you with minor items so that you don’t freak out and cram 11 cookies into the VCR.

"Who the heck are you?
What are you talkin' about? I'm Santa Claus.
No, you're not.
Uh, why of course I am! Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho.
Well, if you're Santa, what song did I sing for you on your birthday this year?
Um, Happy Birthday of course. Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. How old are you son?
Now what can I get you for Christmas?
Don't tell him what you want, he's a liar.
Let the kid talk.
You disgust me! How can you live with yourself?
Just cool it, Zippy.
You sit on a throne of lies."

So you think that you have successfully submitted your final exam document but you can never be sure unless you look very, very closely. To that end, please be sure to verify each document submission by clicking the resulting blue hyperlink that pops up immediately upon submission. Only a cotton-headed ninnymuggins would submit a document without double-checking that it was the completed copy and not an outline or and incomplete answer. If you ever want to double-double check, feel free to stop by the exam table where we can pull up your submitted document and then share a pleasant conversation regarding our mutual affinity for elf culture.

"Hi!
Hi!
Do you remember me?
I do! I didn't recognize you!
I know. I'm in work clothes!"

After you have successfully submitted and verified your exam document, go off and make gingerbread houses, eat a nice Ziploc bag of spaghetti covered with maple syrup, or maybe just hold hands. But please don’t delete, view, or modify your original exam document in any way. If a document is determined to have been modified in any way after the stated exam finish, it will be like Buddy the Elf in work clothes and will be essentially unrecognizable as a valid document in the event that your document needs to be recovered for resubmission. Feel free to make a copy and view the copy or you can view your original submission on LawWeb until it gets printed. But if your original submission gets compromised in some way and the original exam document has been modified past the end of your original submission period, you might feel like you are in a place that smells like mushrooms and everyone will look like they want to hurt you.

"Why are you smiling like that?
I just like to smile, smiling's my favorite.
Make work your favorite. That's your favorite. Make work your new favorite."

Finally, be sure to budget time for both work and smiling. Make both work and smiling your co-favorites. It will be a stressful and spirit-crushing two weeks for you if you don’t take time to study hard but also eat well, sleep well, and get a bit of exercise. I know, I know, the children love the books! But we always see some bad effects of exam exhaustion as the exam period draws nearer to its end so please keep your exam favorites balanced. And if you take a minute to sit still and be quiet you might even realize that your finger has a heartbeat!

I hope that each and every one of you is looking forward to this exciting time as much as we are. If you prepare yourselves properly and make smart choices, then everything is going to work out fine. If you have any questions or get attacked by raccoons along the way, please stop by and see us at the exam table. But hopefully, at the end of it all, we can get together and say to ourselves “You did it! Congratulations! World's best cup of coffee! Great job, everybody!”

Best of luck to all of you for exams and safe travels over the approaching winter break.

Most sincerely,
Papa Elf

Maybe nobody else is amused, or maybe 8+ hours a day of studying is getting to me....but I appreciate the humor. A lot.

Another reason UVa is generally awesome. :-)

Please vote....but leave me alone!

2010-11-01T20:51:00.002-04:00

I love voting. Sending in my voter registration was the most exciting part of my 18th birthday (I also had two papers due the next day, so that may shed some light on the day...). I vote whenever I have the chance. I think it's an important part of being a citizen in a representative democracy.

However, I hate election season. Hate, hate, HATE. The last time I thought an election season was fun was when I was 17 years old and got to go to one of then-Senator Biden's victory speeches at an election party in 2002 because I was "interning" for Senator Carper and was somehow apparently "well-connected." Since then, I've been consistently irritated by the election season process. Sure, there are candidates that I've supported and for whom I've handed out stickers at small town parades. I've even "staffed" out-of-state fundraisers. I've also dressed up as a certain former candidate for Halloween (hey, the costume was basically a business suit and a bump-it, and I'm a Halloween cheap-skate). Like I said, I like voting, and I think civic engagement is important. But I HATE election season.

In case you haven't watched the national news any time in the last few weeks, I currently live in one of the most hotly contested congressional districts in the country. Basically, that means that for the last several months, I've been bombarded with huge yard signs, nasty commercials, and dozens of robo-calls. Every single time I've left my apartment in the last four days, I've come home to a Tom Perriello hang tag on my front door. Every single time the phone rings in my apartment, it's a robo-call (Dear Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Rush Limbaugh....I didn't give you or the organization on behalf of whom you are allegedly calling my number, so that means I really don't want to talk to you. I hate phone calls so much that I am on the Do Not Call Registry. Trust me, I will go vote. But please stop calling. I don't have an executive assistant to screen my calls. And you call at ungodly hours of weekend mornings. Don't take this the wrong way, though. I wouldn't want to talk to a recording of Bill Clinton at that hour either.). Every single time I forget that I have a DVR and actually watch part of a commercial break, there's a horrible campaign ad or PAC message that makes me dislike every candidate. Seriously. Every time. There is not ounce of exaggeration in this paragraph.

I guess propagating nastiness and annoying the voting populace have been key parts of the election process for decades, if not centuries. And I understand that it's important to educate voters and motivate them to get out to the polls. But even I - who LOVE voting - am tempted to put my foot down and/or throw my hands up and say, "Why bother?!?! Just leave me alone already!!!" [Note: I am still planning to go vote in the morning. I'm just saying that it's tempting to put on the blinders and say "screw it" instead.]

I would say that there is a fine line between educating voters and harassing them, between pointing out your opposing candidate's weaknesses and exploiting sentiments and fear....but there isn't really a fine line. There's a huge freakin' chasm.

I know I'm not the only person who feels this way. In fact, I've spoken to numerous folks at both ends of the political spectrum who HATE election season as much as I do, for exactly the same reason. Maybe someone's done studies that have shown that you really do get more people out to the polls with smear campaigns than with anything positive. Maybe a big part of the problem is all the non-campaign-funded (i.e., "independent"....hahahahaha) publicity. I don't really know. But here's something for the political campaign gurus out there to consider: I think there are plenty of people out there who, like me, are more likely to vote for your candidate if you actually tell us something about his/her platform and what he/she actually will do if we help elect him/her rather than just slamming your opponent. If you don't, I think we're all going to be tempted either to stay home on election day or to to walk into a voting booth and vote for whichever third-party candidate hasn't shown up on our TV screens attacking another candidate.

Just some food for thought.

And, to all my readers: make sure you DO vote tomorrow, no matter your party affiliation!

Hocus pocus and technological magic!

2010-10-25T09:51:00.001-04:00

While I certainly don’t consider myself the most technologically savvy person in the world, I am also far from a Luddite. That being said, I got a new “cell phone” about a week ago, and I am completely blown away by the things that sucker can do. It seems like not that long ago that my parents had bag phones, and I feel like just yesterday I had an old-school flip phone that could barely send text messages and only received phone calls when I was standing at the top of a hill in a major metropolitan area under sunny skies.

I finally caved and got a “crackberry” during my last year working at The Consulting Firm That Shall Not Be Named (they weren’t willing to pay for one for a mere paralegal, but I was tired of having to drag my laptop all over creation, because they certainly expected me to be available via email outside of working hours). While my BlackBerry Storm was pretty cool for a while (I fell in love with having my email and calendar synced with my computer and being able to access Facebook while standing in cash register lines), it soon lost its novelty. Now, I could deal with a lack of novelty. What I couldn’t deal with was the outright revolt I started encountering over this summer. That 16-month-old blackberry apparently decided it was time for some teenage-style rebellion. It completely shut down when I asked it to do something for me. It decided that opening webpages was too taxing and wouldn’t respond to simple commands. It refused to recognize when it was plugged into a charger. Basically, it decided that it was grumpy with life, and I decided that I was grumpy with it. Since sending it upstairs to think about its bad behavior wasn’t really going to solve any of our problems, I decided instead to lock it in the closet until it grows up and replace it with a new child – er, phone.

Enter my new Samsung Fascinate (thank you, Verizon, for timing your buy-one-get-one-free android phone promotions at exactly the time that my mother and both were ready to throw our blackberries through a window). Although we had a moderately shaky start (for about an hour, since I refused to read the manual), I am now completely amazed by that thing. It loads full webpages in the blink of an eye. It has applications!!! It syncs my Darden emails and calendar (on an Enterprise platform) without requiring me to pay either $100 for a license or $10 a month to Verizon for the privilege of so doing. And, here is perhaps the coolest thing ever: I CAN PRINT DOCUMENTS AND WEBPAGES FROM MY PHONE TO MY HOME PRINTER. Without touching my computer. Oh, the power of wi-fi. I am completely shocked and awed.

Now, there are a couple blackberry features that I miss (e.g., enabling spell check before I send emails without having to look at the dumb “guess the word” screen all the time, auto punctuation of contractions, etc.), and none of the android phones currently have global phone capabilities, so if I travel internationally, I may need to un-ground the rebellious Storm. But in the mean time, I’m certainly glad that I’m finally the owner of a truly “smart,” well-behaved phone.

Legal MBAyhem's Guide to [Eating] in Charlottesville - Part I

2010-09-26T22:01:00.002-04:00

[Note: I started writing this post, oh, something like six weeks ago. Clearly, it has been sitting - unfinished - in my blog "drafts" box for a long time. Therefore, I've decided to publish what I have already now, and at some point when I have free time (ha!), I will post the remainder.]

In Part II of my Guide to Cville series (see Part I, on getting settled pre-school, here), I'd like to share some of my personal eating/dining/enjoying the glorious local bounty of the Blue Ridge favorites. I've done this "Best of" style, with some runners-up. Obviously, these are just my thoughts and opinions, and I've generally focused on foods/items that are either very convenient to North Grounds or well within the student budget. So, I haven't focused a lot of truly "fine dining," but I think these are worth checking out!

I've broken this list down into categories that make sense to me but that may not make sense to others. It's my blog, so I guess that's what you get... :-)

Best Quick Lunch Near North Grounds: Bellair Market
When I was planning to move to Cville, my boss in the legal dept. at The Consulting Firm That Shall Not Be Named, a UVa Law alumna, told me two key things about dining in Charlottesville: First, a Gusburger tastes delicious after a night on the Corner, and second, the best sandwiches in town are available at a gas station on Ivy Road. I have yet to indulge in a gusburger (fried egg+hamburger=heart attack), and I was very, very skeptical of gas station fare (though I do love me some Wawa). However, she was right - the sandwiches at Bellair Market in the Exxon on Ivy Road are pretty darn tasty sandwiches. Plus, they are affordable and close to school. Some of the other Exxons in the area also carry pre-made versions of the sandwiches (e.g., the Exxon at the corner of 29 and Hydraulic, on my way home), and the Exxon at Forest Lakes by Target also makes the sandwiches to order if you ever want to grab one on your way out of town.
Honorable Mentions: Padow's Hams & Deli in Barracks Road Shopping Center - North Wing (end of Millmont Street), Abbott Center dining room to-go at Darden (can't beat the convenience), and Chipotle in Barracks Road Shopping Center (sometimes you just want a big-a$$ burrito).

Best Indian Food: Royal Indian
For the record, there are basically three Indian restaurants in town: Royal Indian (by Target, so a little ways up 29), Maharaja (in the Seminole Square Shopping Center on 29 between Hydraulic and Greenbrier), and Milan (on 29 just before Hydraulic). Charlottesville seems divided on which is best. I like Maharaja better than Milan, but I've had people tell me I'm crazy. In fairness, I haven't tried the lunch buffet at either because I have always been underwhelmed by lunch buffets EVERYWHERE. But take-out from either Maharja and Milan is pretty good. Royal Indian, however, is worth the drive if you want to sit down. I went to try it for the first time the other day, and it may even be worth the drive for take-out.
Honorable Mentions: See above

Best Thai Food: Tara Thai
Consistently tasty food, extensive menu, close to grounds, the ability to have pad see yew and a cocktail at 2 in the afternoon after finishing your first round of b-school exams....what is not to like? Tara Thai's pad thai is only OK, but I think it's definitely better than that from other local restaurants, and I haven't been disappointed by the rest of the menu.
Honorable Mentions: Thai 99 II and Pad Thai (I thought their pad thai itself was kind of blah, but others like it)
Stay Away From: Monsoon if you want food that actually tastes like Thai food as opposed to a sloppy concoction of random noodle-y things (you can sit outside, though, and it's just off the Downtown Mall, so decide if you're willing to consume less-than-stellar food at Downtown prices for the location/outside factor)

Best "Splurge" or Off-the-Beaten Path Lunch: Feast!
When I lived in Boston, an $8-9 sandwich was no big deal; now that I'm a student, I can't spend that on a sandwich with any sort of regularity. However, every now and then, I need to treat myself, and the sandwiches at Feast! are truly scrumptious. Plus, they feature a lot of locally-grown vegetables and locally-raised meat products. Feast! is also a great place to buy tasty gourmet treats, local vegetables, local cheeses, etc. (and they would love to get more Darden/UVa law students to come in!). Courtney of their catering staff is also fabulous and very accommodating. It's worth the trek down West Main Street every once in a while.
Honorable Mentions: Cville Coffee (service can be slow, though - but they also host various musical performances in the evening), Revolutionary Soup (locations both on the Corner and off the Downtown Mall)

Best "Splurge" or Off-the-Beaten Path Dinner: Tie between C&O and Tavola
Both C&O and Tavola are a bit pricier (my C&O consumption has been funded by corporate sponsors prior to interviews, and Tavolo was my one nice treat to myself this summer), but they are tasty (and maybe great places to get the parents to take you when they are in town).
Honorable Mentions: L'Etoile, Mas Tapas

Best Frozen Concoction: Splendora's
I am a gelato snob, thanks to Caffe Gelato in Newark, DE, which I fell in love with when I was, oh, about 11 years old. Best. Gelato. Ever. Then I went away to college in Providence, where my roommate and I actually put together a business plan for a gelateria on Thayer Street as part of a class assignment (the horrible Roba Dolce actually opened the next year, but it was icky.) There was some decent gelato in Boston, but nothing to write home about. Then I encountered Splendora's. It is super, super, super delicious, and it's REAL gelato, not a masquerading imposter.
Honorable Mentions: Arch's Frozen Yogurt (those melt-y delicious brownie mix-ins are tasty, tasty morsels of evil) and Sweet Frog (which just opened on the Downtown Mall and is reminiscent of Pinkberry).

Best Bakery: Albemarle Baking Company
You walk in, and it just smells like a bakery should smell. Soooooooo good. I wish they would bottle that smell. Albemarle Baking Company has wonderful breads, melt-in-your-mouth croissants, assorted danish, and fancy schmancy cakes and tarts. Plus, it's conveniently located in the Main Street Market (see below).
Honorable Mentions: Hotcakes (great cakes, and some tasty "gourmet" prepared items and sandwiches, as well as breakfast items and a coffee bar) and Chandler's Bakery (up 29 in Albemarle Square - tasty cookies, eclairs, napoleons, etc.)

Best Single Location to Give Yourself a Local Food Coma: Main Street Market
The Main Street Market is the home of Feast!, the Organic Butcher of Cville, Albemarle Baking Co., Orzo, Calvino Cafe and Gearhart's Chocolates. Go. You won't regret it (well, your wallet will, but your stomach won't).

There's something about cupcakes...

2010-09-26T21:47:00.000-04:00

I mean, you start eating just one, and you think, "This is so delicious...but a single cupcake is so very, very small. It's smaller than a piece of cake, right? So I can have TWO cupcakes, can't I? Why, yes; yes, I can."

Well, I'm feeling the same way right now, so yet again, I shall award two cupcakes at once.

The Week 5 cupcake goes to: UVa Law!

Annnnnnnndddddd.....

....the Week 6 cupcake goes to: UVa Law! [Really, folks, this shouldn't be surprising any more.]

The running count: Darden - 0 cupcakes, UVa Law - 6 cupcakes.

The calendar proof (as a reminder, purple is Darden academic/recruiting/clubs, orange is Darden social, green is Law academic/clubs, red is Law social (including softball), and blue is personal):

Darden - Week 6

Law - Week 6

Now, I bet you're thinking, "Wow, it looks like your law school calendar is a lot crazier. I mean, there's stuff all over the place! And last year, you got a reading day on Friday!" Well, yes, you're right. But if we remove all of the Darden (and JD/MBA-specific) stuff from my Law school calendar, you get this:

Yes, it is still crazier-looking, but then you realize that all that red and blue represents purely social events, such as softball, golf lessons, and dinners and outings with friends, whereas last year's Darden calendar was all important academic stuff. Phooey on (and a cupcake to) that.

Part of the reason this last week was so crazy was because this week was a "Program Week" for the current Darden FYs, which meant that they did not have class and instead had time to focus solely on recruiting. To say that the rest of the SYs and I are jealous/irritated/downright angry would be understatement. However, for me, that meant that I had law school classes, mentoring and club meetings at Darden, club meetings at the law school, social events (including a softball tournament and two regular-season softball games), AND two Darden briefings and two recruiting dinners. Basically, what this week taught me is that you really are not intended to do your 1L year while also staying involved at Darden....oops, guess I missed that memo!

Special deal on cupcakes: 2 for the price of 1!

2010-09-12T22:16:00.002-04:00

Obviously, I missed awarding last week's cupcake, so I need to award 2 weeks' worth this time around. All you lucky readers, therefore, get 2 cupcakes for the price of 1!

