Me: Man, my commute SUCKS! I left an hour early and I was ten minutes late!
Danny: I’m sorry. That does suck.
Me: All I did was stop to get coffee and a salad for lunch on my way to work. It took less than ten minutes.
Danny: And you were ten minutes late. Weird!
Me: Shut up.
I survived my recent western regional intern conference in Scottsdale. Don’t get me wrong, I did have fun. I also realized how long it’s been since I was 21 and free beer was the ultimate goal of me and my peers.
I stayed at a really nice resort from Wednesday morning until Friday afternoon. My schedule was booked solid. I did have some free time in the evenings after 7pm, but from 8am until then I was busy with lectures, team-building activities, and wandering from one side of the complex to the other. I did meet some cool people but it took a while to find them. To give you an example of what I was up against, here is a snipped of conversation I overheard while checking in.
Chickie 1: Wow, your bag is full. What did you bring?
Chickie 2: Mostly makeup and hair products.
Each evening, we had a themed dinner. The dress code was casual but we were still at a business event. We even had a dress code. Still, some people thought it was appropriate to wear a tube top to a company event. She looked really really cute but….. a tube top? Hmmm….
After doing my time and getting through the crazy schedule, I was ready to head home. I’d eaten plenty of free food and consumed plenty of free wine but it was enough. I was ready to sleep in my own bed again.
During the closing ceremonies, our host announced the winner of the team competition and guess what? My team won! Out of twenty-nine teams my team had won enough events and shown enough team spirit to take home the grand prize! Yay! I knew we could do it! I was for it all along! *cough cough*
I’m really proud of my team. Despite my constant skepticism, we really pulled it off. The contest. We pulled off the contest, not the tube top. However, I did hear that many a tube top came off after 10pm when the bar closed. I was asleep and in bed like the old lady that I am. After this weekend I can honestly say that thirty is not looking so bad.
On Friday, I was “that guy.” You know. That guy who talks way too much when asked a simple question and who thinks HIS jokes are the funniest things he’s ever heard.
I was asked, along with five of my other classmates, to sit in on a new-student panel and answer questions from visiting prospective students. Normally, I would hold back a little, but I’d had a lot of caffeine and I was ready, even downright excited, to share all of my new knowledge about getting an MBA, UW, and dealing with the accursed GMAT.
I had an answer for every question. About halfway through the Q&A session, I realized that I was “that guy” and tried to tone it down a little. Later, at our TG or MBA happy hour, I apologized to my panel-mates for being a jackass. Either they were a bit buzzed or feeling generous, but they told me that I was fine. They are kind, kind people.
So anyway, I either convinced people to come to this school or I scared them away with my bug-eyed jittery enthusiasm. We’ll see who is brave enough to face the nutty Sarah next year.
I have a little over a week before finals begin. I should be elated. I should be rushing to finish all of my assignments and write up flash cards for each of my classes. I’m not. I’m being lazy. This is my biggest weakness: to significantly slow down right at the end.
Where is the enthusiasm/terror from my first two weeks of school? I’ve worked this hard, so why can’t I gather the strength to even LOOK at my economics assignment?
I blame Thanksgiving. My family came to visit and it was wonderful. Too wonderful. I was RELAXED and I got to SLEEP. My day-to-day fear dwindled.
Now, I have to get back in the swing of things. I know I’ll be fine but c’mon, accounting is hard. I need to get my butt in gear and start practicing for the final.
As RuPaul says, “you better work!” And yes, I am that lame.
Microeconomics on the other hand, was a bit of a letdown. I didn’t “fail” but I certainly wasn’t at the top of the pack or even hanging out in the middle. I’m trying to stay positive about it. Our prof said that our average was higher than usual so I hope I’m still on par with most classes. I know I’ve come a very very long way in this class. I just hope it is reflected in my final grade. I need to keep working on it.
I’m so beat. I’m going to swim a few laps, head home, eat, and do accounting.
The good: I’m done with the IT paper, presentation and Microecon exam.
The bad: I just accidentally deleted 90% of my emails. Oh well, there will be more I’m sure.
is going to be hell. Midterms start tomorrow and end two weeks from today. I’m glad they’re spread out somewhat but that just means that I need to factor in extra study time on top of my regular coursework. It is possible but it won’t be pretty.
Not much else is going on. I studied this weekend and got some reading out of the way. I’m constantly impressed with folks who can churn out work a week in advance. They must be studying machines. I can get ahead slightly but I usually just do what I can to understand that material for the next day. This is probably caused by the fact that my team projects are due now instead of at the beginning of December. If I had a choice, I’d still choose to do them now and then focus on finals later.
Well, that’s enough fun rambling (procrastination) for one day.
In Nintendo news, Danny beat Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney on Saturday. He is now playing Magnetica.
My test today did not go as well as I had planned. I still did okay (it was an open-note test), but I made a bunch of stupid mistakes that were caused by the cardinal sin of test takers: I did not read the directions. How many times did my 3rd grade teacher tell me to read the directions first? Obviously, not enough.
While my instinct is to beat myself up about this, I’m trying to just move past it. If I was going to mess up, it may as well be on a pre-test that does not affect my GPA. The one positive thing is this: I didn’t miss any of the hard stuff. It’s the stupid, little stuff that tripped me up. As Danny pointed out “You would have read the instructions three times if it were a final. Don’t stress over it.” This is true.
On a positive note, I think my presentation went fairly well. Even though I went into verbal rapid-fire mode half way through, I remained confident throughout the speech. I know I have plenty of stuff to work on, but at least I didn’t underperform in one of the few things I truly enjoy.
Lead week starts on Monday. We also got our class schedule today. It makes sense in a weird way. Let’s just say that I’ll be at school a lot, but I won’t have to be there at 8:30am everyday. This is a good thing….at least for this quarter.
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