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

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. 

The Hotel LegalMBAyhem

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. 

Retrospective: Family Weekend

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

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

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

Retrospective: Orientation & Career Forums

Orientation at Darden lasts for about a week. The schedule is basically as follows:

Monday (optional) - pick up your name tag and t-shirt, First Coffee, mill around and meet people, first Career Management (CarMa) session, Q&A Panel with Student Services/Registrar/Financial Aid, etc. I only did the name tag pick-up, CarMa, and meeting some new folks. I skipped the Q&A because I was frankly so irritated by the Financial Aid situation that I was not in the mood to sit confined in a small space worrying about it any more (more on this later). CarMa was all about finding your life themes. I was unimpressed at this point.

Tuesday & Wednesday (optional) - Career Discovery Forums. Basically, these were 1-4.5 hour presentations (usually by alums working in a particular field) and Q&A sessions with a panel of folks from various career tracks, such as General Management & Operations, Finance, Consulting, Entrepreneurship, Sustainability/Non-Profit, and Marketing. I went to GMO, Consulting, Sustainability/Non-Profit, and part of Marketing. I thought the sessions were vaguely informative. The quality of the presenters varied. The Q&A sessions were not terribly enlightening. If you knew nothing about a particular area, these may have been rather helpful. Likewise if you were looking for folks with whom to network later. I personally think that cramming all of these sessions into 2 days was just too much. It was a ton of sitting around, plus the same boxed lunches each day. I would think about hosting one forum each day, first thing in the morning, so that they are interspersed with other Orientation stuff. Also, Tuesday was the day of the Business Etiquette Dinner, which was actually fairly educational. For instance, did you know that the appropriate time to bring up business at a breakfast meeting was right after the coffee arrives, whereas at lunch you can wait until after meals are selected?

Thursday (mandatory) - Dean's welcome, First Coffee, Section & Faculty Introductions, Welcomes from Career Management and Student Affairs staff. Standard orientation fare. Nice to find out with whom we'd be in class for the next three months.

Friday (mandatory) - Introductions from the Registrar, Financial Aid, Library, UVA Honor Committee, and Darden Outreach, followed by First Coffee, Introduction to the Darden Curriculum, Learning Team Orientation and Lunch, and Learning Team/Community Acitivity. Everything up to Learning Team Orientation was not particularly memorable. I remember thinking that it was really duplicative of everything we'd covered in International Student Orientation. I was really sick of turkey sandwich boxed lunches by this point. BUT, I did get to meet my awesome learning team (woot LT 31!). Then they shoved us outside in 95+ degree weather to run around and do team-building activities. Because really, who doesn't love spending time with virtual strangers sweating all over each other? It's not like you're going to have to hang out with them every day for the next 3 quarters or anything, right? :-) I think there was a Cold Call (read: free beer + food out in one of the courtyards) after this, but I went home for a much needed shower and nap.

Saturday (optional) - Fun activities, including tubing, winery/brewery tours, hikes, etc. The weather was fairly miserable, but I enjoyed the wine tour I did, which took us to Veritas and Cardinal Point. We even got to meet the winemaker at Veritas; he was quite informative.

Interspersed throughout this entire week were various gatherings at myriad social establishments throughout Charlottesville. I frankly do not have the stamina to go out every night; never have, likely never will. Plus, I find it really difficult to meet people when you have to shout at each other to communicate. And, smoking indoors is still legal in VA. Boooo!

All in all, Orientation was about what I expected; definitely not the highlight of my life, but relatively informative, and a good chance to meet some new folks.