The cupcake for Week 3 goes to: UVa Law!

The cupcake for Week 4 goes to: UVa Law!

Now, a lot of folks have seemed completely incredulous when I say that I find the first year at law school less demanding than the first year at Darden. But take a look at Exhibit 1:

That is a snapshot of my schedule for the third week of my first year at Darden. Things in purple are classes, recruiting events, club meetings, learning team, etc. Things in orange are scheduled social events. You'll note that I was basically "scheduled" from 8 am to 10 pm every single day. The "white space" was the time I had available to use for preparing cases, running errands, making food, etc. You'll note that there is not a lot of "white space."

On the other hand, consider Exhibit 2:

This is a snapshot of my third week in law school. Green represents law school classes, purple is still Darden club/academic events (no recruiting currently, given the new FY schedule), red is law school social events, orange is still Darden social events, and blue is personal. You will note two things: (1) there is a lot less time spent in class, and (2) there is a TON more white space generally. Consider also that most law school "homework" consists of just reading, which, although dense, is generally only 10-15 pages per class. Contrast that to 3 Darden cases a day, which involved ~20 pages of reading AND constructing a spreadsheet/model for each class, first individually and then with your learning team. Hopefully, you're all beginning to see why I think law school is less demanding (for now at least...)! I guess we'll have to see how this continues.

For those of you keeping track at home, the cupcake score is currently Darden - 0, UVa Law - 4.

Rumor has it...

2010-08-30T14:06:00.000-04:00

...that Darden has launched its new webpage! Check it out here!

Also, I have it on good authority that this year's application is available now. Ready, set, go, Round 1-ers!

This Week's Cupcake goes to...

2010-08-27T15:32:00.000-04:00

UVa Law!

Running score: Darden - 0, UVa Law - 2

Rationale for this week's award: I actually had to bring home work one evening, but only because I've been to Darden at least twice each day for receptions, meetings, career counseling sessions, etc. So Darden is even more demanding than the law school for a pseudo-SY student!

(If you're confused about the cupcakes, see bottom of this post).

Sentimentality for a change

2010-08-27T15:27:00.000-04:00

Let me state for the record that I am not, by nature, a particularly sentimental or emotional person (unless you want to count righteous indignation as an emotion...in which case, I plead guilty as charged). I generally don't develop attachments to inanimate objects (well, except maybe to my old Subaru, but we were together for 7 years, and a lot of marriages don't last that long). It takes a lot to make me emotional enough to cry, and on the very rare ocassions when I do, it's typically because an internal tempest of rage and righteous fury bursts out of my control and starts leaking through my tear ducts, not because I'm sad. I didn't cry at my graduation from either high school or college. I like babies (particularly some of those belonging to my classmates), butterflies, and rainbows as much as the next person, but I got really sick of Chris L. on The Bachelor and his whole shpiel about seeing his mother in every rainbow. Like I said, I am generally a no-nonsense, un-sentimental person. This isn't the forum for psycho-analyzing me and figuring out why that is....let's just accept it as a fact and move on, shall we?

Given this fact of my nature, imagine my shock when I returned to school (and by school, I mean Darden) and found myself feeling...sentimental. Shock doesn't even describe it. I mean, I didn't really leave - I've been in Charlottesville all summer, and the scanner in the student copy center and I spent A LOT of time bonding between June and August. Also, I've only known the people at Darden for 12 months, max (OK, so I went to high school with two of them....that doesn't count). So why on Earth did "returning" make me feel so sentimental? Maybe it was the fact that everyone seemed shocked to see me (note: the law school, contrary to popular belief, does NOT lock 1Ls in the library), and some even seemed fairly delighted that I was coming to help out with Orientation, to hang out at the beginning-of-school picnic, or to attend the Dean's "welcome back" speech to the second year (SY) class. Maybe it was the fact that I've hugged more people in the last four days that I have in probably the last six years of my life. Maybe it was just that everyone was so darn excited to be at Darden. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's it: we're all just happy to be here (heck, I'm so happy that I've been spending almost more time at Darden than at the law school this week, despite the fact that all my classes are at the law school).

My class (or I guess I should say the Class of 2011) has bonded a lot. Sure, we aren't all best friends, but we generally get along, we enjoy catching up with one another, etc. Most of all, we've all survived the first year of Darden together, and there's a sense of brother-(and sister-)hood that comes with that. As I watch the FYs struggle with their first full week of class, stressing about building Excel models and understanding managerial accounting and debating the merits of prepping LO cases in learning teams, I remember how all of those experiences brought my class together. My section, Section E, certainly bonded over our trials and tribulations in class. My learning team bonded as we figured out the most efficient way to get in, get everything done, and get out so we could go about the rest of our lives. We bonded over recruiting, over the hell that is Black November, and over our delight in finally finding some time in Q4 to start to appreciate Charlottesville beyond North Grounds. I feel closer to some of my Darden classmates than I do to people I knew through three-and-a-half years of college.

So, now that the powers that be have decided I am in a position to provide "advice" to the FYs, here it is: just remember, no matter how stressed out you are now, so is everyone else, and there's an opportunity in that. The person you run by in a panic as you realize that you're late for your fourth meeting of the day may be one of your closest friends by this time next year. Take the time to take a deep breath, say hello, and commiserate with the other person running down the hallway with you. I hope that in 12 months, you, too, will be feeling sentimental...even if it isn't in your nature, either.

Orientation/Start of Classes, Round 2 and the Camp Cupcake Award

2010-08-22T22:30:00.000-04:00

Eek! It's been a crazy few weeks since I last posted. In the last 14 days, I wrapped things up at my summer job, tried to get my life in order to start school again (e.g., organize random stack of mail and paperwork, buy school supplies and books, buy parking pass, buy groceries, starch and iron accumulated pile of washed cotton sundresses, scrub floors because I won't have time to let them see Pinesol again until next summer and the Swiffer Wet-jet only does so much, etc.), and began running around between Darden and the law school like a chicken with my head cut off.

I've gotten a lot of questions lately about "how this whole JD/MBA thing works." The answer, like many things at Darden, is "it depends." If, like me, somehow applies to law and business schools concurrently and gets into both, at UVa you get to pick where you start. I chose to start at Darden because for me, business was what was "new," and I wanted to be able to graduate with one of the classes with which I did my "first" year; since there is no way to do that with any Darden class, I chose to do my 1L year with the class of 2013. So, I've finished the Darden first year, I'm doing the first year of law school now, and next year and the year after, I'll be taking electives at both schools, sprinting back and forth numerous times during the day. Most (but not all) folks doing the JD either apply concurrently and choose to start at the law school or apply only to the law school up front and then apply to Darden while a 1L. I think it really is a personal decision about how you choose to do it, and I think I made the right choice for me, though there may have been some draw-backs.

So, this past week, I've been doing Orientation, Round 2, which has been an interesting experience. Unlike most of my 1L classmates, I've been in Charlottesville as a graduate student for a year, so I know where things are, how things work, and what the grad student social scene is like. Unlike my SY Darden classmates, I'm not negotiating class swaps and trying to schedule the least-stressful 4th quarter. At Darden, they've restructured Orientation this week, so I can't really speak to how that worked out. I did volunteer to help out at one of the faculty receptions (lots of fun!), and I organized one of the Activity Day trips to a couple local wineries (also lots of fun!). I also had a couple meetings with incoming first year students. Over at the law school, I did some community service for Public Service Day, met a bunch of new classmates, attended Section H bonding activities, sat through presentations by a bunch of administrators, and attended my first three days of class. I generally like the faculty, and the classes (as at Darden during the first semester) were selected for me, but I think they'll be interesting. I'm taking Torts, Contracts, Civil Procedure, and Criminal Law this semester, as well as a year-long pass/fail Legal Research & Writing course. Although my schedule is sort of wonky (bizarre gaps between classes, some M/W, some T/R/F, some M/W/R, etc.), I think it will allow me to get most of my case briefing done during the school day, so I'm going to try to treat this like a 9-to-5 job and not bring work home to the greatest extent that I can manage. I'm sure there will be some exceptions, but for the sake of my spine, I want to leave my books at school as frequently as possible - they weigh a ton! On the plus side, this arrangement meant that my homework was done by 5 pm on Friday, and I have actually been able to enjoy my weekend (section H potluck, polo, Darden picnic, winery tours, coffee dates, and catching up with friends - yay!). We'll see if this trend continues.

On that note...one of my Darden classmates' husband is a 2L at the law school, and he apparently refers to Darden as Camp Cupcake, implying, obviously, that Darden is "easier" than the law school. Apparently, this has been a point of virtually constant (and only quasi-serious) debate between people at both schools for quite some time. Consequently, I've decided that I'm actually going to issue an "official" verdict on which school has the most difficult first year, as an "objective" party experiencing both. I'm going to do this by assigning a weekly "Camp Cupcake" award to the school that was "easiest" for that point in the semester. At the end of the year, the school with the most weekly awards will be officially declared "easier" in my perspective (clearly, this is a very scientific award process). For the first week of school, Legal MBAyhem's Camp Cupcake Award goes to: UVa Law. Rationale: no group work, finishing homework at school before dinner, more evening social events, only two days of Orientation, and no recruiting activities.

Ongoing Cupcake Tracker: Darden 0, UVa Law 1.

A couple resolutions for the future

2010-08-09T16:46:00.001-04:00

I have been having several very frustrating interactions with outside counsel for the company with which I am working this summer. What can I say, I was very spoiled when I working in-house at the Consulting Firm That Shall Not Be Named. Such interactions, however, have led me to the following resolutions. If (or when) I become a practicing attorney, I hereby resolve to do the following to the best of my ability:

1.) To respond to emails within 24-48 hours and not to leave clients hanging for days on end without at least an acknowledgement of their message. If I cannot answer a question immediately, I will at least let the client know that I am working on it and when they may be able to expect a full response;

2.) To make sure I spell a client's name correctly and that I do not, in fact, misspell their name incorrectly in two different ways in the course of a 4-line email;

3.) To make sure that I remove one client's name and other information from "template" documents that I send to another client;

4.) To avoid misstating information previously provided by my client and uncessarily muddling the very clear questions that he/she asked;

5.) To provide information requested as succinctly as possible, and to provide all the information requested, rather than requiring my client to send me repeated emails asking the same thing, thereby enabling me to continue to bill said client for .1 hours of my time for each single email I read and then proceed to ignore;

5.) To avoid assuming that my client(s) don't know what they are talking about or that they have no legal experience whatsoever; and

6.) To appreciate my paralegals, because they generally have the important information committed to memory, with the applicable templates readily available.

I expect people to hold me to these rolutions.

Why didn't anything this exciting happen when I was a paralegal?

2010-08-09T10:36:00.000-04:00

Many readers of this blog are aware that I spent nearly four years of summer and winter breaks (and one semester, working remotely from Rhode Island) working for College Firm, based in Wilmington, DE, in a variety of roles, ultimately as a Legal Assistant (They wouldn't give me the title "Paralegal" because I hadn't yet earned a four-year degree. Phooey on them.). During my time at College Firm, I scheduled countless depositions, spent hours and hours sitting in court trying to stay awake after getting 2 hours of sleep in 3 days, filed dozens (if not hundreds) of motions and briefs, and witnessed a whole bunch of legal shenanigans on the part of opposing counsel. Unfortunately, I never got to travel to a deposition in another state while the attorney for whom I worked stayed home, and I certainly never got to click photos with my camera phone and then imbed them in the footer of EVERY PAGE of a motion to have opposing counsel sanctioned for allegedly tapping the foot of the deponent to signal answers.

I think the whole motion is hilarious - it is written more like some sort of creative writing piece than anything I ever saw filed in Delaware, and it's full of the sort of rhetorical questions I was always told were a less-than-stellar idea to include with such high frequency in pleadings. It's stylistic shortcomings notwithstanding, the motion still makes me wish I had had a chance to be such a bad-a$$ paralegal.

LegalMBAyhem's Guide to [Getting Settled and Keeping Yourself Alive in] Charlottesville

2010-08-02T18:00:00.001-04:00

One year ago at this moment (as I start to write this during my lunch break on Monday...probably not when it finally gets posted), I was sitting in the Pantops DMV for the second time in three hours. Little did I know that it would take two more trips to finally get my license, title, and registration squared away...but that is another story for another time. The point is, the first few days of August mark the time during which most Darden and UVa Law graduate students move to Charlottesville. Their next two weeks are filled with unpacking, buying furniture, getting VA drivers' licenses, acclimating to new roommates, and preparing for Orientation. Then school starts and your life is ~~sucked away from you~~ consumed by academic pursuits and school-related social events.   MissMBA recently offered some great advice for incoming b-school students, and I can't profess to be any sort of expert on the law school experience yet, but since I have lived in Charlottesville full-time for the last 12 months, I can claim some personal expertise on getting settled and keeping yourself alive in the Cville area. I can also offer some personal tips and tricks for things that took me (in many cases) a disturbingly long time to realize/learn after I got here.

Getting settled
I'll leave the actual moving logistics up to each individual person. That totally depends on how much stuff you have, whence you are coming, and where you are living in town. But, once you've gotten to Cville and picked up your keys, here are some tips for other things:
1.) If you haven't moved in yet (as of reading this), make sure you do things like set up an appt. to get your cable set up, putting electricity in your name, etc. BEFORE you get here. Obviously, who your service providers are will vary by location (e.g., you have no choice in cable if you live in Ivy Gardens), but since everyone and their mother is moving to Cville in August, you'll want to try to get a jumpstart on getting on the schedule as soon as you can. Note that if you have not previously had utilities in your name, the local utility companies may require a deposit from you. It can be difficult to talk your way out of this if you can't get some sort of reference letter from a prior utility provider, so be sure to plan ahead.
Useful links:
Comcast
Dominion Virginia Power
Century Link (formerly Embarq)
2.) I highly recommend taking a good bit of time before you move to set up a forwarding order from your old address with the post office, to change all of your address information with your credit card companies/banks, etc. When you set up a forwarding order with the USPS, they will send you a confirmation of your mailing address change - to both the new and old address. KEEP THIS DOCUMENT. It will make your life so much easier when you go to the DMV as you won't have to bring your lease (which may or may not have an actual street address on it, as I learned the hard way) or wait to get a bank statement to show residency.
Useful links:
USPS Change of Address
3.) Don't forget to get renter's insurance (or change the insured property with your existing insurer)! The student budget at UVa includes renter's insurance, many leases require you to have it, and it's just plain smart to have it, in my opinion. Since money will be tight, take some time to shop around if you haven't in a while. Make sure you ask about things like multi-policy discounts, alumni association discounts, professional network discounts, good student discounts, etc. It's up to you whether you choose to do all of this online or with a live agent in town, but don't forget to do it!
4.) If you have a car, make sure you get any necessary parking stickers from your landlord, management company, or the city (if necessary). The last think you want is to get towed (and it does happen every year)! Also, there is generally a parking waiver at Darden (and they claim at the law school) for most of August, but the lines at the Parking & Transportation Office toward the end of the month/waiver period can get to be truly ridiculous. Decide if it's worth it to you to pay for a little bit more of the month (while the waiver is in effect) in exchange for your sanity, and just go before Orientation starts.
5.) The DMV in most states is pretty horrific, but VA takes the cake in my opinion. Double and triple-check the list of documents you need to bring, and plan to spend several hours there. If it takes less time, you'll be thrilled, and if it takes as long as it usually does, at least you planned appropriately. Also, I recommend going and getting a VA inspection (you can do it at many gas/service stations on 29 or 250) BEFORE you go to the DMV. Then that's done.  I love the folks at the Goodyear on 29 (by Starbucks and Jiffy Lube, just south of Rio Rd and across from the Fashion Square Mall).
Useful links:
Virginia DMV

