Friday, March 31, 2006

It's Friday!!!!!!!

And normally, that would mean... doing nothing! But today I have an interview, which I was supposed to have Wednesday but had to reschedule do to the unplanned (and unwanted) strep throat debacle. So now it's sunny and warm and I'd like to take a nap on the terrace, but instead I'm in a suit and on my way out the door.

If anyone is reading this in the next two hours, please send good Spanish interview mojo. Gracias!

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Crash And Burn

Well it's official. I'm sick. My throat has been hurting since early last week, but I ignored it and pushed through finals, the Spring Fling, and the first two days of the new term. Last night it caught up with me and this morning when I woke up I decided to go see a doctor at Teknon. I walked all the way up there (ok, it's not that far, but when you're sick everything feels far) and got in line at Urgencias and realized I'd forgotten my wallet. So I had to walk all the way back down to the house. Half an hour I was back at the doctor and the line at Urgencias had grown from one person to 10. Oh well.

After nearly a three hour wait and a five minute visit with the doctor, I was out in the sunshine again with a diagnosis of strep throat (which I had already diagnosed myself anyway) and a list of drugs to buy. After a stop at the pharmacy, I crashed into bed again, watched Old School again, and passed out for several hours. I was supposed to have an interview at 6:30 today, which I had to postpone till Friday... probably for the best, since getting your prospective employer sick doesn't exactly leave the best impression.

So now it's getting late and I'm still exhausted. I've read some of the cases for tomorrow so it shouldn't take much more to be fully prepared in the event that I feel well enough to attend class in the morning. Speaking of class.... I've learned a big lesson: When you arrive at IESE and you're going through your first year and you're stressed out, do NOT listen to second year students who tell you that the second term is easier than the first, or that the third term is a breeze. This is the hardest term off all! The professors are ball-breakers, the classes are taught in Greek instead of English, and they give us HOMEWORK. As if! I now don't even believe the second year students who say the second year is really fun and much easier than first year.

Monday, March 27, 2006

I'm a beauty queen

With barely enough time to recover from the finals (just 72 HOURS ago!!!), we were back in class this morning, discussing such light subjects as corporate finance and operations strategy. It was a little overwhelming.

And tonight wasn't much better, with two chapters to read on corporate strategy, two more on corporate finance, plus a mystery submission for Quantitative Measures... a class we haven't even had yet (and any class with the word "quantitative" in the title is not my friend from the get go). The submission is about linear regression, whatever that means. Here, for example, is a little quote from the twenty page technical note: "Given two variables, X and Y, measured on a population of elements, for each value x of variable X, the mean of the values of Y of the elements for which the explanatory variable X takes the value x is denoted by M(Y|x)." I thought this class was going to be taught in ENGLISH! Hmmm I wonder how Snoop would tranzilate that.

I told Achilleas about it and he said, "Oh that's easy. I did my thesis on linear regression and forecasting." No fair! This is already easier for him because this crap is full of Greek letters.

So yeah, only one day into the new term and I already feel clueless. Oh well, it's a badge I'm starting to wear with pride. If there were an IESE beauty pageant, I would definitely win "Miss Mediocrity." Or Mis-take.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Term Ends, Term Begins

When we left our heroine she was in the grips of managerial accounting panic, which proved to be well-founded. It was a blessing and a curse that this was the last exam, because we were all so exhausted by the time 2pm Friday rolled around we didn't have much left, but at the same time, if this had been the first test we all would've been depressed throughout the next five. It was HARD.

I considered handing it in blank after looking at the questions, but then decided I should probably take a crack at it. An hour later, my head was hurting and my legs felt dead, so I decided to go outside for some fresh air. In other exams, getting out of the room for a few minutes has worked wonders, and I tend to come back to class able to answer questions I previously thought impossible. This time, nothing worked. I eventually took a second break and it was on my return from that one that I finally realized I wasn't the only one suffering. Everyone's faces were drawn and some people were staring into space, as if waiting for divine inspiration. The good thing is, it was hellish for everyone.

The better thing is, IT'S OVER! Here we are as we received the exams:




And here we are after our sixth and final three-hour test.
Nice!

Even better!

