Multi-tasking

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. 

Retrospective: Section E is AwesomE

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

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

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

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