Keeping yourself alive
1.) Try to get any and all possible doctor's appointments out of the way before Orientation starts. You'll thank me later. Despite all your efforts to be organized, I promise you that you will have something else pressing to do if you think you can schedule an eye exam for, say, 2 pm on October 5. Because UVa has a medical school and teaching hospital, there are some really good doctors around. Check out the DocFind for Aetna if you are on the UVa student plan, or check with your independent insurance company to see who accepts your plan locally. Health Services is OK for things like sinus infections and flu shots, but I haven't had a great experience trying to get routine care from them, and if you need a specialist, you'll have to do that on your own anyway. Plus, you can't get into Elson until school starts anyway if you haven't paid the summer fee. Also, transfer your prescriptions from your old pharmacy NOW. CVS is the most convenient to school, but Kroger, Walmart, Sam's Club, and Target all have generic programs that can significantly reduce your co-pays (and the line at CVS - even if you've pre-ordered a refill online - is frequently a 20+ minute ordeal).
2.) Take an hour to drive (or walk) around and pick up take-out menus from places near school or your apartment. You'll want to have these later (yes, many of them are online, but it really is easier to have a folder at home). I'll be publishing LegalMBAyhem's Guide to Charlottesville Dining later this week, but figure out what is on your way home from school if you drive, and you'll be a much happier camper.
3.) If you want to avoid frequent take-out and think Lean Cuisines start tasting like rubber after the first or second one you eat a week, spend an afternoon preparing some of your favorite dishes. Make 4-6 servings and then portion them out into single-serving containers to freeze. This way, you can throw one serving in the microwave and you're only 5-6 minutes away from home-made deliciousness any crazy day. I've found that pasta dishes (lasagna, penne with vodka sauce, etc.), saucy stir-fry dishes with rice, and many curry dishes with rice actually freeze pretty well. The key is to make things that have enough moisture in them to help re-hydrate your starches when you microwave them, so think about adding some extra sauce relative to what you would usually make. Red meat (beyond ground beef) can be the most tricky ingredient because it doesn't always re-heat terribly well.
4.) Similarly to above, take some time to go to the grocery store and stock up on pantry items and other things you can prepare quickly. I'm not saying you should live on ramen noodles (the amount of sodium in those seasoning packets is far too high!), but you'll want to have some things on-hand.   At Darden at least, there's also a lot of free food in September - first coffee, briefings, cocktails, etc. - that can make menu-planning a challenge. If you throw some chicken in the freezer and invest in some frozen veggies (they even freeze diced onion and peppers these days), you can whip up something homemade pretty easily without a special trip to the store if you find you have the time to do so....and you won't end up throwing out a bunch of fresh stuff you bought and then never had time to cook.
5.) Familiarize yourself with the locations of the nearest dry cleaner, ATM for your bank, the cheapest gas (I think Kroger off of Hydraulic and Sam's Club are the consistently the cheapest by far), FedEx (Barracks), the UPS Store (on 29 by Hydraulic), and the post office (Barracks and the main branch on 29 - note that the main branch accepts overnight mailings until much later in the afternoon than the Barracks branch).   Generally scope out the area and learn the lay of the land before you need something last minute and don't know where it is.
6.) If you need a new interview suit, a dress for a wedding in October, etc., go find those things now, while you have (maybe) some extra cash and some free time. There are some nice stores (Banana Republic, White House Black Market, etc.) and boutiques in Charlottesville but not a ton, and the mall leaves a little bit to be desired at times. However, the Leesburg and Williamsburg outlets are each about 2 hours away. Go now! If you're a Darden student, make sure you have a pretty solid business casual wardrobe, and if you're female, you'll want a couple good 100% cotton sundresses (that silky dress lining stuff that seems to be on virtually every nice sundress I owned before getting here is MISERABLE during August, September, and most of October) and a nice cocktail dress for Darden prom.
7.) Do a little bit of sight-seeing. Hit up Monticello or Ash Lawn-Highland! Explore Richmond or DC if you aren't from this area! Visit a winery! Check out my posts here (at the bottom) and here to see what I've done with guests recently. Put together a list of things you want to do (with information and websites and whatnot) that you can consult without spending a lot of time if you have friends or family visiting from out of town.
8.) Take some time to make sure all of your personal paperwork and information is organized and neatly filed before you start school. I'm talking bank statements (if you still get paper copies), old paystubs, copies of last year's taxes, any medical records you may have, insurance documents, financial aid materials, copies of written recommendations from prior employers, etc. Basically anything you may need to consult at some point in the next 9 months and don't want to waste precious time scrambling around finding. It may seem silly now, but it could be super-helpful later. If you did this before you moved, good for you. If you just threw everything in a box that you plan to stash in a corner of your new apartment, go back and read the last three sentences again.
9.) Try to get in the habit of going to the gym as soon as North Grounds will let you in (or start taking a regular run/bike). If you don't make this a part of your routine very early, it becomes much, much more easy to justify never doing it. I think I went to North Grounds a total of 5 times all year. Not good, folks, not good.
10.) Get sleep. I know you'll want to go out and meet people and check out the local bars at the Corner, but don't start the school year sleep deprived. Honestly. Just don't.

Naturally, you don't have to take my advice on the above, and I'm sure other folks have different advice entirely. However, I learned a lot of this the hard way, and if I can keep anyone else from making the same mistake(s) I did, I'll consider it my good deed of the day. UVa also has a Graduate Guide that can be helpful (but I find it kind of hit or miss). If you have specific questions or concerns, don't hesitate to email me at legalmbayhem@gmail.com. Good luck!

The Hotel LegalMBAyhem

2010-08-02T11:59:00.002-04:00

Every few months, as I'm writing my rent check, I think to myself, "Hmmmm...I could be saving so much money if I had a roommate!" Then I realize that a.) I could also be spending a lot more money if I lived in another city/town/hamlet or even elsewhere in Charlottesville and b.) I really do love my apartment. Particularly the fact that I have both a guest room and a guest bath, which makes hosting whole passels of family and friends from out of town very easy and enjoyable. The weekend of my second big jam-making fest, (two weekends ago), my parents were in Cville, and this weekend, my friends and college sorority sisters M and T flew in from Boston and NYC, respectively. For both of them, it was their first trip to the 'ville, so we made sure to pack in a lot of fun. Luckily, the weather gods decided that Charlottesville has suffered through sufficient 100+ degree weekends, so it was gorgeous on Saturday and in the 70's and lower 80's all weekend.

M flew into Cville's wee small airport late on Thursday night, so she spent Friday doing some work and chilling in my apartment while I went to the office, and in the afternoon, we drove to Richmond to pick up T from RIC. M had put in a request for good barbecued southern meat products for dinner, so we stopped at Alamo BBQ before jumping back on the highway. Very, very tasty pulled pork, and scrumptious jalapeno mac and cheese! Then, we schlepped back to Cville along one of the most boring and uneventful stretches of highway I have experienced with any sort of regularity. Naturally, the boring car ride made us hungry again, so we stopped for Arch's frozen yogurt (a Charlottesville institution) before making it home and spending the rest of the evening catching up.

Saturday was a whirlwind of planned activities. We got up early to try the breakfast tacos at Beer Run and then drove to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. They've actually added a new tour that (for an additional fee, of course) lets you do the original house tour and then a "behind the scenes" tour of the second and third floors of the house, including the family rooms and Dome Room. We wandered around a little bit before and after our schedule tours and then headed down the mountain past TJ's grave. I've been to Monticello a few times (both with S last August before school started and with the 'rents in April), so I've got a bunch of pictures I haven't posted anywhere else, and I might as well post them here:

Looks like the back of a nickel, huh?

The crowning moment of my photography career, right here, folks.

The hazy view from the mountain

Flowers along the path this spring

More flowers in the garden

View over the terraced gardens, which had tiny little plants in April and a jungle of produce in August

I love daffodils

Tulips

Another shot of the "West Front"

Gorgeous budding trees in April

Yes, I could totally live here

The deer that greeted us on Saturday when we stepped off the shuttle

This is what happens to an artichoke if you don't drown it in butter and eat it first

T was scared of the butterflies...so naturally I needed to take a picture of this vicious creature

After Monticello, we grabbed a late lunch at the historical Michie Tavern (yep, totally touristy, but you've got to try it once) and then spent the afternoon doing wine tastings at Jefferson Vineyards, Blenheim Vineyards (owned by Dave Matthews...no, he wasn't there, and much to our disappointment, none of the bottles magically started playing "Ants Marching" when you took out the cork), and Kluge Estate Winery & Vineyards. On the way back towards town, we drove by Carter Mountain Orchard, where we picked up some peaches (for me) and some peach cider donuts (for T). Carter Mountain also happens to have a wine tasting room that offers $2 tastings of Prince Michel wines, including some made from Carter Mountain fruit, with the proceeds going to charity, so of course we had to try that, too. Duh. When we finally made it home, we decided to spend the evening in with a Redbox DVD (which we never watched) and take-out Indian and some more wine, and H and J (local friends) came over to join us for a bit.

On Sunday, I made breakfast (mmmm....blueberry pancakes...mmmm), then T and I dropped off M at the Cville airport, picked up sandwiches at Bellair Market, and drove to King Family Vineyards hoping to catch one of the Sunday afternoon polo matches (I'd gone with C, K, and H to the Pink Ribbon Polo match in June when it was a million degrees outside - random token photos from that below, last one of us talking to the player courtesy of C. Note my ability to find an appropriate and color-coordinated polo hat.). Unfortunately, the match had been cancelled due to rain the night before (and drizzle that morning), but we did a tasting and then sat outside on the patio enjoying our tasty sandwiches and the beautiful views. Then it was back to RIC to drop off T, and the Hotel MBAyhem cleaning staff had to start doing laundry and re-making beds.

The power of the interwebs

2010-08-02T10:52:00.001-04:00

Like most bloggers with a little bit of free time and some curiousity on their hands, I occasionally take a few minutes to check and see if people have been visiting my little corner of the internet world. I think it's neat to see where my readers live, and as Darden has publicized my blog, other sites have referred readers to it, too. I've also done some shameless self-promotion by tying a blog feed into my Facebook status updates and adding my site to Hella's List and the Clear Admit business and law blog lists (and thanks for the two shout-outs in Fridays from the Frontlines a couple weeks ago, folks!). After all, my reasons for starting this blog were three-fold: first, I wanted to keep family and friends "in the loop" while I vanished into the deep, dark depths of Charlottesville; second, I wanted to provide a perspective on student life as a JD/MBA student at UVa for those who are also considering UVa and/or a dual degree; and third, I needed a forum to vent periodically. So, with the exception of the third reason (which is mostly for my mental health and frankly cheaper than paying for therapy would be), promoting my blog and linking it to Facebook helps me achieve my goals for Legal MBAyhem.

Today, as I was perusing "Recent Visitor 'Came From' Activity" and "Keyword Search" information in StatCounter, I realized that it is almost creepy how quickly even a relatively small and largely inconsequential blog can spread through the "interwebs." (Thank you, Al Gore. Just kidding!) That realization led me to do some Google searching of my own - for my name (including nicknames, since I use my full name and shortened name pretty much interchangeably now), my blog's name, and various combinations of "Virginia Law," my name, "Legal MBAyhem," and "Darden." Obviously, I expected my posts to show up at some point when I searched for Virginia Law and Darden, and I know that Darden posts my name in connection with this blog. When I last Google-searched my name during the recruiting season, the only forum in which my name and my blog were publicly associated was through Darden. However, when I searched for my name today, I got all sorts of links to this blog. While I don't have a big problem with that (hey, I chose to post in a public forum, anyone who knows me knows that my online persona is a direct reflection of my real-life persona, and if a business or law firm chooses not to hire me because of something I posted here, that is their perogative), I did notice that 1.) the number of websites that aggregate all sorts of information and then try to link it to keyword searches for goodness knows what junk is OUT OF CONTROL; and 2.) a lot of people and sites seem simply to have done away with good blog etiquette (by which I mean referring to someone who runs a fairly anonymous blog by the name of their blog/online persona (e.g., referring to me as "Legal MBAyhem" or "UVAJDMBA2013"), not by whatever name you were able to uncover for them somewhere else).

So the whole searching process got me to thinking about blogs and the internet and anonymity and whatnot. I don't slap my name all over this blog primarily because I don't want to deal with total creeps and obnoxious people using that information for some nefarious purpose. After I go (back) into business or become an attorney, I also don't necessarily need potential clients and co-counsel or coworkers reading all of my blog posts when they Google search my name. I also generally try to keep my blog free of specific, attributable references to otherwise innocent people or companies who may not be thrilled about the fact that I am blogging about them. For instance, I refer to my last major employer as "The Consulting Firm That Shall Not Be Named," I refer to most friends (except those who also blog and use their first names to do so) by their initials or some other moniker, and there are some subjects and people I just don't blog about (yes, I have an "I need to have a ring on my hand to blog about a man" policy).

But of course there is a tension between keeping part of my life shrouded in mystery and anonymity and being open and honest about my experiences, thoughts, and feelings as I work through Darden and UVa Law. Anyone who knows me (including many of my classmates) will be able to "undisguise" my disguising and concealing efforts. In my mind, that's fine - if you actually know me AND you read my blog, you will obviously know more about the topics about which I post than the average person who stumbles across this blog inadvertently. If you actually know me, I've probably told you a good bit more about me than I post here. Naturally, you should "know" someone you've actually met better than someone you've only "met" online.

On the other hand, some people have periodically accused the Darden Student Bloggers of offering a biased or censured perspective of Darden and the student experience here. For the record, Darden has absolutely zero authority to tell me about what I should blog or not blog; we bloggers make all those decisions on our own (I have no idea if the law school knows that I blog or if they particularly care). Sure, if I started posting daily Darden-bashing entries, they might stop linking to my blog off of their Admissions page...but the ocassional Darden-critical post certainly makes it through, with a direct link from darden.virginia.edu. I can't speak for the other bloggers, but for me, my decision not to post some more critical things about Darden, certain people, life, etc. stems more from a personal desire not to air all of my own dirty laundry and to avoid preserving in perpetuity on the internet my fleeting displeasures with some experiences or individuals. Everyone has bad days or makes mistakes; I don't feel the need to immortalize all of those - either mine or others' - here. I do periodically rant, and those of you who read my Cannes post will see that sometimes, I certainly do articulate my "beefs" with others. I try to only do so when I am a.) attempting to keep my head from exploding or b.) after I've thought long and hard about it and think that someone else reading this blog may actually benefit in some teeny tiny way from my 100% honest perspective about some particularly unpleasant experience or encounter.

Anyway....I think I started writing this post with a totally different idea of where it would go, but here's where it's ended up. Just my random musings, I guess. I might as well post it, since I've spent the time typing it, right?

Rusticating, Part II

2010-07-28T10:01:00.000-04:00

As I posted a few weeks ago, this has been a summer full of "rustic" activities: gardening, picking fresh local fruit, visiting the Charlottesville City Market, canning, etc. Two weekends ago, I decided to try my hand at yet another activity that has me thinking that maybe I was actually raised on a farm and just don't remember: cheese making. For whatever reason, I suddenly just had a burning desire to make cheese with my own two little hands. Yes, I know, I am a freak of nature. So, I did some digging around on the internet and found instructions/recipes for both ricotta cheese and mozzarella that seemed relatively straightforward.

I started with the ricotta cheese, which seemed fairly foolproof, even for a cheese-making novice like me. Basically, you throw milk (which I buy in glass bottles, 1950's style, from a local dairy that supplies Charlottesville Krogers), vinegar and some yogurt into a pot and heat it until it curdles, then you dump the whole thing into a strainer lined with cheese cloth and about half an hour later, ta-da, you have ricotta cheese!

Ricotta cheese starting to form curds (in my very poorly lit kitchen)

Ricotta cheese straining in cheesecloth-lined collander

Finished ricotta in a container!

Making ricotta was so easy that I felt motivated to try making mozzarella, which requires some slightly more exotic ingredients and a little bit more time and effort. You need a good candy thermometer (or something else that reads temps under 100 degrees F well), twice as much milk, rennet, citric acid, and salt. I have never in my life had to purchase rennet before, but fortunately Rebecca's Natural Foods in the Barracks Road Shopping Center carries rennet, citric acid, and cheesecloth. There are varying "recipes" on the internet, but basically, you heat the milk to around 88 degrees, add the rennet (dissolved in some water), add the citric acid, heat to around 105 degrees, and then scoop out balls of cheese curds and squeeze the whey from them with your hands. You then place the balls of cheese into the microwave (this is the faster way...if you are particularly industrious, you can dip them back into the whey until they soften) for a few seconds, remove them, squeeze out the whey, knead, and repeat until the mozzarella reaches the texture you want. You add salt at the second kneading (I am kind of anti-salt, especially since I'm working for a company focused on hypertension and salt sensitivity this summer, but you can't make mozzarella without salt. Seriously.). I think I over-kneaded a bit....probably one too many rounds of kneading, because once I had refrigerated the cheese, it came out more like mozzarella that you could grate and put on a pizza than soft "fresh" mozzarella that you would turn into mozzarella caprese. But that didn't stop me from making a nice caprese with some local tomatoes (only my cherry and grape tomatoes are ripe) and home-grown basil!

Essential ingredients - vegetable rennet and citric acid

Just getting started....

Some nice preliminary curdling action around 88-90 degrees F

The first ball o' cheese

Mozzarella balls, pre-microwaving and pre-kneading

Finished mozzarella balls, ready to go into the fridge

A nice fresh caprese salad platter!

After my cheesemaking, I decided to make some braided Italian herb bread (I like to pack a lot into one day, OK?), and then I packed up the whole lot to take over to Brianne's, where she was cooking up some very tasty pasta with veggies. We enjoyed the food and then topped off the evening for a trip to Splendora's for gelato. Tasty, local/homemade, Italian food - what more can a girl want?

That is a good-looking homemade bread if I say so myself

I took a few days off after The Great Cheesemaking of 2010, and then my parents came into town for the weekend. On Saturday, we grabbed breakfast at Albemarle Baking Company, picked up sandwiches to go at Bellair Market, hit up three wineries (Barboursville, Prince Michel, and Sweely Estate), and topped off the day with dinner at The Bavarian Chef (totally worth the drive, but don't go on the hottest day of the year - their poor little A/C just couldn't keep up!). Sunday, we did breakfast at a little place down the street from my apartment and then went peach-picking at Chiles Peach Orchard and blackberry-picking at Hill Top Berry Farm (they also have a winery/mead-ery) before the parents hit the road and left me to my own devices. Naturally, once they left, the hot water canner came out again and I started canning up a storm. In two evenings, I made peach salsa, peach pie filling, peach melba jam, blackberries in framboise, blackberry syrup, blackberry apple chutney, blackberries preserved in water (for use in baking recipes later in the year...blackberry cobbler in February? Yes, please!), and maple walnut syrup (because I could...).

Mmmmm....tasty canned goods!

This is what my coat closet looks like now...anyone need some canned goods?