George looks relieved:

Rafa, Ian, Ivan, and Alexia:

With Till, Gustavo, and Abe: (yes, I was tired)

There's no stopping Satoshi:


There's no rest for the wicked, however, and after a quick nap, I was off to dinner with a few friends and then to a party at Mirabe for the Spring Fling kickoff. Spring Fling is the lead-up to the MBA Olympics, and this year INSEAD, Instituto Empresa, and ESADE were in town for a little friendly sporting fun. After sleeping three hours, I was up again and off to Montjuic, where I played four soccer matches and a rugby match in the blazing heat. We tied our rugby match and won the women's soccer. IESE also won mens soccer, mens rugby (though Federico unfortunately broke his ankle very badly and had to be taken to the hospital), basketball, volleyball, ultimate frisbee, and tug-of-war.

Here we are with the Instituto Empresa team, whom we played in the final:


Nine hours later and many shades pinker, I again crashed into bed for a three hour nap before heading to dinner to meet Rafa's parents with a crowd of twenty. Around one we hit Shoko for another Spring Fling party and ended up after it closed at a godforsaken place called City Hall where I will never go again. (Famous last words.) I would have gotten home at six, but was foiled by the time change, which doesn't occur till next week in the States, so I rolled into bed at seven. All in all, a day well spent.

The scary thing is that we have three new classes tomorrow. And three cases to prepare. An extra day off would have been nice, since I feel like I haven't recovered from finals yet. Fortunately, unlike last term where we did not have a single holiday, this term is filled with them. And spring break is just around the corner, two weeks away.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

A Bag of Poop - A True Story

I was about to burst into tears an hour ago when trying to remember how to do managerial accounting, so instead I asked George if he wanted to go for a walk down the street to buy candy. On the way back up, we passed Jan-Kees's house and I could see him in the window, studying at his desk. We yelled at him and he came to the balcony and said he'd come down for a few minutes.

He came out the front door carrying a small plastic bag, which reminded me of when people in Manhattan carry bags around to pick up after their dogs, so I said, "What's that? A bag of poop?" And he said, "Actually, yes. A bag of poop."

These are the perils of having a one-year-old.

24 hours to go

24 hours from now, I will have just stepped out of my managerial accounting final and will most likely be headed in the direction of the school bar, along with about 200 other people. Not an original idea, clearly, but who's thinking about originality when you're completely braindead anyway?!

Today brought the third and fourth of our six final exams: Capital Markets and Marketing Planning and Implementation. That's a mouthful. I was really clueless on the subject of Capital Markets when this class started and now I'm proud to say that I'm somewhat less clueless, though certainly not un-clueless enough to get an A on this test or in this class. As long as I'm un-clueless enough to avoid a C, I'm happy. I finished the test quite quickly, which was a little strange... maybe I did the problems wrong, who knows. And at this point, who cares? It's over. Next!

I had hoped to study a bit for tomorrow's accounting test during lunch, but my brain was already too full and the sun was too bright and I had to sit outside and rest instead. A nice, well-deserved lunch break before the marketing exam, which I also finished rather quickly. It's hard to take a long time writing a test when you are given four questions and only allowed to use one side of a page for each. And especially when the professor stresses that he wants you to be concise. Concise I can do. The case was about launching a low interest rate credit card. I had prepared some notes covering the main ideas of the course and sent them to my team to help out. Today they were in almost everyones' hands before the exam. Funny, since just last night I was thinking how sad it was that no one ever asks me for help on anything ... well now I know at least my notes are good! It's nice to feel useful sometimes.

I haven't felt very great coming out of any of the exams so far, and though my perceptions about exams are usually wrong anyway, it's kind of disconcerting. And it's impossible to know how you did anyway when you're graded on a curve and so much depends on how your classmates did. Fortunately, by the time we get our results, it'll probably be spring break and I'll have forgotten these classes ever happened!

In the meantime, I can't say I'm looking forward to spending the rest of the night studying for the two hardest exams of the week. But at least this the last night! Good luck everyone. (Sorry George, I read your blog, but I can't help but wish people luck.)

