Needed: One Motivational Speaker

After two weeks of only three days of class, it's difficult to comprehend that today is only Tuesday and not Thursday. Tomorrow should be Friday and instead it's only Wednesday. Not fair! And the next four weeks will be like this... with the fourth one ending in midterms!

Regardless of the monotony of our nightly cases (or perhaps because of it), we are still managing to have a good time. Sunday night I went over to Julian's place for a cinephile dinner. His wife works in the film biz, and they invited Jorge (who is a rabid movie fan), Kyoko (who worked in video games and now wants to possibly go into TV) and me over to talk shop. I brought George along as well, and we all enjoyed a lovely dinner and chatted about movies. Next time we're planning to do a screening of something, since Julian has set up a projector in their house. And when the weather gets nicer, I'm hoping to screen movies on our roof against the wall.

Speaking of the weather getting nicer and being on the roof... Maybe we got a little overexcited about the recent spell of warm weather we've had during the day... But we decided to have the first Calatrava BBQ of 2006 last night. Marco cooked up a feast and a few people came over and shivered on the roof next to the fire. I think we'll wait a while for the next one. I took photos, but because there was so much sausage involved, most of them are kind of... inappropriate.

My main difficulty now is overcoming a severe lack of motivation as the second term gets underway. I mean, I'm not a person who is capable of not doing my homework because I'm too freaked out about getting cold-called in class. So, to an outsider, it probably appears that I'm studying like crazy. And I suppose I am. I just feel like I'm missing something. I mean, I feel like I'm doing the work every night and preparing my cases for class, but then the exams will roll around and I'll be totally blank. It doesn't help that this term so far has felt really fragmented. since we started midweek the first week and then again last week because of the career days, we only saw our marketing professor for the second time today... two weeks after our first class with him! So some of the classes are taking time to get rolling.

Meanwhile, there are also always very funny moments in our class. We've realized that Section A is far funnier and more entertaining (read: disruptive) than the other two sections, which is a badge we wear with pride. But the professors sometimes come up with even better lines than the students.

For intance, today in Operational Finance, our professor Heinrich said (in a strong German accent): "Yesterday there was an entrepeneur in the 2nd year class talking about how he got bust. It was very silent, the class."

Hmmm maybe that doesn't read so funny. Try saying out loud in your best deep-voiced German accent, and maybe you'll understand.

Anyway, tonight we have our usual three-case load to prepare for tomorrow. Managerial accounting is a case about a company deciding whether to manufacture plastic or steel rings for machines. Verrrrry exciting. Human resources is about a hotel in SF that made a poor decision (in my humble opinion) about its service policy and how it affects the staff. And in Marketing, a lovely case about snack food in Italy. The case is in lire. I'm-a confused-a.