And that, in a nutshell, is Rustication, Part II.

Best of luck to all the Bar exam-takers!

2010-07-27T17:08:00.000-04:00

Today is the first day of the bar exam in many jurisdictions, and since I know I have a couple loyal readers who are taking their exams this week, I just wanted to give them and everyone else suffering through the process a shout-out. You've all studied hard, and you'll do just fine - you only need to pass! If that doesn't make you feel better, just remember that I'll be in your shoes in just three years, and by that point, I'll be suffering and miserable and you'll be a fairly well-compensated third-year associate. See? It's all about perspective.

For those of you (possibly MBA students?) who think the bar exam is no big deal.....go away, and I never want to speak to you again.

For anyone who's looking for something entertaining, check out this hypothetical bar exam-type question from Above The Law. It's funny whether or not you have any idea how you'd answer the questions.

If this whole JD/MBA thing doesn't work out, I could always become a scullery maid

2010-07-27T16:58:00.000-04:00

From medieval times until the early twentieth century, the scullery maid was basically the lowest of the lowely household/kitchen servants, responsible for washing pots and everyday dishes, scrubbing floors, boiling water, and performing other such unsavory tasks as plucking chickens. The position is one that has (fortunately, I think) generally gone the way of the horse and buggy, but somehow I recently managed to find work as a scullery maid.

The Scullery Maid (L'Ecureuse)
Jean-Simèon Chardin (French, 1699 -1779)
From http://www.corcoran.com/

Yes, that's right - a Brown University diploma, a year of the MBA program at Darden, and impending matriculation into a Top 10 law school has landed me a position as a scullery maid. Well, technically, the position is "Assistant." And it's actually kind of fun. A few months ago, the Wine & Cuisine Club (WACC....B-school humor at its finest - hahaha! ) at Darden took a cooking class through the Charlottesville Cooking School, which also hires folks to fulfill the scullery maid function in exchange for either pay or free classes. So for a couple nights in the past month, I've donned an apron and some gloves for 4+ hours after putting in my time at the internship. While there is a LOT of dishwashing (particularly for the sauteeing class), I also get to listen to most of the class, and the assistant/scullery maid always gets fed part of the meal that the class cooks, too. All in all, it's been a pretty neat experience (for dishwashing), since I learned some new knife techniques and recipes, and I'm looking forward to signing up to take some classes myself - I earned them, after all!

Now, I signed up for the scullery maid job at CCS, so I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. What I didn't expect was that my summer internship would also necessitate serving as combination sous chef/scullery maid last week! The local biotech start-up that I'm working for this summer hosted its first Advisory Board meeting last week, which was kicked off by a dinner at the CEO (who is technically my client/boss)'s house. His wife was out of town until right before the dinner, and he needed some help pulling everything off, so I showed up a couple hours in advance to chop and dice and make crabcakes, and I ended up serving as combination cater waiter/scullery maid in addition to "guest" and "company representative" during the dinner. I'm guessing a good number of MBA students would have been displeased with that arrangement, but I enjoy cooking, and my mission this summer was to be as helpful as possible, and that's what the company needed at the time....so I did it, and my help was appreciated. Like I said....if this JD/MBA thing doesn't work out, I'm going to buy a nicer apron and hire myself out. Anyone else need a scullery maid? Will work for food...

LO and recruiting...from a legal perspective

2010-07-20T19:39:00.000-04:00

Apparently, today is the day of posting links rather than posting real posts. But I stumbled across this article on emotional intelligence and legal recruiting and thought it was worth a read whether you're a law student, a business student, or both. Dontcha just love it when LO* sneaks its way into law school?

*For the uninitiated, LO stands for "Leading Organizations," or a core course in the First Year at Darden - it's basically all about interacting with and/or managing people within an enterprise.**

**Dear LO faculty, please don't hate me for that super-condensed description of LO.

Who gets a JD/MBA anyway?

2010-07-20T12:44:00.000-04:00

I recently stumbled across a Wikipedia list of "famous" (I use the term somewhat loosely) JD/MBAs from a variety of top schools. Sadly, UVa is not listed, but if anyone is looking for some information about JD/MBA career paths, check it out!

The countdown to the first day of my second first year

2010-07-16T08:00:00.002-04:00

Today marks the “one month from the start of law school orientation” point. Eeek! I honestly probably should have been more freaked out about starting Darden last year than I am now about starting law school, but oddly I wasn’t. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Darden does a MUCH better job communicating with matriculating students and letting you know what you need to get done before school starts (I can say this objectively. I've lived here in Charlottesville for almost a year now and have done all the "Charlottesville things" one needs to do when one gets here. I've even done most of the "UVa things." But I'm generally clueless about most of the "law things" I need to or should be doing. I don't think I'm alone on this. At Darden, we got a checklist in May, and even though it stressed me out, at least I knew what I needed to be doing.) Or maybe it had more to do with the fact that the incoming Darden students started moving to Charlottesville earlier and organized social events so that we’d know each other before classes start. Or maybe it was because even though Darden is the bootcamp of business schools, law school in general still has a much nastier reputation than b-school. Or maybe it’s because I haven’t played softball since the days of The College Firm’s lawyer-league play. Who really knows why, but I’m apprehensive in a way (a “nervous gym tummy” kind of way) that I wasn’t last year.

I suppose that it isn’t really the nature of the work or the workload that makes me nervous. I’ve worked in political and legal environments since I was 16, and frankly, the parts of my summer job that I’ve enjoyed the most this year have been the corporate governance and legal-ish parts (though I’ve been very clear with everyone that I CANNOT provide legal advice under any circumstances). So it’s not the work or the reading of legal cases that is making me apprehensive; I periodically still track down pleadings for random cases to read them for fun. Nor is the issue the workload. I’ll be taking fewer classes, spending less time in class, and taking fewer exams over a longer period of time. I’ll also be able to do my studying on my own time, rather than on Darden-dictated time (which means the return of AFTERNOON NAPS!!!! So exciting.). I know it will be challenging, but that’s exciting to me, not nerve-racking.

I frankly think that part of my apprehension has to do with - *gasp* - the people (I know, I know…. I am SURE that I will be lambasted or burnt in effigy or something for saying this, but I’m trying to be honest.). When I visited Darden when I was applying to schools (18 months ago at this point), I loved the Darden people I met. They were friendly, they were welcoming, and I just seemed to “click” with the people I met. That whole “fit” thing they talk about in admissions was completely on the mark for me. I just “fit” better at Darden than I did anywhere else I had applied or been accepted, and a huge part of that “fit” was the people (the other part was that Darden was - of all the b-schools to which I was accepted - the place where I felt I could do my "best work" in the words of Dean Bruner). Last year, as I was preparing to start at Darden, I wasn’t at all worried about the “people” component of the experience (the finance component, yes…the people component, no). Now, I am by no means the world’s most outgoing person, and there are certainly people at Darden with whom I don’t hang out regularly, but I can honestly say that by and large, I really like my Darden classmates. The vast majority of Darden students are intelligent, motivated, and fun to be around. I’ll bet this is true at UVa Law, too, but I frankly didn’t get the same vibe and perfect “fit” feel from the law school either when I visited several years ago or when I went to the Admitted Student Weekends this year. Oh, I liked it and the people well enough, and I definitely didn’t get any stronger “fit” vibes from any other law school, but it just doesn’t feel the same. And if I have to put my finger on it, I would say that part of the issue is really age.

Now, before somebody starts accusing me of being hypocritically ageist, hear me out. The average incoming age of Darden students is 27-28. I was on the very young side of my class at 23 (I turned 24 a month later, and I will reiterate again, I worked full-time every summer and winter through college at the same law firm, and I worked at The Consulting Firm That Shall Not Be Named for a full 30 months after graduating). But I’ve always been younger than my classmates (even in grade school – a September birthday will get you!), and because I graduated early and spent a lot of time at the office, most of my friends are at least a couple years older than me. Given my work experiences and the friends that I have, I often feel older than 24. The vast majority of Darden students have had careers of some sort prior to returning to school. This means that they have (usually) lived independently, travelled for business, bemoaned the lack of summer vacation in the “real world,” tracked their 401-K performance, and balanced the demands of work and the “rest of life.” There’s a perspective that comes from having been out in the working world for a while, and I think there’s also a perspective that comes from having survived the first year at Darden, frankly.

The average incoming age at UVa Law is 24 (at least for the class of 2012, the most recent class for which data is easily available). Yes, that’s the average and I’m right at it (though I’ll be 25 shortly after starting). That means that the average UVa Law student at graduation is still younger than the average incoming Darden student. It also means that 50% of my class is younger than me. This is a first for me. It means that the peer advisors assigned to my class – who are 2Ls and 3Ls – are younger than me. It means that many people (about 40% of the class of 2012) have gone straight through from undergrad and haven’t worked or lived on their own. It means that, amazing though I am sure these future classmates will be, right now I very much feel like we are different points in our lives. And I feel like a grandma. This grandma-like feelings started at the Admitted Student Days this spring, when I hosted several admitted students (I have a guest room that might as well get some use) and attended the standard barbecue and other scheduled programming and found myself talking to people who were barely 21 and still seniors in college. I felt truly ancient. Fortunately, the second student I hosted is coming to UVa and will be joining me in the “grandma club.” Also, I suppose that many of the "older" people joining the class of 2013 may have been stuck at work and didn't make it to the Admitted Student weekends. So I know I will have elderly brethren....but I haven't found many of them yet.

It’s also comforting to know, as I get more apprehensive as the start of school draws nearer, that all my Darden friends are just a (very) short walk away from the law school. And they have the added attraction of being in a building with free coffee. And of having no idea whatsoever what the Blue Book is. You all better be prepared to drag me out of the law library, ply me with grown-up cocktails, and make fun of me for being a young’un next year!

I'm going to end up living in a cardboard box

2010-07-15T11:55:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, as I was electronically signing yet another master promissory note (Um...hi...doesn't "master" mean that I should only have to sign one? I signed four last year.) for student loans and petitioning to have my student budget adjusted so that I can pay for all my healthcare costs (I have diabetes. I take care of myself, but doing so is darn expensive....bye-bye savings!), I thought to myself, "Wow, my 1L classmates and I are getting ready to take on nearly $70,000 of loans for a 9-month period." Holy moly. And that doesn't include paying for things like car insurance. Or travel. Or anything fun.

Tuition alone at UVa Law is $47,500 for incoming out-of-state students (don't even get me started on the fact that I have lived in VA and exclusively in VA for a year, filed a tax return here, pay personal property taxes here, have a VA license and car registration, and certainly don't even pretend to reside anywhere else). Yes, it's even more at Darden ($49,500). That means that I'm basically paying more for tuition each year than the total cost of yearly attendance at my undergrad college, Brown University (and it was cheaper when I was there, obviously). Yes, ostensibly (and hopefully) I'll have a nice, lucrative job when I graduate, but if you look at the costs of a JD/MBA, the base debt load amounts to $280,000 (not including capitalized interest or a discount rate or any of that other financial ridiculousness from which I'm taking a break this year). Just an MBA will set you back $140,000, and a getting a JD alone can easily generate up $210,000 in student debt. Eeeek! You could buy a decent-sized house around here for that. I am dreading - absolutely dreading - the day that the Powers That Be tell me what my monthly student loan payment will be. Let's just say that most people have cheaper mortgage payments each month. I'm going to start planning the interior decorating scheme for my cardboard box. And to think that I tease my sister about her future of living in a tent (she's applying to Ph.D. programs in archaeology). Tents are far more spacious than boxes, and somebody will basically PAY HER to go to grad school. Sigh.

Clearly, I'm not the only one who has been thinking about the high costs of professional education. For more on the subject of law school tuition, check out Above the Law and this recent US News & World Report article. My advice to potential professional school applicants: Think long and hard about whether or not you think the costs of going back to school - and of attending top schools - is really going to be worth it to you before you spend time and money applying. I do think it will be worth it for me in the long run...but that doesn't mean I can't grumble about the costs. After all, I wouldn't be an MBA student if I didn't worry about dollar signs followed by big numbers...

Rusticating

2010-07-13T09:37:00.000-04:00

Let me be clear: I am not typically an overly outdoorsy, tree-hugging sort of person (I did hug a tree once, but I went to Brown, so it was basically required before they let you graduate). When and if I ever own a house, I plan to hire someone to take care of the yard, because yard work really isn't my thing (and my neighbors would end up stoning me because the place would become an eyesore very quickly). I think the local food movement is great, but I also like to eat raspberries in January. However, all those disclaimers aside, I have spent much of the last couple months going all "crunchy granola" and becoming domestically inclined in a thoroughly "old school" sort of way. Maybe it's just the relative abundance of free time that the summer has afforded me, or maybe it's a result of living in the "country" (or maybe it's both...), but I've been rusticating to an extent that has started to frighten even me.

It started innocently enough, I suppose. When my parents and sister came down to visit for Easter (yep, I cooked Easter dinner this year), my father brought with him some tiny little mint plantings for me. Mojitos are one of my favorie summer time drinks, and I maintain that you shouldn't be permitted to live in Virginia if you don't have all the makings of a mint julep on hand at any time, so this seemed like a good idea. Plus, I already knew that I'd be spending my summer in the Charlottesville area rather than abandoning my apartment for the summer like many of my classmates with exciting jobs in exotic locales, so that meant I'd be around to water plants and all that stuff. Well, the mint seemed to start me down a slippery slope. I decided that if I had mint, I might as well have basil (for homemade pesto, another my summer favorites) and other herbs, too. And while I was making the trip to Lowe's for window boxes and potting mix and seedlings, I might as well buy one of those nifty little upside down tomato growing pot thingamajigs, too, right? Right.

Three months later, I have realized that there is either some sort of plant equivalent of steroids in the water here, or I actually may have a wee little bit of a green thumb. Who knew? The herbs are out of control, I've had to repot the tomatoes because they over-grew their original hanging pots and became slightly suicidal (one of the two pots spontaneously plunged two stories to its almost-demise), and I decided to diversify into peppers, too.

Yep, I'm basically running a garden/mini-farm off of my little apartment porch. My tomatoes have been very tasty...

...and I've been trying very hard to be patient while this guy ripens (but I am not naturally a patient person):

I've really been enjoying having fresh herbs for the aforementioned summer cocktails and pesto and other tasty treats, and I also bought an ice cream maker and made fresh homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream (and strawberry frozen yogurt with fresh-picked strawberries). I brought the tasty frozen products to a BBQ a friend hosted, and they got rave reviews. Yay!

In addition to my sudden urge to become a gentlewoman farmer (inspired by our man Thomas Jefferson, but minus the whole land-owning part) and purveyor of frozen delights, I developed an almost unhealthy obsession with the ancient art of canning. By canning, I mean preserving various tasty foods in glass jars, of course! I don't exactly know what inspired my desire to take up this new hobby, but it *may* have been related to my childhood love of going to pick fresh fruit. Picking (and eating) locally grown fruit with my own two grubby little hands has always been a summer-time ritual in my family. Now that I live alone in a climate and location that again permits me to partake in said activity (Rhode Island and Massachusetts were great for apple picking, but not much else), I needed a way to ensure that the fruits of my labors (literally and figuratively) didn't go to waste. Because really, in my mind it's not worth it to drive out to the middle of nowhere to spend time picking fruit if you're only going to pick what you can eat in the next day or two. Plus, homemade jams and jellies are both tastier and healthier than the ones you can buy at the store. And I like to cook and bake, so canning seemed the next logical step in my own personal domestic diva development project.

So I invested in a boiling water canner ($20 at the local Wal-Mart) and all the little necessary gadgets like jar lifters and lid lifters and canning funnels. Oh, and the jars (which a friend of mine had to special order in Massachusetts but which are sold in grocery stores and WalMart here in more sizes and shapes than you might imagine). I purchased so many jars at Wal-Mart that the cashier closest to the door by the housewares section and I were on a first-name basis. For my first attempt, I chose strawberry jam. It went so well (and tasted so good), that naturally I had to go cherry picking and make things with the cherries, so I made preserved cherries in almond syrup (delicious spooned over homemade vanilla bean ice cream) and cherry raspberry compote. And then, because I was feeling pretty good about my mad canning skillz at this point, I made bread and butter pickles. Yes, I did this all within the first week of owning a canner. I may or may not be slightly obsessive about new hobbies (and again, I don't have homework, so what's stopping me?)

The results of my first week of canning: jam, compote, preserves, and pickles

Week 2 of my new addiction - er, hobby - conveniently coincided with the start of peach season and raspberry season, and Week 3 marked my first trip to the Charlottesville City Market (the big Saturday farmer's market downtown). During these weeks, my canning repertoire expanded to include dill pickle slices, Oktoberfest beer mustard (no seasonal ingredients involved, but who cares?), golden relish, raspberry jam, chocolate raspberry sauce, peach salsa, berry wine jelly, and blueberry chutney. Brianne even came over for a canning "lesson" (I use the term very loosely) when I made the chutney.