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

2 Down, 4 To Go!

It's a beautiful, sunny day, perfect for my ride home from school after two exams. The weather report said it was supposed to rain these three days of finals, which is more condusive to studying than bright sunshine. Interestingly enough, it looks like storm clouds are now rolling in, which should make me less inclined to run around outside and thus help me study for tomorrow's exams: Capital Markets (I'm screwed) and Marketing (hopefully not so screwed).

I'm sitting in the living room feeling very relieved after having survived the first two exams. Operations was difficult, but not impossible. I didn't feel as confident coming out of the final as I did after the midterm, so maybe I screwed up some things, or maybe there was just too much to remember. Or maybe I did fine. Whatever the case, it's over now so it doesn't really matter.

After lunch we had our Human Resources exam, which consisted of 2 questions on a single sheet of paper. We had one side of the page for each question and only an hour to complete it. Abanis handed his in first, after 20 minutes, and was greeted with a wild round of applause. I think I finished in about 40. So now I'm home, procrastinating a little by blogging, getting ready for the next round of studying.

To all of you who are sending me emails wishing me luck, THANK YOU. I appreciate it and I promise I will get back to my regular emailing habits after the last exam on Friday! For now, the good ol' blog will have to suffice.

Okay time to do a little marketing review and then a LOT of finance review.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Last Day of Term



Can you imagine sitting here for three months, trying to participate in class with all these people staring at you? And that's only half of them! Good thing I LOVE THE LIMELIGHT.

Today was the last day of classes for the second term. Twelve people are switching to the Spanish section (I opted not to go in the end), two of whom are my teammates - Gabriel and Diego. Come Monday morning, we'll have two new teammates - Enrico from Italy and Juan from Spain - and twelve Section C-ers in our killer upstairs classroom. No more basement! (That was one of my main reasons for not switching sections. Heh heh.)

After class Carol presented the Comment of the Week, won handily by Jan-Erik for reasons I cannot mention on this blog. The Comment of the Quarter (le coq) went to Robain, aka "Animal," for his antics on Fridays after the Bar of the Week.

After the COW, Rafa and I performed a rap for the twelve Section A deserters which we wrote during lunch. We then presented them all with T-Shirts we had made that said "Section A Forever" on the front and a few Section A catch phrases on the back. It will be really strange not to see all those people on Monday morning when we start the new term. I just shed a single tear.

Tomorrow the pain starts. 9:30-12:30 - Operations Management Final. 2-5pm - Human Resources Final. Then we get to go home and study for the other FOUR finals. Geez. I have my sights set on Friday afternoon at 5pm. Three days to get through!

Monday, March 20, 2006

The Naked Call Parity... Or, How Telefonica Is Preventing Me From Studying for Finals

An American family lived in this apartment before the Calatrava Guapos moved in, which was fortunate for us because it meant a telephone line had already been installed before we arrived. As most people in Spain know, dealing with Telefonica is a nightmare and it can take three months to have a phone line installed. (As I write this slanderous material, I'm wondering how soon they will pull the plug on us... probably in three months or so.) So the existing line in our house meant we had immediate wireless internet thanks to George, our resident IT wizard.

The downside is that the family had a filter installed. And it's a STRONG filter. If you try to search anything that Telefonica thinks MIGHT be sexually-related or might have a link to sexually-related content, you are immediately blocked. I can't access one of my favorite websites for funny videos of people falling down because it has a link to "adult" sites.

Now, you may be thinking, just call Telefonica and have them remove the filter. And if it were that simple, believe me, we would have done it long ago. Calling Telefonica means waiting on hold forever, being transferred over and over, and being hung up on several times. So we haven't exactly had time for that. And it's not such a big deal, really...

...Until tonight. I have been studying for finals all night, and switched from Operations to Capital Markets about an hour ago. I'm reviewing some terms and looking things up on Investopedia and wanted to check the definition of a "naked call," which appeared in my notes. I plugged the term into Investopedia's dictionary and ....

BLOCKED! I CAN'T DO MY HOMEWORK BECAUSE OF TELEFONICA!

The best part of the day...


... is riding down the hill after school.

Every morning I cycle up to school on my schnazzy Decathlon brand bike, loaded down with my laptop and the day's cases. The route to IESE from my house (and from most places in Barcelona) is almost entirely uphill. Sometimes I ride alone, listening to music. Other times I ride with George. And sometimes we meet Jan-Kees along the way, because he lives just down the street, and we form a little IESE bike gang.

