Name one thing that you associate with the south? Walmart you say? Spot on!
I’ve been out to the WalMart super center several times the past couple of weeks to buy groceries and other miscellaneous things for the apartment. The super centers in particular attract all kinds of shoppers and the best of the best are captured @ this site: People Of Walmart.
So funny, yet so scary.
Today, as a classmate put it, “the madness started”. Assembled at the Student Life Center were the 200 plus MBA, Ms.F and MaAC students from Owen. I now have two years, or one year in the case of the MSF and MaAC students, to learn everyones names. It should be fun watching my brain explode.
Thankfully, the dean reminded us that we’ll have bigger problems than remembering names, namely trying to keep our heads above the water while juggling our academics, career search, and personal life.
The guest speaker, a very accomplished Owen alum, gave some very unconventional yet sage advice. Her advice was, “Don’t network. Build relationships”. I don’t remember what her other nuggets of wisdom were because my back teeth were floating, but that slide stuck.
After lunch, we had a team building exercise conducted by Afterburner Inc. The instructors, a bunch of retired military guys, taught us an organizational model called Flawless Execution. I totally wasn’t expecting to plan a military campaign against “Floribama” so the whole thing was entertaining but cheesy. The only problem with the event, at no fault to the Afterburner guys I’m guessing, was that a lot of people were falling into a food coma because of all that heavy cheese and cream we ate for lunch. And there was no coffee.
At night, we went to a reception at a grill called Cabana. There was more meeting and greeting and more small talk. I think I’ve retained most of the names of the people I met today, but thank goodness for name tags. Oh look, there’s mine.
The food at Cabana looked horrible so I only drank my two free comp’d beers. The international students however really went to town on the springs rolls. I ate dinner at Jackson’s with a classmate I met during Welcome Weekend. The grilled chicken sandwich I got was bombtastic.
And so concludes day one of being a lifelong Owenite.
Tomorrow is the official start of my two year adventure at the Owen Graduate School of Management. Like the slogan in those Mastercard commercials, my summer vacation, with all its ups and downs, has been priceless. And although there is a quantifiable cost for the the next two years, I know the experience will also be priceless.
Orientation starts bright and early at 8am on Monday and officially ends on Thursday night with a reception at Owen. On Friday, there is a golf tournament and on Saturday, there is a biking and hiking event. And there’s probably going to be some partying in between. Classes start next Monday.
There is a lot of anticipation, a lot of excitement, and a lot of unknowns. Time to go iron my slacks and dress shirt and hit the sack. Lets get this thing crackin.
Correction: No golf on Friday. Replace with sessions on Introduction to Excel and Intermediate Excel.
It has been a week since I left LA for Nashville and I’m glad to report that I made it in one piece. The drive was not as bad as I thought. My initial estimate of being on the road for four days turned out to be one day too many. I averaged roughly ten hours of driving and 650 miles a day. There isn’t a lot on I-40 east that is worth stopping for unless you’re into the Grand Canyon, petroglyphs, and 72oz steaks.
Although I said the drive wasn’t too bad, it was still boring as hell. The drive gave me a chance to walk down memory lane as I listened to all the CDs that I haven’t listened to since freshman year in CD. Man was I such a faux-gangster back in the day. Somewhere in Texas, I think it was Amarillo, I broke down and pulled into a Barnes and Noble and bought an audio book, Malcom Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw. Nothing is more stimulating while driving through the open country of north Texas than listening to Gladwell wax on about the differences between ketchup and mustard.
Since my arrival in the Music City, I’ve been setting up my apartment so that it is somewhat comfortable. I was going to go for the cheap, agile, and mobile setup – buying camping chairs, tables, and aerobed from Bass Pro Shop or Wal-Mart – so that I can quickly pick up and move on from here after I graduate. I was quickly convinced that this solution was a bad idea, particularly after a classmate pointed out that a blow up sofa might not be the coolest thing to bring the ladies home to. Touche.
One thing I didn’t expect was how much money I would spend on furnishing the apartment. In my head, I had a general idea of what things would cost. What got me was how things added up so quickly. To Costco and Target: your weclome, you guys are now richer while I am much poorer.
When I’m not doing apartment stuff, I’m doing school stuff. Every other day, there is some kind of get together at a classmate’s place. There are so many people to meet that I’m on name overload right now. Owen, for whatever reason, doesn’t have a “math camp” that I know some other b-schools have so a classmate setup a series of ad-hoc quant review sessions this week. Each day is a different subject and the Owen professor that is teaching that subject comes in for an hour to answer our questions. I think we, the students and professors, are going above and beyond with the reviews, but then that is why we are “Team Awesome”.
So that’s the basic account of what has been going on for the past week. Things are going well and I’m well on my way to settling in. All this is a good way to slowly ramp up to orientation, which is a good ramp up to the madness that is going to be school.
I can’t end this post without commenting on the weather. A couple of weeks ago, I tweeted something about how it didn’t feel that hot or humid in Nashville. I’m eating that tweet this week because it’s been absolutely smoldering. The heat and humidity is worse than I experienced in Singapore or Taiwan. Not only will you sweat from just standing outside, but you’ll continue sweating once you go inside. I went running the other day and I couldn’t stop sweating even after an hour after I stopped running. I look outside and I start sweating. Supposedly, this is just a freakish week. I hope so.
For a limited time, or at least until I get to Nashville, I’ll be using Google Latitude to broadcast my location to the world . You can track my location here or by clicking the “Currently @” menu item above.
Hat tip to lamdar for pointing me to this wonderful big brother technology.