From left to right: (front "row") Oktoberfest beer mustard, berry wine jelly, golden relish, blueberry chutney, peach salsa; (back "row") chocolate raspberry sauce, raspberry jam

Once I had made all of these tasty treats, I had to figure out where to store them. I already keep a fairly well-stocked pantry (no real surprise there), and since most people don't have a root cellar these days (you should store glass jars of fruits and vegetables in cool, dark places so that the light doesn't lead to discoloration), I had to clean out the shelf in my coat closet in order to hold lots and lots of jars. I also put together a gigantic basket of homemade treats as a gift for Father's Day (my mother hates sugary sweet things like jams and jellies, so she got a jar of bread and butter pickles and Dad got everything else). Everyone else should be forewarned that I will be gifting canned goods from now and until eternity...

My last domestic rustication effort of the summer (so far) has included making all sorts of side dishes and tasty morsels for barbecues and picnics and whatnot in town. One of my friends threw a surprise b-day barbecue for his girlfriend, and I offered to make the cake (this same friend once challenged me to a bake-off...after two months of talking smack, he finally forfeited after the aforementioned b-day barbecue). Since I was feeling particularly ambitious, I actually decided to make a round layer cake AND to hand write the birthday wishes; I usually cop out and make a sheet cake, frost it in the pan, and buy "Happy Birthday" candles. My focus is taste, not appearance. But I think that this one looked pretty good (and certainly tasted good - red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting....mmmmmm), if I may say so myself:

I've been taking some time off from rusticating due to travel plans for the last three weekends, and I've been spending several of my evenings doing fun exciting things like organizing my case materials, ironing, and all that other stuff that you can do inside in the air conditioning (it was one of the hottest Junes on record in Charlottesville). Since I'm in town again this weekend for the first time in a while, and I hear that it's blackberry season, I'm thinking I might need to bust out the canning materials again...

My inner neat freak

2010-07-09T15:57:00.000-04:00

Since school ended two months ago, I've basically been ignoring the gigantic stack of cases and tech notes and review decks and exams and various other school-related junk that has been cluttering up my bookshelf. Yesterday, I decided that unless I did something about said junk, I was going to have to go buy another bookshelf to hold my law school stuff this year....and Ikea ain't close. So, it was time to clean.

Here's the starting point:

I had been pretty good about taking everything out of the binders and reusing the binders each quarter up until Q4. But I'd also been just throwing exams and review decks and goodness knows what into a big pile. Plus, seriously, that's like 3 feet (OK, OK, maybe only 2 feet) of rubber-banded paper just flopping all over the place! It was becoming seriously offensive to my Type-A over-organized everything-has-its-place-darnit personality. Now, I know I could have just opted for electronic cases in the first place, but I will probably never be able to build an accurate spreadsheet using case data while I'm flipping back and forth between two windows on my laptop. And I'm not going to lie - hard copy cases are a great crutch when you get cold-called. Nothing says "I'm super prepared" more than flipping like a maniac through a case and muttering "I know I saw that in here somewhere....uh......"

I decided that I really only needed to keep technical notes and review decks from this year. The cases were interesting, but I don't necessarily see myself sitting somewhere thinking, "Hmmm...I thought there was some really interesting information in that George's Tshirts case about predicting the likelihood of rain at rock concerts. I wish I still had that case!" I do see myself (possibly) thinking, "I wish I had that tech note on calculating inventory re-order points."

So two hours, four francy schmancy binders, and a couple packs of dividers later, I had this much "trash" to be hauled to Darden and recycled:

...and a bookshelf that looks like this (bottom shelf is all empty binders and notebooks to be used next year in law school):

Ahhh.....so much better!

Yup, I know I'm a freak. But that's Ms. Neat Freak to you.

The Riviera

2010-07-02T15:56:00.002-04:00

or those of you who know me, you know that a I drive what is officially an "old man" car - a 1995 Buick Riviera that was, in fact, previously owned by an old man (my grandfather). I refer to it the same way Pop always referred to it, as "The Riviera" (not to be confused with the Pop-dubbed "The Park Avenue" or "The Lucerne," his other recent Buick models; my old Subaru Legacy aka "The Subaru;" or my mom's minivan, which my grandparents still call "The Truck"). Since I'm so used to driving The Riviera, it was odd for me to start talking about how I was going to visit The Real Riviera: the French Riviera.

During my trip to Cannes (see the post here for details of GBE Cannes 2010), several of my friends and I took day trips to explore other Rivieria attractions beyond the annual Film Festival. Those trips included taking a ferry to the Ile St. Honorat, which is one of two (along with Ile Ste. Marguerite) cute little islands about a 20-minute board ride from Cannes. We took the bus from Cannes la Bocca, walked down the pier, bought our tickets, and voila! We were ready to sail!

After a 20 minute ferry ride on which we saw "pirate ships"...

...and fancy carbon-masted racing sail boats...

...we made it to St. Honorat, which is the site of the Abbey des Lerins, an actual abbey inhabited by monks. You're supposed to be quiet on the island, so we took a lovely peaceful walk around the place. We saw their fancy vineyards (they do make their own wines and liquors, available for sale in the abbey gift shop)...

....and we saw some cute little chapels on the shoreline....

...we found a little pirate cove...

...and a big fort that looked straight out of Robin Hood...

...and then we visited the actual abbey before grabbing lunch and heading home....

It was a lovely day!

The next day, the same group of lovely ladies decided to take the train from Cannes to Monaco. We did our own tour of basically the whole principality, starting with the beautiful church outside the train station...

...then we walked up the hill to the royal palace....

...saw the royal guard....

...and some other beautiful scenery and gorgeous parks in Monaco Ville.

Then we trekked down the mountain, hopped on a bus, and went to see the Montecarlo casino before heading back to Cannes.

And thus ended my trip to the Riviera. Now all I have is some photos...and the Buick.

Cannes GBE, or what should have been the greatest-ever course credit coup

2010-07-02T14:58:00.003-04:00

View of Cannes from the fort at the top of the hill

At the beginning of May, two days after exams ended and one day after I jaunted up to Hartford for my cousin's wedding (lovely, lovely but completely gratuitous-to-this-post pic below - it was a beautiful and very fun wedding!), I hopped on a plane to Nice, France to attend the 63rd Festival de Cannes (i.e., the Cannes Film Festival). For two weeks, I was supposed to hob-nob with entertainment insiders and walk the red carpet...all while earning the equivalent credit for a one-quarter Darden class. This sounds like the best plan ever (a veritable academic coup, if you will), right?

Um...wrong! While there were certainly parts of the trip that I enjoyed, I spent much of the two week period completely frustrated and counting the days until I got to fly home. Now, before you stop reading here and write this off as a crazy rant by a grumpy person, let me say this: what follows below is a fairly "fair and balanced" (no, not in the Fox News kind of way....in a truly "fair and balanced" kind of way) summary of the trip. I'll cover the good, the bad, and the ugly in the spirit of being entirely honest. What follows is my opinion, yes, so you can feel free to wholly disregard it, but there's also a lot that I'll say below that I really, really wish someone had told me before I signed up for this trip. Some of my Cannes-mates may have different views (Sierra's more up-beat accounts are here and here and here), but the following is mine (and you'll note that I've taken six weeks to write this post, in part because I was so irritated before that I didn't think I could provide any sort of objective report on the whole thing until now. I've mellowed with time. Honest.).

So...in the style of my Barcelona GBE post, here goes...

Overview
1.) Course name: The Business of Film at the Cannes Film Festival
2.) Professor: Yael Grushka-Cockayne, a member of the Decision Analysis faculty (she did not attend the Festival with us but will be reading our papers, viewing our presentations, and giving us grades)
3.) Credits: 1.5 credits that count toward the Second Year elective requirement (or equal to a one-quarter long regular class)
4.) Academic requirements/work load: Working a 6+ hour daily internship shift with a company doing business at the Festival for about 10 days; attending screenings at the Festival (mostly for fun); writing a 5-6 page marketing and distribution plan for a film screened at the Festival (either in competition, out of competition, or screened to buyers) (70% of grade, due July 1); putting together and delivering a 10-15 minute presentation about one of the films and our marketing/distribution plan in a group of 3-4 students (30% of grade, will be done in September when school resumes).
5.) Done in affiliation with: The American Pavilion, a communications and hospitality center at the festival, which matches students with companies for internships and ostensibly provides a variety of other services and perks to student participants (more on this below)
6.) Cost: Around $5000, including the program fee ($3000), airfare ($800-900), and food/beverage/sundry purchases for the two weeks. Darden approved loans for up to $4500, which was not really quite enough to cover everything (food is ridiculously expensive during the Festival....I think they just prey on tourists, which is probably a genius business strategy).

Travel:
The plan was for everyone to depart on May 8 and arrive in Cannes on May 9. I was planning to go late (arrive very early on the morning of May 10) due to the aforementioned wedding. However, thanks to the Icelandic ash cloud, I ended up arriving about 10 hours after I was supposed to and before about 30% of the program participants (and before about 50% of people's luggage).

Days 1-2:
May 9 was supposed to be a "get over your jet lag" kind of day for everyone in the program. For future reference, there were about 150 or so students participating in the American Pavilion's program, the vast majority of whom were undergrads. There were 16 or so Darden students and one girl from NYU-Stern. Since the ash cloud was wreaking havoc on travel plans, May 10, which was supposed to be a day for getting the lay of the land and attending panels, ended up being a "get over your jet lag and hunt down your luggage" kind of day for most people. My classmates who attended the actual scheduled programming of the day unanimously said that I didn't miss anything by not being there.

Day 3:
This was the day when we got our internship assignments. There were also several panel discussions and a tour of the Palais de Festivals, or the main building where the festival screenings and the Marche du Film (film market) are held.

Outside the Palais, with the official festival picture of Juliette Binoche

I was actually pretty excited about my internship assignment - 5 other Darden students, one NYU undergrad, and I were assigned to work for a pretty major American studio (in my ongoing spirit of protecting the innocent, let's just call it "The Studio That Shall Not Be Named"). What I wasn't excited about during this day was the constant "hurry up and wait" routine (we literally spent over an hour just sitting on the steps of the Palais waiting for someone to fetch our festival accreditation badges), the panelists who spoke interminably on random topics that had nothing to do with their advertised theme (we got some guy's random musings on life during the talk entitled "Navigating the Cannes Film Festival" and absolutely no useful information about the Festival), and the relatively patronizing tone of the American Pavilion staff members. Yes, I know wrangling 150+ students is difficult. Yes, I know students often act obnoxious and entitled. But hello, you're maybe five years older than me (which makes you younger than many of my classmates), so please don't talk to me like I'm a child. And definitely don't just yell at all of us. Grrrrr.....

Days 4-12:
From May 12-20, we were basically on our own to do as we pleased, so long as we showed up to our assigned internship shifts. I ended up on the afternoon shift, which meant that from about 2 pm -8 pm I occupied the penthouse offices of The Studio That Shall Not Be Named and made myself available for whatever they needed me to do. This included straightening up the office, organizing RSVPs and guest lists for parties, and running errands. We had been told in advance that we would be doing menial things like running errands, so I really didn't have a problem with that, at least in theory. I was more than OK with fetching office supplies and snacks and whatnot....it was when I got sent out to buy (and then return) a French MacBook (european outlet plug, French keyboard) for somebody who spoke no French and lived in Hong Kong or to track down Tampax and Midol for the executive's personal assistant or to go get the heel fixed on the Studio's VP of Corporate Affairs' shoe that I got a little frustrated. It was like living in "The Devil Wears Prada," but I didn't get to meet Meryl Streep. I also wish that we had had a little more opportunity to actually learn about the film business, but we were basically under orders to stay out of the way of the executive (who apparently doesn't love interns), and there frankly wasn't enough to keep us all busy, so we spent a lot of time watching trailers and reading scripts (there are some really cool films coming out towards the end of this year, just FYI). Several of the more senior Studio employees did periodically take the time to talk to us and answer any questions we had about the business, but it would have been cool to see a distribution negotiation or something like that. Still, all that aside, the internship wasn't too bad. I have some suggestions for how it could be improved, but we'll get to that later.

Literally rolling out the red carpet...

Days 13-15:
Here's a key festival secret: most of the actual "business" is done the first week during the major market session. Then all the important Hollywood-types fly home, leaving the minions....er, I mean interns....free to jaunt off on day trips (read all about those here).

Day 16:
Most of us flew home on May 24, though a couple of my very lucky classmates had planned other European excursions before their internships started.

So, that's the trip in a nut-shell. As described above, it probably doesn't sound too shabby, right? Well, here are my other thoughts on the trip that I really think anyone considering going should know (and don't worry, I have some constructive suggestions for improvement, too, not just complaints). These probably don't sound like major issues, but they could get awfully, awfully annoying when they were all happening at once.

Accomodations

My issue: space concerns and roommate matching
The situation: We were housed in "European efficiency apartments." This didn't sound too bad at the beginning. I have friends who have lived abroad for a protracted period of time in accomodations that are billed exactly the same way, and they were perfectly fine. However, when you cram four people into an apartment that is smaller than my master suite in Charlottesville (which, trust me, is not palatial), you will have problems. There literally was nowhere to lay down our suitcases, and there was not a single drawer (and only limited closet space). I was in a bunk bed with a mattress that was flimsier than my sofa cushions at home. The bathtub had a flexible shower head but no curtain. We didn't get keys to the apartments; instead, there was a lockbox with a combination hooked to the bars over the window outside, and you had to open the lock-box, get out the key, unlock the door, replace the key in the lockbox, enter the apartment, and use the second key inside to lock the door again each and every time anyone entered the apartment. If you were unfortunate enough to be sleeping in the bunkbeds in the front alcove, this meant that any time anyone came or went, you knew about it. However, this all would probably have been bearable if I hadn't had The Roommate From Hell. There were four of us in this apartment - me, my friend Amy, a cool undergrad from Bentley, and The Roommate From Hell. Our first day there, before Amy's luggage and the cool undergrad had even shown up, TRFH comes up to us and asks if she can have friends who are in town for the festival sleep on our floor. Ummmm....hi, there isn't enough room for four people, let alone their luggage, in this apartment. We certainly aren't adding any more. AND, we paid for this, your friends didn't, and the AmPav rules prohibit rommates. Amy and I articulated our concerns to her pretty nicely, though, which earned us a grumpy "Fine, I was just asking your opinion." We thought that issue was over. Wrong. Instead, we ended up with a "squatter" who TRFH periodically snuck into the apartment while Amy and I weren't looking. Super, super annoying. TRFH also regularly flooded the bathroom while showering, and she was also in the annoying habit of handwashing her stockings and undergarments and hanging them in the bathroom each day to dry. Oh, yeah, and she CONSTANTLY turned on the heat to the maximum temperature. It was 70+ degrees outside and there weren't any windows to open. Now, I am not usually a passive agressive person; if you've really ticked me off, I will usually go straight to blatantly aggressive. But something about this girl really drove me up the wall. Maybe it was that she pretended to be unable to speak English and refused to communicate with me and Amy. Maybe it was that she kept trying to stealthily sneak her friend into our apartment. Maybe I just didn't like her. Either way, I started passive aggressively turning off the heat every time I walked into the apartment. I started ignoring her the same way she ignored me. I avoided the apartment basically at all costs. Childish, yes. But I know I wasn't the only one annoyed by her (the remaining roommates really enjoyed commiserating). Oh...and I should also mention that we paid $3000 for the privilege of coming to Cannes, and the weekly rate for each apartment was 400 euro. So that means that per person housing costs were 200 euro for the week. Just keep that in mind for later...
My proposed solution/recommendations for the future: Don't cram four people into those apartments. 2 or 3 MAX would be much better and the cost really shouldn't be a huge issue. Also, don't have undergrads rooming with grad students. We are at different stages in our lives and have different priorities (in other words, I am a grandma and would like to go to bed before 3 am at least sometimes). If I'm going to be crammed into a room with 3 other people, I'd be much happier if they were Darden people.

OK, at least the view from our apartment wasn't too bad...