Riding to school is great because you don't have to follow any traffic laws and you can ride on the sidewalk. I usually pass two or three buses en route. But riding to school sucks because it's uphill and my bag is heavy and I arrive there kind of sweaty. I have to bring a change of shirt.

But after a long day of classes, I love walking out the gates of IESE knowing my trusty steed is waiting for me, ready to whisk me down the mountain. Riding downhill at the end of a long day is the absolute best. I smile every time.

Saturday, March 18, 2006

Weekend of DOOOOOM! And parties.

This is it, the last weekend before finals. There is just never enough time to do all the studying you need to do during the weekend. Or at least, all the studying I need to do. Which is a lot. Hmmm, that's depressing so let's move on to something fun!

Yesterday we took photos of all the teams for the yearbook. Here we are in all our glory, Team A6, the baddest of them all. Front row: Matteo, Gabriel, Madhur, Diego, Noshaba. 2nd row: Marcus, Jan-Kees, Juanra.


And with our team leader, Professor Fede Sabria, head of the Operations Dept, and who apparently cooks the best paella in Catalunya. We will find out for ourselves on April 22, as he has invited us all to his house in Costa Brava. I told him I'm allergic to seafood. And to and rice. Hahahahaha.


Yesterday brought the birthdays of Huy and Francis. We'd spent the last week or so organizing a surprise party for good ol' Francis, and the surprise was nearly ruined on several occasions. First, Alexia sent the email out about the party and accidentally included the guest of honor himself on the CC list. His roommates snuck into his room and deleted the email and all the subsequent replies. Disaster narrowly averted.

Last night we were all supposed to meet at a bar near his house while his roommates got rid of him. The idea was that they were all going out for dinner together, but Christina was to take him for a beer first. Well, unfortunately, the bar we were all supposed to go to was closed, so everyone went down the street. Then Christina and Francis walked in. Oops. Francis said, "Hey! What are you guys all doing here?!" Everyone managed to convince him it was a gathering of the IESE ladies' club... with a lot of boys invited. Hmmm. And yet, Captain Gullible BOUGHT IT!

So when he came back to his house under the pretenses that Christina had forgotten something, he was completely and utterly surprised to see everyone in the living room, and said, "Hey! What are you guys doing here?" Ok, the very last part didn't happen, but he was surprised. This was the earliest party I've ever attended in Spain. It started at 9pm. How very geriatric!


And finally, no weekend (or blog entry) is truly complete without some photos of people acting foolish in public places. Marco, George, and I saw this playground as we were walking to Francis's house last night and HAD to stop for a photo op.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are the business leaders of tomorrow. Be very afraid.




Thursday, March 16, 2006

Burning Down The House

Tonight I stayed at school working on a team project until 7:30, then raced home to change for soccer and raced back up the hill to practice with the IESE ladies. On my way home on my bike I thought, "Yessss! I will definitely get home before Marco and George and get the first shower!" George and Marco had driven to the guys' football practice in George's car.

As I got closer to the house, I noticed a lot of smoke in the air, and as I turned on to the street perpendicular to mine, I saw three fire trucks. I thought to myself, "Gee, I've never actually seen Bomberos around." As I turned the corner, I thought, "Hot damn, our building is on fire!" And so it was.

I had left the house without a wallet, without money, without my cell phone. I didn't even have a lock for my bike because I just rode up to the field and left the bike right next to where we played, so there was no need to lock it anywhere. Even though the smoke was coming from a different building from ours (there are four in our little complex), it was coming from the garage, which connects all four buildings, so they wouldn't let me up to the apartment. I wondered how George and Marco would get back with the car since the streets were all blocked off.

Eventually they found me, standing out on the street. The amount of smoke was unbelievable and only got worse. Dozens of families were standing out on the street, waiting for the fire to die down, and we heard that someone had been "fixing" his moto in the garage and it somehow caught fire. (I think you're not supposed to smoke while fixing vehicles for this very reason.) Three more cars and two more motos eventually burned before it was all over. After standing outside in our sweaty clothes for an hour - George and Marco were even wearing shinguards! - we decided to get something to eat.