Tickets to screenings
My issue: handled inefficiently, inequitably, and unprofessionally by AmPav
The situation: When we weren't at work, we were free to do whatever we wanted, including attend screenings. Now, here is the secret to the Festival: if you have a festival badge and an inside ticket connection, you can go see some really cool stuff that is being screened as part of the film market (the Cannes market is one of the biggest film markets each year, which basically means that it is where studios and filmmakers and distributors all get together to buy and sell films and distribution rights, so there are tons and tons and tons of market screenings for buyers, to which you can frequently get invitations or tickets if you know or can figure out whom to ask). Unfortunately, I think it took some of us a really long time to realize that you could go to tons of screenings for cool US films this way. Nobody really told us, and unlike every other Festival-goer with a badge, the American Pavilion kids didn't each get our own book of market screenings. I don't know why this is, but I really wish I'd had it. That being said, the American Pavilion did *try* to get us red carpet tickets to the films in competition and to some of the market films (but again, you had to specifically know which films where showing and where and when in order to even ask them to try). They kept a book where you could sign up for the films you were interested in seeing. While I did get to see a good number of competition films, there were a variety of very frustrating things about this ticket system:
1.) You could sign up at breakfast each morning, and you had three "stars" that you could put down next to the screenings that you *really* wanted to see. Doesn't sound bad, right? Well, the problem with this was that you could theoretically sign up for everything, so there were some people who did this...and then went back through and changed their minds and hemmed and hawed every morning, so it was often a slow, tedious process to wait and sign up. Also, some people had variable work schedules, so you weren't always sure whether or not you should sign up for something because you didn't know if your work schedule would conflict. Aaaaannnnddd.... what we didn't realize at the time was that you were basically rewarded for signing up first, because there were a limited number of tickets for each screening (if the AmPav even got tickets), and while there was a "raffle," that basically meant that if there were five tickets available, the first five people who had written down their names got the tickets. Also, if you "used" one of your stars for a screening for which the AmPav couldn't get tickets, you didn't get that star "back" to use again, you just lost it.
2.) Halfway through the festival, when we'd all wised up about the stupidity of the system and realized that the key was to just sign up for everything really far in advance and then swap a work shift with someone if you had to, they....LOST THE BOOK. And didn't tell anyone. Um, yeah, that was really super and really professional. We all started wondering why we weren't getting tickets to anything any more. Yeah.
3.) They did the daily "raffle" and ticket-awarding at 6 pm. If you worked an evening shift, too bad for you. The Darden crew tried to always have a representative who went and tried to pick up tickets for those people who "won" them, but the AmPav staff was sort of snooty about this whole thing. You needed a signed note authorizing you to pick up someone else's ticket, and half the time, they didn't even do the drawing on time, so somebody had to be willing to go sit around, wait for the drawing, fight to collect tickets, and then hunt you down before the screening. Again, "systems" like this are infuriating for an MBA student.
My proposed solution/recommendations for the future: AmPav should really publish (or otherwise communicate) concrete, helpful information about the ticketing process. They should also provide us all with the copy of the market screening guide that I believe we are entitled to as credentialed attendees. The AmPav ticketing system should be electronic. Run a Google spreadsheet or something so it can be accessed continually, can't get lost, and so that you can actually run a "drawing." Hold the tickets at the actual American Pavilion for pick-up by the recipient (stick a post-it with the person's name on the thing and hold it at the front desk, for crying out loud). Seriously, put an MBA student on your ticketing "operations" problem for 20 minutes and let them fix the thing for you. Sheesh.

One of the billboards for Robin Hood, which most of my Darden classmates got to see. Why didn't I? They ran out of tickets and handed out the last one right under my nose. :-(

Technology
My issue: We were told not to bring computers but they clearly would have been useful. We should have been told to get ourselves French phones/phone numbers prior to our arrival in Cannes, because our employers certainly expected us to have them.
The situation: AmPav told us not to bring computers, so I didn't (one less thing to tote through airports...). However, we needed them at work (thank goodness some of my classmates had brought theirs), they were the best way to get information on the films that were screening (again, because AmPav withheld the standard festival attendee information from us), and I think online ticketing (see above) would solve a lot of problems. Our employers, who were sending us jaunting around town on copious errands, also expected us to have French phones/phone numbers, or at least some way for them to reach us. I signed up for a temporary international plan on my blackberry (Yes, I am addicted, but at least that way I could stay in touch with family/friends while I was gone), but I didn't want to pay 99 cents a minute for somebody from my unpaid internship to call me. Also, without phones, you had no way to track down your Darden classmates to figure out who was going to which screening, where everyone was grabbing drinks, etc.
My proposed solutions/recommendations for the future: Bring a computer. A bunch of us also ended up buying rechargeable prepaid French phones. It would have been much cheaper to do this in the States in advance, and I also learned that I could have signed up for a French number that could have rung on my blackberry. C'est la vie. Now I know. And I have an old-school flip phone with a French number. Aren't I cool.

Money
My issue: We paid a crap-ton of money to AmPav and did not receive anything approximating the value of that money in return
The situation: As I mentioned, we paid a $3000 fee to the AmPav program to participate. In return, they gave us crappy housing (200 euro), shuttles to and from the Nice airport to our crappy housing in Cannes la Bocca (approximately 50 euro value per person), festival badges (rumor is the full festival badges through a company costs around $300; we had apparently watered down versions that didn't come with the free swag or informational materials), access to the American Pavilion tent (whoop-dee-doo!), [semi-stale] breakfast each day (I'll be generous and say they spent $5 per person per day, or about $70 for the whole trip), limited access to tickets [which we could have acquired ourselves if we'd been given the right information], and access to organized panels and speakers that many of us couldn't attend because they conflicted with our work shifts. So, they spent MAYBE $800 on each of us. Even throwing in a generous administrative fee, I still don't understand where at least $1000 of my money paid to AmPav actually went. Plus, I paid for a French phone, bus passes, lunch and dinner, my plane tickets, etc. on top of that. Now, I know all GBEs are expensive. Barcelona wasn't cheap. But at least in Barcelona, I could see where my money was going (very nice hotel, tour guides, admissions fees to museums, etc.) Maybe if I had been planning that trip myself, I wouldn't have spent the moeny the same way, but at least I know where it went. Not so with Cannes....and that is INFURIATING to someone who is living on loans. I feel totally ripped off.
My suggestions/recommendations for the future: I think going to Cannes and working at the festival is cool and a valuable experience, but I think Darden could organize a better program itself without AmPav for much less money. Rent a villa, use the connections we've established with US companies to set up real internships where we actually do useful things, and use those internships to get festival badges. Done and done.

Lest you all think that this is just me going on a tirade again without doing anything productive about it, be aware that AmPav did give us review forms to fill out after the trip...and I said on that form much of what I've said here. Oh, and I warned them that I would be blogging about it....

Done, done, and DONE!!

2010-05-06T01:41:00.000-04:00

Yes, I know I've been MIA again for a while, but I have a good reason...I've been really busy finishing up my first year at Darden. Five minutes ago, at 1:35 am, I sent in my last exam/final (a powerpoint presentation about my plan for managing my summer internship). So, now, I'm DONE!!! I survived First Year!!! Yay!!!

On the sad side, since my next three years will be spent technically "in residence" at the law school, my Darden experience is now basically over. :-( [Not really, but I felt slightly nostalgic a minute ago upon realizing that I'm leaving all my friends now and going over to the "dark side."]

Tomorrow, I need to do some hard-core cleaning, tons of laundry, pack, and leave for my next adventure: a quick stop in DE, up to CT for my cousin's wedding, and then a Sunday evening flight to Cannes, France for an internship/GBE at the Cannes Film Festival. Then it's back to Charlottesville in a couple weeks to start my internship. More details on everything later. I think I may bust out some champagne for myself, and then it's off to bed to rest up for everything on tap tomorrow.

Barcelona GBE - a week in one blog post!

2010-03-28T21:01:00.001-04:00

Now that I've gotten back to the States and have settled into Q4 (and by "have settled into" I mean "have been hit by the Mack truck that is"....though I think maybe they loaded the Q4 Mack truck just slightly less full than those of the prior quarters), it's time to recap the Barcelona GBE and post some pictures! Beware, I'm cramming all you ever wanted to know about the Barcelona GBE into this one post, so go grab a cup of coffee, hit up the restroom, and make sure you're in a comfy chair before starting this....

First, to explain the course:
1.) Course name: Design as Strategy
2.) Professor: Jeanne Liedtka (she is amazing!)
3.) Credits: 1.5 credits that count toward the Second Year elective requirement (or equal to a one-quarter long regular class)
4.) Academic requirements/work load: reading a coursepack of articles on Barcelona, strategy, and design; attending about 12 hours of class and participating in reflection/discussion; attending field trips to numerous design and tourist sites; completing a journal of reflections and insights to be handed in upon return to Charlottesville
5.) Cost: Around $3500, including course fee, airfare, and food/beverage/sundry purchases. You can take out loans to cover these costs.

The trip:
Travel
Most of us flew out Friday from DC, connecting through London. Some of us attempted to do some of our required course readings on the plane or during the connection.

Darden students at Heathrow

We arrived Saturday afternoon, checked in to the hotel (which was very nice and which is located just down the hill from IESE, in the Pedralbes area of the city), and then went in search of paella and sangria at a nearby restaurant. We were apparently super excited by the fact that there were orange trees, so that merited some pictures (which will not be posted here). After eating and a quick trip back to the hotel for cat naps and showers, we rounded up the rest of our classmates and then split into two large groups for dinner and other festivities. I ended up in a group at the Porto Olimpico, or the port area that was built for the 1992 Summer Olympics and that now features a whole bunch of restaurants, bars, and clubs. We had a tasty dinner (paella, pictured below, for those who hadn't been with us earlier in the afternoon and tapas or other tasty morsels for the rest of us), and then ended the night at a couple bars in the area (including one that was doctor/nurse themed. Take note, as this bar will make a repeat appearance in this post). The other group headed to Las Ramblas, where they enjoyed tapas and sangria and other fun stuff.

Paella - yum!

Day 1
On Sunday, we battled jet lag and got up early to head to class. We walked up the hill to IESE together and then basically had the entirety of the school to ourselves (there were a couple learning team-type groups of IESE students meeting together, though - so it's not just a Darden thing!). We talked about design for a couple hours, and then we met up with our first tour guide and boarded a bus to Colonia Guell. Colonia Guell was a textile mill "colony" established by Eusebi Guell, who was a fairly progressive, wealthy Barcelona resident and a patron of architect Antoni Gaudi. The Colonia included not only the mill but also houses for the workers, a school, cooperative shops, and a church. Guell hired Gaudi to design the church for the Colonia, though Gaudi only completed the crypt portion of the church before Guell died and his sons cut off funding. Pictures of the crypt are below.

Gaudi's crypt at Colonia Guell

For those unfamiliar with Gaudi, he is known for several things:
1.) Mosaics (example from the exterior of the crypt below).

Mosaic

2.) "Natural" structures - for instance, the Colonia crypt is built of brick, which has been left exposed rather than being hidden behind stucco or the moral equivalent of sheet rock or anything like that.
3.) Catenary arches - Gaudi actually modelled many of his buildings using inverted chain models, like the replica shown below. When inverted (as reflected in a mirror and shown below), the arches are self-supporting. There's a bunch of physics behind the whole concept that I can't articulate well, but our tour guides and the engineers in our class explained it a bunch of times - basically, the forces exerted by gravity when the chain is upside down are equivalent to the forces exerted by the materials when the arch is standing up.

Hanging model of the planned whole church (only the crypt was built)

"Upright" reflected model

Interior arches in the crypt

Following the trip to Colonia Guell, we took the bus to Park Guell. This was another site where Eusebi Guell hired Gaudi to do the architectural work. The whole property was intended to be a self-contained residential development of sorts, complete with a market square, a park area, and houses. However, now it is basically just a park, as again Gaudi was foiled by the issue of funding and the development was stopped mid-process. At the part, Gaudi focused on tailoring his work to the landscape, rather than terracing the hill and forcing nature to do as he wished.

Viaduct at Park Guell

Plants along the viaduct at Park Guell

GBE'ers walking down alongside the viaduct

Gaudi also briefly lived at Park Guell in this house:

Part of the plan for the development at Park Guell included a main square on top of an open market of sorts:

The ceiling of the marketplace, under the square, includes more of Gaudi's trademark mosaics:

At the front entrance to the Park, Gaudi built two houses that I believe were originally intended to hold either shops or community services (like phones, etc.). I think they look like gingerbread houses:

After we left the Park, folks again rallied to go out, while I succumbed to jet lag and got a nice full night of sleep.

Day 2

On Day 2, we again started with a couple of hours of class at IESE. By the time we were done with class and walked outside to get on the bus, we were stunned to see that it was SNOWING. Seriously, the snow seemed to follow us from Charlottesville to Barcelona. But, it wasn't sticking yet, so we weren't too concerned. We drove to La Sagrada Familia, another incomplete Gaudi work (are you sensing a theme?). He had planned the Sagrada Familia to be the "People's Cathedral" of Barcelona. It is entirely funded by donations; if you pay to go inside and see the museum and the interior, your admission fee funds the construction. Apparently, if you contribute, you are also being forgiven for your sins. While, as a business student, I recognize how ingenious that PR campaign may have been in a nominally catholic country, it still smacks slightly of the days of indulgences to me (go brush up on your European history...). Here's a shot of the front of the cathedral:

Now, the cathedral is still under construction, and they don't intend to have it finished until 2025 (although some estimates extend to 2030 or later). Allegedly, the Pope will consecrate it in November of this year. Gaudi started the construction in 1882, and when he designed it, he planned towers that it would have been physically impossible to build given the state of technology at the time. But, he trusted others to do it. In fact, only one of the four facades of the church was completed during Gaudi's time (the Nativity facade, shown above). The Passion facade, pictured below, was completed by Josep M. Subirachs (starting in 1952, well after Gaudi's death). You can see that it appears dramatically different from the style of the Nativity Facade.

Just take a look at the faces:

Since it was freezing and snowy outside, we were in a rush to get inside, where there is a museum with information about Gaudi, the construction process, and the plans for the cathedral. During the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, many of the plans/models were destroyed, so the folks working on the cathedral have had to do a lot of re-creating.

One of the workrooms with some models

We also got to go inside the actual cathedral (the museum is in the basement). It was a really odd experience for me, as I don't think I've ever been in an unfinished cathedral before. Thought we arrived during the workers' lunch hour, before we left, we could hear saws and jackhammers and goodness knows what else as they worked. But it was still pretty cool looking:

Then, when we went to leave, this is what greeted us outside:

Yup, a lot more snow, which was accompanied periodically by wind gusting at gale-force speeds. Sideways snow is so much fun (especially when you've planned and packed and dressed for 55-degree temperatures)! When we finally got back onto the bus, we had a couple hours to kill before our scheduled entrance to Casa Mila (La Pedrera), so we decided to drive up a mountain to a cafe where there were allegedly great views of the city. I bet you're thinking, "It's snowing and you are going to drive UP a MOUNTAIN to see VIEWS through the SNOW?" Aren't you? I certainly was. But I was also just along for the ride. So we started the trek up the mountain. About halfway to the top, this is what were were looking at through the bus windows:

Yeah.....about that. We got to the top only to realize that we no longer had time to get off the bus. So we started back down the snowy, icy mountain. Right. Almost 2 hours later, we arrived at Casa Mila (La Pedrera - meaning "the quarry"), which is an apartment building that Gaudi was commissioned to design by Pere Mila i Camps, a really rich developer married to a really rich widow. Mila wanted an obnoxiously extravagant showpiece of a building right on the Passeig de Gracia, so he hired Gaudi.

In 1996, the building was restored, and it now includes an apartment that is set up in the style of the time in which Gaudi lived and a Gaudi museum in the attic. By this point, I was frankly kinda grumpy after being cooped up on the bus, I was over the snow (see below view from a window at Casa Mila - clearly things were worse on the mountain), and I was virtually incensed by the fact that there was a courtyard in Casa Mila that allowed the blustery cold snow to get "inside." Go figure.

The museum in the attic was both cool/creepy. Apparently, there was some "mood" lighting and some equally odd music being piped in. But we can again see Gaudi's trademark arches:

There was also a model of the building, including the really cool stuff Gaudi had put on the roof, which we didn't get to see because of the weather:

I'm sure there was a lot more I could have gotten out of the Casa Mila experience, but as I said, I was grumpy. By the time we'd trekked through traffic to get back to the hotel, I was exhausted, wet, and grumpy, so Julie and I did dinner at the hotel and did some reading for class and fell asleep early. Yup, I'm lame.

Day 3

The next morning, five of us decided to climb up the icy hill to IESE while the rest of the group took cabs. Let's just say that climbing was not a brilliant idea, but we made it. On time, nonetheless. You can read more about the snow escapades and consequences for Barcelona in my post here. After another couple hours of class, which included watching part of the movie Picasso: Magic, Sex & Death (it was for school....so magic is as far as we got....), we got back on the dreaded bus to head to the Picasso Museum (our bus driver was amazing, but we managed to scare off our second tour guide (the first had lost her voice after the first day with us)). The Picasso Museum is located in the Gothic/old city section of Barcelona and features mostly Picasso's early works as opposed to his Cubist masterpieces, which are at places like the Louvre and the Met. I actually have never been a huge Picasso fan, but it was really neat to see his earlier stuff; he was so incredibly talented at such a young age.

After that, we walked through the Gothic area (think quintessential narrow European streets and buildings, which I love) back to our bus for a tour of the city.

Picture from the street outside the Picasso Museum

We visited the Porto Olimpico and the Olympic Stadium on Montjuic....

...we saw the "Face of Barcelona" statue by Roy Lichtenstein...

...and the German Pavilion built by Mies van der Rohe for the International Exposition of 1929.

Apparently, this building was revolutionary for its time, but I think we all just sort of considered it "standard-issue contemporary." :-)

During our city tour, we also had the chance to take in some views of the city from Montjuic...

...and then we returned to the Gothic area of the city to visit the Catedral de Barcelona and some other landmarks.

Cloister in the cathedral

One of the cathedral's residents

A shot of the interior.

Following the city tour, a big group of us grabbed excellent tapas at one of the nearby restaurants.

Day 4

Wednesday was a "class-free" day, and we set out on a all-day field trip to the Dali Museum in Figueras. That was an experience! I am convinced that Dali was on super terrific mind-altering substances. He actually designed this museum himself, which means it is completely absurd. Unlike most museums, there seems to be little rhyme or reason to the layout. Even the exterior is ridiculous:

Yup, those are eggs on the roof, little Oscar figurines over the entrance, traditional "breads" on the exterior, and sinks on the walls of the courtyard. Craaazzzzyyy.

I don't know how many of you like Dali's work, but I personally have never really "gotten" surrealism (which is part of the point, right?). I did think the picture below was cool:

It's a picture of his wife (Gala, who appears in many of his pictures) looking in the mirror. But it's also Abraham Lincoln. Do you see both? How about now:

Dali is also buried in the museum:

After the museum, we wandered around Figueres for a little while, bought really tasty pastries, and then headed to the town of Girona to see the Jewish Quarter and eat lunch.

Outside a church in Figueres

Check out the cows!

Bridge and cathedral in Girona

View down the canal in Girona

After Girona, we drove the Besalu, which is an adorable Gothic fort/city, to see the Jewish baths before heading home.

Besalu - totally beautiful

Some of the girls in front of a church in Besalu - yes, there were an outrageous number of green coats

Part of the bridge in Besalu

When we got back to Barcelona, we went out with Professor Lipson (who had joined us on Monday and was departing on Thursday) to dinner to celebrate SS's 30th bday. We had a delicious Basque meal (we had the restaurant to ourselves), drank delicious wine, and then went out to a disco and then a club at the Porto Olimpico. I think we all ended up getting back to the hotel sometime between 4 am and 6 am.

Day 5

The next day was our "free day" to explore the city on our own (which partially explains why we were all so willing to stay out partying the night before). Julie and I headed to Casa Batllo, another Gaudi building. This was by far my favorite of his works.

Casa Batllo from across the street

He did a lot of cool things there, including this cool bit of the ceiling:

....some cool mosaic work on the exterior:

...and a really neat blue tile effect on the interior courtyard walls that was designed to look like water and also help lighten the inside the of the building:

He also did a lot of work on the top of the building, including mosaic-ing the chimneys and constructing this dragon-like detail and cross:

Don't see the dragon? How about now:

Do you see the dragon's back and scales?

After the leaving the whimsical Casa Batllyo, we walked a couple miles to La Sagrada Familia to see it again without the snow whipping into our faces. On the walk there, we realized that Barcelona doesn't really have "street corners" in the typical sense of the work. Instead of streets intersection at 90-degree angles, there are sort of blunt edges at the "corner" of each block, which means that you get to see cool architecture like this:

I think it really helps brighten the intersections, though it is a little inconvenient if you're a pedestrian trying to cross the street. I guess I'm too used to marching through cities; the extra steps involved in detouring to the crosswalk started to irritate me by the end of our hike.

We didn't pay to go into the Sagrada Familia again, but here are some exterior shots in snow-free daylight:

Detail on one of the towers

Detail of the Nativity Facade

Tree with doves

See, look! A palm tree! In sunshine! This is what Barcelona should look like!

The towers above the Passion Facade

After La Sagrada Familia, we took the Metro to the Gothic area and walked around doing some shopping. We also stopped by the Mercat de Boqueria, a huge market. I wish I had access to a kitchen, because I would have bought a ton of fresh produce and meat to cook!

By the end of the day, I was exhausted (probably from all the fresh air and walking, not to mention the previous night's activities), so I grabbed a sandwich for dinner and fell asleep almost embarassingly early.

Day 6

Friday was the last official day of the GBE. Unfortunately, it was also the day that the Barcelona plague really began to take down members of our group, including my roommate Julie. After a wrap-up session in class, we headed out to explore design through food (think el Bulli and molecular gastronomy...or Marcel on Top Chef). We went to Restaurant Coure, a Barcelona restaurant known for deconstructing food and other inventive stuff (and where the brother-in-law of our tour guide is the chef/proprietor). As an aspiring foodie, I loved it, though some of my less adventuresome classmates were put off by some of the dishes, I think.

We started with a demonstration and talk with the chef about his creative process. Unfortunately, he only spoke Catalan and Spanish, so LW became our default translator (it's always helpful to have a native Spanish speaker on a trip to Spain...).

Above, the chef is making a "deconstructed pizza," the final result of which is here:

He also demonstrated a deconstructed "onion soup," which was the first course that we got to eat:

We also ate (pictured, in order, below) razor clams with some some sort of tasty pesto, ox tail and potatoes, and a passion fruit mousse topped with coconut foam and crystalized mint.

TK, who trained at Le Cordon Bleu in London last year, and I really enjoyed it!

After lunch, the GBE was officially over. :-( RH and I did some shopping on the walk back to the hotel (Zara and H&M are still much cooler in Europe), I took a brief nap, checked on my poor sickly roommate, and then a bunch of us headed out to an opera and flamenco performance. It made me really wish I had dancing skills! Then we headed over the the Placa Espana and the Spanish Palace, where they light up the fountains on Friday and Saturday nights and do a Bellagio-style fountain show (though clearly it was done in Barcelona first). It was absolutely beautiful!

RH, me, TK, and TB in front of the fountains

View of the city from the Spanish Palace

We then grabbed tapas and sangria on Las Ramblas (where some of our classmates had befriended a waiter the prior Saturday), hit up a bar (called Cheers, I think, which I recall offended me as a prior Boston resident) and headed back to the Porto Olimpico and the doctor/nurse themed bar (and some others) before calling it a night. All in all, a great day!

Day 7

While the official scheduled events were over, several of us had planned to spend an extra day or two in Barcelona before flying home (Q4 classes didn't start until Tuesday). Although a few more people came down with the plague, Julie seemed largely recovered, and we had planned to stay at a hotel with AM and AA. We quickly discovered that the nice cheap hotel we had booked was actually located way far away in the 'burbs (yeah...Q3 didn't really leave a lot of time for great research!), but we found a computer and located a hotel downtown. After dragging our luggage over there on the Metro (it was a workout!), we grabbed lunch and then headed to Montjuic to go to the Miro museum. If I thought I didn't "get" Dali, I certainly don't "get" Miro...but I'm glad I went to the Museum, because if I hadn't, I always would have felt that I should have. Since we had already taken the funicular up the mountain, we figured, hey, let's take the gondola the rest of the way up! On the way, we ran into three huge Barca fans buying gondola tickets:

AA and the Barca fans

But the views on the ride up the mountain were beautiful, and it was a great ride.

Me, AA and JB (AM was the designated photographer for this shot) with Barcelona in the background

At the top of the mountain is the Castell de Montjuic (a fortress/castle dating to 1640). The castle itself was really cool, and the views were absolutely amazing!

Castell de Montjuic

Next to the courtyard at the center of the castle...I was feeling "artsy"

Me in front of the fortress

Afterward, we took the gondola and funicular back down the mountain and split off from the boys. Julie and I grabbed dinner, walked around the Gothic section of the city again, saw some Barcelonians dancing the sardana outside the Catedral de Barcelona (pictures below), and then headed back to the hotel to rest up for the journey home on Sunday (which took forever but included a nice layover at Heathrow, where we were able to window shop at Tiffany & Co. and actually shop at Harrods; that is one dangerous airport!).

Folks dancing the sardana

Outside the Catedral at night

And now all of you should feel like you've visited Barcelona, too!

Barcelona - update during Day 4

2010-03-10T12:49:00.003-05:00

The last time I posted, we were experiencing the early stages of the worst snowstorm Barcelona has had since 1962. Yes, that's right: around 3 inches (max) of accumulation constitutes the worst snowfall in 45+ years. According to our tour guide on Tuesday (not the one from Sunday, who lost her voice after an afternoon with us, nor the one from Monday, who was apparently freaked out by the snow situation and wouldn't come back), 3000+ Barcelonians spent Monday night in emergency shelters in schools and other public buildings because they could not get home in the snow, and the local politicians are pointing fingers at each other about Barcelona's inability to handle the freak storm. As we GBE'ers spent Monday afternoon trapped on a bus driving up and then immediately back down winding, icy roads on Mount Tibidabo, we had the chance to observe what happens in a city where whole generations have never seen snow:
-middle school students scooped snow off of cars stuck in the traffic jam and hurled it at one another;
-every woman in the city who owns a fur coat dug it out of her closet;
-apartment residents crept out onto balconies to take pictures;
-particularly brilliant local residents attempted to remove the accumulating snow from their driveways by dousing them with water from their garden hoses; and
-dozens of scooter owners walked their immobilized vehicles up slippery hills.

While it was fun to see everyone enjoy the once-in-a-lifetime precipitation, it did put a little bit of a damper on our tourist plans for the day. I'll need to head back to the Sagrada Familia to look at the facades without blustery wind whipping snow into my face, and we were all bussed-out by time we got back to the hotel that night. Yesterday, in the aftermath of the storm, we hiked up a very, very icy hill to IESE (again, hosing down ice and snow is not an effective method of removal) and saw all of the wreckage caused by the storm, including numerous downed trees (including on top of a tour bus), abandoned cars, etc. The most funny part of the morning may have been watching a public works crew carrying what looked like a witch's broom (think branch handle and twig bristles) and a cauldron of sand as they set out to conjure up a solution to the snow curse. No joke.

After a classroom session on Tuesday morning, we again boarded our trusty bus to take a tour of Barcelona, including Porto Olimpico and the Olympic stadium for the 1992 summer games, buildings erected for various World's Fairs, and other important sites. We also visited the Picasso Museum and did a walking tour of the old city area, including the Catedral de Barcelona. Last night, we grabbed tapas and wine and walked down Las Ramblas before taking the metro back to the hotel.

Today, we took a break from class for an all-day field trip to Figueras (to see the Dali museum), Girona (to see the Jewish Quarter), and Besalu (to see the old town and Jewish baths). Again, pictures will follow. We are currently on the bus back to Barcelona, where we will rest up before heading out to dinner and to celebrate SS's 30th bday (which was Monday; we delayed celebrating until we could count on sleeping in the next morning). It should be tons of fun.

Tomorrow is our day off, so I'll need to figure out what to do with myself besides returning to Sagrada Familia. Hopefully, the weather will stay sunny!

Live snow update from Barcelona

2010-03-08T10:31:00.002-05:00

This is a horrible picture from my BlackBerry camera through a bus window as we travel up a windy, snow-covered mountain...but just to share that it is actually snowing (and accumulating) here in Barcelona. I know I am from New England, but I did NOT pack for this!

Darden students featured in NY Times

2010-03-08T09:44:00.002-05:00

Check it out here!

Barcelona - update during Day 2

2010-03-08T06:44:00.001-05:00

Allegedly, it never (or practically never) snows in Barcelona. Well, today it is snowing. Apparently, my memo to Winter either got delayed in Frankfurt (like one of my GBE-mate's flight here) or lost in the translation to Catalan.

Although there have been some "this is why I didn't bid on the Stockholm GBE" rumblings, I think most, if not all, of us are enjoying the trip so far. We've spent 2-3 hours in class each day discussing design and the applicability of design concepts to business strategy, and then during the afternoon yesterday we visited 2 sites designed by architect Antoni Gaudi, Colonia Guell and Park Guell. (Pictures will follow later when I get home and can connect my camera to my laptop.) This afternoon we will be seeing a few more Gaudi sites, including the Sagrada Familia. Each evening we've been heading out in groups for tapas, paella, and sangria, though I opted for an early bedtime last night to finally beat the jet lag.

We just finished lunch at IESE (where we've been using classroom space), and now it is time to catch the bus. Stay tuned for more updates from Barcelona!

Barcelona bound

2010-03-05T19:58:00.001-05:00

I'm sitting at the Dulles airport, waiting with several of my classmates to board a flight to London, where we'll hop on another flight to Barcelona. We're going on one of Darden's several Global Business Experiences (GBE's) that are scheduled during the next week, which is Spring Break for the rest of the Darden community. First Years can bid to go to Barcelona, Sao Paulo, Stockholm, Mexico City, or Buenos Aires, while Second Years, who have a longer break, can go on any of the above trips or to India, China, Bahrain, or Egypt. There is also a GBE trip to Israel after Q4 exams in May, some students are heading to Mumbai this week for a project with Danaher, and a few of us will be getting GBE credit for an internship program at the Cannes Film Festival in May, too. The GBEs offer those of us who do not necessarily want to commit to a whole quarter or semester abroad a great short-term opportunity to travel internationally and learn about business issues in a global context, all while earning the equivalent of one quarter-length class' worth of course credit.

I will be trying to blog via BlackBerry this week, so stay tuned!

I hereby declare Winter to be over

2010-03-02T23:49:00.003-05:00

I'm playing mind games with Winter. Yes, it did snow today in Charlottesville. Yes, I know that Spring doesn't officially start for almost three more weeks. But I have decided to throw my parka in the wash, pack up my hats and scarves, stow the big bad snow shovel, and remove all of my winter pictures from my camera and post some of them here. Therefore, I announce that Winter is over. Do you hear that, weather gods? YOU ARE DONE!!! Mwhahaha!

When I started planning to move to Virginia after 7 years in Providence, RI and Boston, MA (including above-average snow fall each of the last two years...and the average is ~45 inches), everyone said, "Oh, Virginia. It only snows once or twice a year, and it snows MAYBE five or six inches, MAX. Plus, it melts right away." I should have known they were all lying to me when it actually snowed on the day that I came to interview. But anyway...I was expecting snowfall like this, which we got during the first weekend of exams in December:

See, it was kinda rainy and gross, barely sticking to the roads.

You could still see the grass peeking through in Flagler Courtyard!

There were still living plants!

...and Darden hadn't even removed the flower pots!

Yes, well, snow like that would have been all well and good. Then we got 2 feet during the weekend before Christmas. The city, county, and state shut down. More than 48 hours after the storm ended, I left to drive home to Delaware, and I didn't see a completely clear lane of roadway until I got two counties north on Rt. 29. I realized then that Virginians have no idea whatsoever how to deal with snow. OK, maybe that isn't fair. Virginians who have previously lived in New England have a vague idea of how one should properly deal with snow. Most Virginians panic, in the "OH MY GOODNESS!!! It is going to SNOW!!! I have to run to the grocery store immediately and stock up on bread, milk, cat food, snacks, beer, etc., BECAUSE I MAY NEVER BE ABLE TO LEAVE MY HOUSE AGAIN!!!!" sort of way. Do Virginians do proactive things, like salt or sand roadways? No. They do not. In fact, they wait to start plowing or shoveling or doing anything to deal with the snow until there is more than a foot on the ground. I want to start some sort of educational program for the local municipalities. Furthermore, I want to issue a public service announcement to Virginia drivers:

"Attention, Virginia drivers. Please consider the following tips for traveling in snow. First, if you do not have 4-wheel drive and there is more than a foot of snow on the road, DO NOT DRIVE. Second, if you do not know how to drive in snow, DO NOT DRIVE. Even if you do have 4-wheel drive, do not drive if you are going to go either 5 mph or 80 mph in the snow. Neither option is particularly safe. Third, if it snows, please clear the snow off of the top of your car before it hardens into a rock-solid chunk that will go flying off of the back of your vehicle once you start driving, causing considerable consternation to other drivers behind you. Fourth, if you see that your female neighbor has spent an houring shoveling out her car, including hauling shovelsfull of snow to the opposite end of the parking lot so that it does not block anyone else in, DO NOT MOVE YOUR SNOW-COVERED CAR TO HER CLEAR SPOT, leaving your snow-covered spot to ice over; that's just rude. Your adherence to these four tips will make snowy winters far more pleasant for all Virginia residents. Thank you."

Clearly, as a snow-hardened, grizzled New Englander, I was frustrated by the local response. But again, I thought, "Hey, this must be the odd one-off situation that happens once in a blue moon. I've dealt with it, and now I should be able to get through the rest of the winter snow-free." Right? WRONG.

It seemed to snow every single weekend through late January and February (and only on weekends!). I had to cancel numerous trips to DC to visit friends, which meant that I felt snowbound every single weekend, and the cabin fever became ridiculous. My #1 way to spend free time was shoveling out/off my snow-covered car (yeah, with that much snow, those little snow brushes are worthless - see below).

Grocery stores constantly had 30-40 minute check-out lines as every Charlottesvillian panicked, storm after storm. (Seriously, if it snows on Tuesday and you go to the grocery store on Monday to prepare for Snowmageddon, do you really need more food on Thursday in preparation for the Friday storm? How much do you eat?) As my friends and younger sister in DC got day after day off from work, I didn't even get a single stinkin' snow day (the University cancelled classes on one Friday because there was a state of emergency, but Darden had a Reading Day anyway, so there was no incremental benefit to me)! The outrageousness of it all!

However, during the second 2-foot storm, I decided to take the camera out and get some nice pictures of Darden and the central UVa grounds, because I do actually like snow (but I like it more when there is public transportation, when people know how to deal with it, etc.). I thought some of you might enjoy!

The Darden sign.

Saunders Hall.

Close-up of Saunders.

The tree-lined driveway to the faculty parking lot.

Kind of hard to sit on the benches, huh?

Our man, Thomas Jefferson.

Flagler Courtyard and the fountain, looking towards Saunders.

A very, very snowy little courtyard alcove.

I love the contrast of green leaves and snow.

Anyone for lunch outside?

Treacherous stairs.

Abbott Center and Wilkinson Courtyard.

I LOVE snow-covered trees.

Central Grounds, view from Newcomb Hall.

Walking towards the Lawn.

The Rotunda, from the Lawn.

The Episcopal church near the Lawn (St. John's, maybe?).

View of the Rotunda from University Ave. Clearly the undegrads had been sledding. I miss "borrowing" dining hall trays to sled down College Hill in Providence.

The University chapel.

See, wasn't that pretty? Unfortunately, now that I have decreed that winter is over, all we are left with is the big heap of parking lot snow we have dubbed Mt. Barracks:

The Barracks Road Shopping Center people covered it in sand so people would stop sledding. Killjoys. Darden students, ever-inventive and very good at monetizing anything they can, have a bet going as to the day that Mt. Barracks finally melts, and if you are actually still reading this blog post, you must have time to kill, and you should check out the Cold Call Chronicle article about climbing Mt. Barracks.

You know Spring is just around the corner when...

2010-03-02T22:45:00.001-05:00

...LACROSSE SEASON STARTS!!! Yes, I know most people do not get this excited about lacrosse season. However, I am my father's daughter. For those of you who do not know my father, he played lacrosse growing up in Baltimore and all throughout high school and college. He subsequently officiated high school and college games up until having two knee replacement surgeries in the last several years. When my father officiated, my younger sister and I came along to games. During our younger years, we were bored out of our little minds. We used to pray that the high school to which we were dragged also had an affiliated grade school so that there would be a swingset or something to occupy us (shout out to Tatnall, which had by far the most entertaining facilities). But by the time we were older, we actually enjoyed watching the games. We also owned pee-wee sized lacrosse sticks as kids. We played in grade school. I started playing in high school and then ended up with the world's most evil lacrosse coach (long story, but if I had continued to play for her, I am fairly sure I would have ended up in the hospital and my high school would have had a very unpleasant legal situation on their hands), so I quit, and I think my father and I had the single largest fight we've ever had about my quitting. I then "managed" the mens' team. Anyway, my history aside, I like watching lacrosse, and I am particularly excited now that I go to a university with the No. 2 ranked men's lax team and the No. 12 women's team! It doesn't hurt that the lax stadium is a mere 5 minute walk from Darden.

As part of my exam procrastination - er, I mean, studying - regimen this weekend, I went to the men's game against Stoneybrook on Saturday. It was a little chilly, and the fact that there were four-foot mounds of snow surrounding the turf field seemed moderately odd, but it was fun! It was clearly early in the season, so play was a little bit sloppy, but we won, and hopefully I'll have a chance to attend more games this season. I'm very sad that I'll be missing the Syracuse game next week, but I think I'll be able to get over it since I'll be in BARCELONA (more to come on that). In the meantime, I thought I'd share some of my attempts to be a sports photographer (here my father also puts me to shame - since he no longer officiates, he's moved on to photographing high school and college games. He has a fancy schmancy camera and stands on the sidelines. I am technologically challenged, so this is the best I could do from up in the stands with a tiny little Nikon Coolpix.):

Oh, rural life

2010-03-01T16:24:00.001-05:00

Today, after our Decision Analysis exam, Julie and I decided to go see a movie. We figured, hey, we deserve a treat, and how much can you really study for a strategy exam anyway? So...we determined that Valentine's Day was playing at the Carmike, Charlottesville's least glamorous theatre. The movie was scheduled to start at 4:05. We walked in at 4, and there was not a single light on. Thank goodness for Blackberry flashlights. Then, we had numerous false alarms with previews. And the ticket guy came in to accuse me of stealing his pen when I signed my credit card receipt. Maybe now we will actually be able to watch the movie...but not before they blast my eardrums to smithereens. Oy.

Multi-tasking

2010-02-28T23:39:00.001-05:00

Since August, many of the the Second Years have said that Q3 marks a turning point in the first year. By that point, First Years have survived half of the mandatory curriculum, we've ostensibly hit our stride in terms of case preparation, and we allegedy have much more free time. Well, with Q3 classes over and exams starting tomorrow, I'd like to say this: we don't necessarily have more free time; we've just become better b-school multi-taskers. Consider the following evidence:

Yes, that would be my Darden classmates (and co-Section E'ers) at the UVa vs. Duke basketball game studying technical notes for our Decision Analysis exam tomorrow. Wow. There are no words...

...except maybe to say that this somehow represents an equilibrium point of sorts in the self-negotiation between fun and work. It certainly isn't the Pareto Optimal solution.

Those of my classmates who spent the evening studying (whether at the game or at home) will understand my lame joke. To those of you who are coming to Darden next year, be warned that this is what stands ahead of you. To the rest of you, I apologize.

Why I love/miss Brown

2010-02-22T21:12:00.001-05:00

I'm sure most of us at Darden have very fond memories of our undergrad experiences (hey, many of us seem to be trying to relive them on a regular basis every Thursday-Saturday!), but I have to say that I truly loved my time at Brown. This week, I have been constantly reminded of the amazing relationships I was able to form there and the great times I had. In the last 48 hours:
1.) My girlfriends from Brown, who are always there for me no matter how busy they are or how obnoxious I am when in the throes of my "let's complain about how stressful FY is" rants, have come through yet again, telling me exactly what I needed to hear, precisely when I needed to hear it.
2.) A former mock trial teammate was critically injured in a hit-and-run in Brooklyn early Sunday morning. Within hours, friends with whom I haven't spoken in months (and sometimes years) had sent out emails letting everyone know, offering each other support, and planning hospital visits (for those of you who are in any habit of praying, please keep my friend and her family in your prayers).
3.) This morning in the hallway after First Coffee, I ran into a fellow Brown alum who is also a prospective JD/MBA student and we caught up over coffee this afternoon.
4.) Another good friend posted this on Facebook.(For those of you who are confused, see here for the inspiration and here to understand why the video was made.)

Suffice it to say, I'm more than a little nostalgic (and successfully procrastinating when it comes to working on my group's Strategy paper).

If you feel ignored...

2010-02-22T13:03:00.000-05:00

Thanks to everyone who has been sending me emails asking about the Darden FY experience and my JD/MBA application process and current thoughts. For those of you who have questions but haven't emailed, I am more than happy to try to answer them via email or to set up a phone call (just email me to set up an appointment). If you email LegalMBAyhem@gmail.com, your email should make it to me at my Darden email account.

NOTE: If you do not get a response to (or at least an acknowledgement of) your email within 72 hours, GMail has deemed you spam and I have not received your email because it was not forwarded to an address that I check. If that is the case, I sincerely apologize and encourage you to try again - typically, putting "Darden" in the subject line will help you avoid the virtual trash can. To those of you who have fallen victim to this already and think I am just ignoring you, I am not! Despite my posting delinquency, I have been trying to respond to emails in a timely fashion. PLEASE try to send me another email if you still have unanswered questions. :-)

Differences between Darden and UVa Law

2010-02-22T12:36:00.001-05:00

So, over the last couple months, I've gotten several emails regarding the UVa JD/MBA program (I use the term "program" loosely, since it's not a truly integrated program here). Recently, I got a question from a current 1L at the Law School and potential JD/MBA student who wanted to know what I perceived as the major differences between Darden and UVa Law. I thought that sharing my answers here might be helpful to some of the rest of my readers (to whom I sincerely apologize for my blogging delinquency...again). As a disclaimer, the below represents my current perspectives as someone who hasn't finished the First Year (FY) program at Darden and hasn't yet been at the Law School at all. So feel free to take everything with a grain (or handful) of salt.

Differences between Darden and UVa Law:
Darden structures far more of your daily schedule. You will have class from 8 am-1:10 pm every day. You will have learning team each day from 7-9 or 10 pm. Between 1:30 and 3 or so, there will be speakers, company briefings, club meetings, etc. There will also be occasional meetings in the 6-7 pm time slot. That means that on any given day, you have about 3 hours of “free” time during which you not only need to prep cases before learning team, but you’ll also want to do things like try to go to the gym, schedule networking calls, run errands, try to unwind, etc. It is a really crazy schedule, and you don’t have a lot of freedom to adapt it to your personal preferences. For instance, I much prefer to stay up late to get work done, but Darden has forced me to be a morning person and to do most of my academic preparation for the next day during the middle of the afternoon (when all I really want to do is take a nap). Everyone survives this schedule, but it can be frustrating, and I understand that there is significantly more “unstructured” time at the law school during which you can control the way and order in which you get things done on your own terms. Likewise, there is more personal time vs. group preparation at the law school. I think the group work is essential to the Darden learning experience, but it’s different from the “locking yourself away in the library to read” that I understand goes on in law school generally.

The work is just different. While you do spend time reading cases at Darden (which are different from legal cases), you spend much more time building Excel models, crunching numbers, and generally fighting with spreadsheets. It requires a different part of your brain, and if you aren’t used to using Excel, it will just take some time to make the transition to thinking in terms of linked cells instead of well-substantiated arguments. That being said, as the year goes on, there are some actual writing opportunities, albeit short (think 2-6 page papers).

You may feel like you are constantly taking exams. Darden operates on a quarter system, and you will have five 5-hour, take-home, open book, open notes exams back-to-back for a week approximately every 6-7 weeks. Exam week can be both great (you can’t really study THAT much for these exams, and recruiting activities are slightly curtailed, so you have much more free time) and exhausting (25 hours of exams in 5 days). It usually feels both like exams are right around the corner again and that you just finished them. I know law school exams are typically just at the end of the semester and, at least for 1L’s, are given at school and scheduled for Mondays and Thursdays for two weeks, so there’s more ability to pace yourself and maybe focus on one course at a time in terms of studying. Of course, there are good and bad aspects to both schedules, but my point is just that there’s a pretty significant difference.

You should expect to learn from your classmates, not necessarily the faculty. So much of the Darden experience is based on learning from your peers, not just from cases or the professors (who are still absolutely amazing at leading classes and if you have technical or personal issues that require assistance). I can honestly say that I have learned more from what my classmates have shared from their backgrounds and work experiences than I thought would be possible. Because pretty much everyone has worked for at least a few years, there is a tremendous diversity of perspectives and accumulated knowledge, and Darden classrooms and learning team meetings are full of information-sharing opportunities. With case method discussions, the professor facilitates the learning process and shares some of his/her own experiences, but the prof is not the star of the show the way I understand he/she can be in law school.

You take more classes. The required FY curriculum includes the following classes: Operations (3 credits), Marketing (3), Accounting (3), Finance (3), Macroeconomics (3), Decision Analysis (3), Leading Organizations (3), Strategy (1.5), Ethics (1.5), and Managerial Communications (1.5). You also get to pick 3 1.5-credit electives in the 4th quarter, and you can go on a global business experience trip (1.5 credits) over spring break. So you’re trying to absorb a great diversity of subject matter (13+ subjects) over the course of the year, as opposed to the standard Torts, Contracts, Crim Law, Civ Pro, Property, Con Law, and Legal Writing plus a couple electives at the law school. This also means that you’ll have the opportunity to learn from as many as 20 faculty members during your first year at Darden (both cool and unnerving). Also, each quarter (except Q4), you take all your classes in the same room with the same section of ~60 people. Sections get shuffled after Q2. You end up getting really comfortable with the people in your section and the perspectives and backgrounds they bring to the table.

Everything sort of sneakily fits together. Despite the number of classes you take, the First Year curriculum at Darden every now and then really surprises me with how well it fits together. When you learn about hedging against exchange rate exposure in Finance, you also talk about exchange rate and currency risk exposure in GEM (aka Global Economies and Markets, i.e. macroeconomics). You’ll do cases about setting airfare prices in both Decision Analysis and Strategy in the same week. You’ll learn about negotiations in Decision Analysis and then negotiate a merger in Finance. You’ll talk about the connections between sales forecasts in Marketing and production capabilities and defect rates in Operations. You’ll do large “program days” or simulations periodically that enable you to draw together information from various classes in a hands-on way. Darden has clearly spent a lot of time thinking about the scheduling of each class and the timing of each assignment so that you can maximize your learning. This interconnectedness is tied to Darden’s focus on the “general management” or “enterprise perspective,” or understanding each aspect of business. Maybe this sort of thing happens at the law school, too, but I’d be surprised if it is as extensive.

Recruiting at Darden is non-stop. I know during the 1L year, everyone is prohibited from contacting firms until the November/December time frame thanks to the ABA. At Darden, recruiting starts before you even arrive on grounds. No joke – you will be encouraged to attend conferences, job fairs, networking events, etc. during the summer. A large chunk of orientation is devoted to Career Discovery Forums, a business etiquette dinner, and networking tips. Companies start showing up on campus in very early September to host briefings and info sessions, and most students will be sucked into the Recruiting cyclone and spit back out (hopefully with an offer). Now, that’s not to say that everyone gets completely caught up in recruiting; some folks have offers to return to their prior employers. If you’ve finished your 1L year and happen to do law school recruiting in August and get an offer that you want to take, you can skip the whole Darden recruiting thing. If you’re focused on business recruiting, on the other hand, expect to spend a lot of time on it. I wish I could say that the JD/MBA degree is hugely appealing to companies, but depending on your background and what you want to do, you may find yourself at a slight disadvantage to your FY peers, who will be available for full-time positions a year or two before us JD/MBA folks.

So, that’s my summary of perceived major differences. There are some other differences, but they are much more minor – e.g., Darden dining options are better, the Darden grounds are slightly more beautiful, the Darden parking is closer to the school but more expensive, I think the Darden faculty offices are easier to find, corporate sponsorship is more apparent at Darden, and you get fewer emails from the Darden Director of Student Affairs every day than you do from the Law School Dean of Students (trust me – I get both sets now).

Winter Break

2010-01-05T00:30:00.000-05:00

When I was in college, I never really had the chance to "enjoy" breaks from school. I worked at a law firm in Delaware during each summer and winter break, starting pretty much the day I got home after exams up until the day right before I had to go back to Providence for classes (or mock trial tournament preparation or sorority planning retreats or whatever). When I worked at the Consulting Firm That Shall Not Be Named, I never really took vacation. Even if I did travel somewhere for "vacation," I inevitably worked at least an hour or two each day doing the parts of my job that nobody else either wanted to do or fully understood how to do. This is honestly the first time in my entire life that I have had nothing that I truly needed or was obligated to do for a period longer than a weekend.

Let's just say that I'm truly loving it, more than I ever thought I would or could.

We survived!

2009-12-11T14:15:00.000-05:00

I know I am well overdue for several posts, and I promise those will come later (honestly!)...but, as my Global Economies & Markets exam rolls off my printer, I just wanted to say CONGRATULATIONS to all my Darden FY classmates. We've survived first semester, and now we can celebrate our survival with 5 weeks of glorious freedom! Oh, yeah, and interview prep.... :-)

I wish everyone safe travels and a happy and healthy holiday season!

Why do you build me up just to let me down and mess me around?

2009-11-11T12:42:00.004-05:00

Apologies to The Foundations for borrowing their lyrics ("Build Me Up Buttercup") for the title of this blog post, but....

Dear Darden,

I have a question for you: seriously? Now, I've heard all about "Black November" at Darden. It's like one of those "the school, the myth, the legend" kind of things around here. I know that I'm not supposed to have any free time at all, that I'm supposed to be getting 3.25 hours of sleep each night, that I should be making 5+ networking calls a day, that I should be calculating WACCs and de-levering betas in my dreams. I get it. Really, I do. I was expecting it. And frankly, my November didn't start out too terribly wonderfully. I didn't understand anything in either Finance or Global Economies & Markets. I hated my resume. I was grumpy, for a variety of personal versions. In other words, I was ready for Black November.

Then, Darden, you decided to lure me into a false sense of security and complacency. You gave me a light caseload last week. My learning team didn't have to meet after Tuesday. We got to go on a field trip, fifth grade style, complete with busses and a lunch consisting of turkey sandwiches on white bread and chocolate chip cookies. I can't remember the last time I had a sandwich on plain white bread. It was nostalgic. I had time to pay my bills, clear out my DVR, and watch a movie from NetFlix. I went to TNDC for the first time since September, without feeling guilty, because I got to sleep in the next morning since class didn't start until 10:15 for a change. I got to clean my apartment from top to bottom because I actually had time to do it, not because I was using domesticity as a procrastination excuse. In my view, having time to scrub your floors on hands and knees, with Pinesol, at 3 pm on a Thursday afternoon when you don't have company coming is the height of self-indulgence, an activity typically reserved for the unemployed or ladies who lunch. The rest of the world uses Swiffers. This weekend, I had time to make coffee cakes to motivate my Section E-mates to get up and play Darden Cup soccer. I baked bread. I made chicken noodle soup, from an actual raw chicken and a big pot of water and some chopped up vegetables. It felt like exam week, only so much better.

Then this week started. Monday was Black Monday, in my view. I don't know what happened to the stock market, but my levels of joy and satisfaction with life plummeted well below 10,000. I had a paper due that should have taken me 2 hours to write. It took me HOURS, and I finished it 20 minutes before the deadline. It was a 4-page paper. WTF, Darden? You've robbed me of my ability to write papers, and I was a paper-writing fiend before you converted me to a spreadsheet junkie. I realized this week that my resume still stinks. I haven't written any cover letters, and I have three weeks until on-grounds job applications are due. I'm behind on preparing for case interviews. I have several networking calls set up for later this week, but I'm still behind the ball. I REALLY have no idea what's going on in Finance. My class participation has fallen off a cliff. We have a marketing simulation (StratSim) from 1:30 pm-9:30 pm today and 9 am-9:30 pm tomorrow. It's raining today, and it suddenly went from 70 degrees to winter. I feel like I'm drowning. I'd rather go back to working 90+ hour weeks at a law firm.

Darden, I understand that this month is called "Black November" for a reason. I just think it was really mean of you to make me think that everything was peaches and cream last week. If you were a man, I would dump you, because I consider that false advertising, and it's a problem in any relationship. Take that, Buttercup.

Love,
Me

Old friends

2009-11-06T18:31:00.002-05:00

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... :-)