We went to the bar around the corner, which I'm sure has never seen so much action since it opened. Two kids in bathrobes were there with their parents, along with several other families from the building. We laughed and joked and finally Juanra from my team, who happens to live around the corner, found us there and offered for us to come up to his place. He had passed us in the street earlier when we were waiting outside. We checked on the building and heard we'd have to wait at least another hour, so we went over to the house of Juan Ramon, Juan Revuelta, and Ramon Roqueta - the flat with the most Juans and Ramons per household.

After an hour or so there, we figured we could probably go back home. On the way downstairs, George made a joke and moved too quickly and the elevator got stuck momentarily between floors. We went from laughing at George's joke to nearly crying over having to spend the night in the elevator in our soccer clothes. Fortunately it only lasted a minute.

Now we're back home and the flat is full of smoke and everything is covered in very fine ash. I have read the cases for tomorrow, but I haven't had time to really prepare anything. And I'm getting sick and had planned to go to bed early tonight! Who knew I'd be prevented from an early night by a kid setting his moto on fire. By the way, fire fighters in Spain don't give you blankets when you're standing outside of your house freezing in shorts and shinguards. So I would advise against getting caught in such a situation.

Monday, March 13, 2006

Two Tough Weeks Ahead

Two weeks from now, I will be reading cases after my first day of classes in the third and final term of the first year. Two short weeks. How the hell can they cram so much work into two weeks? Less than two weeks, in fact!

This week we have six team assignments and two individual assignments due: a paper for Negotiations, a problem set for Microeconomics, two team papers for Capital Finance, two team submissions for Operations, and a team paper for Human Resources. Next week we have two days of class followed by three days filled with the joyful glory of SIX FINAL EXAMS. Six!!!! With the last day being the most fun: Capital Finance and Managerial Accounting.

So I have resigned myself to spending the next 11 days under lockdown, only taking breaks to run or play soccer or rugby. 11 days. I can do it.

Today was very long. A full day of classes, including Spanish, then a microecon review session, and then a brainstorming session for the Women In Business club. I'm now halfway through my second case of the evening - a marketing case about Starbucks - and the third, a 30 page accounting case, still looms. My bed is looking more comfy by the minute. And here I am procrastinating by writing about it!

Back to Starbucks.... 11 days and counting...

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Deep thoughts

This weekend was one of many which brought thoughts of quitting IESE and running away. Why?
1. The IESE rumor mill is working away as usual - extremely annoying.
2. Finals are approaching - extremely daunting.
3. I'm really tired - extremely tiring.
4. I really don't like studying any of this stuff - extremely unsatisfying.

But then I heard from a friend of mine who just fell off the wagon after like 12 years of sobriety and I thought, "Man, I'm dumb." There I was thinking about how much life sucks because I'm studying some boring crap that I don't like, but at least I'm not in a psychiatric ward.

So the positive-thinking hat is firmly back in place on my head. And a gin and tonic is firmly in place in my hand. Just kidding. Actually, an accounting case is firmly planted in front of my face... And Monday approaches.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Hmmm ... how boring!

Howdy everybody. Since dressing up as a cowgirl for the Multi Culti, I have decided that I'm gonna right this for y'all in a nice Texan twang from now on.

Okay maybe not.

So it has been a week since the big Multicultural extravaganza and people are still bandaged and bruised and funny stories about the Greek kissing bandit still abound. Maybe that's because nothing else is really going on, aside from studying. Lame!

Well, let's review the latest, shall we?

1. Barca beat Chelsea last night in their second leg champions league match. Bravo!

2. The weather is downright balmy today. The kind of sunny day that makes you want to say... WHAT MICROECONOMICS ASSIGNMENT??? Studying will become increasingly difficult as the weather continues to improve.

3. A major fiasco occurred regarding section changes. You see, before the third term, people who have passed the final Spanish exam or who are native speakers may switch to Section C, the Spanish section, and the same number of students from C switch to A & B. Because more C students wanted to switch than A and B students this year, a free for all occurred in Section B. I had asked over the past weeks to take the exam early (well, I've asked since September, but to no avail) and was told it was not possible and that, as a result, I could not switch sections. Then three people from my same Spanish level who are in B were allowed to switch without the test, as well as one person from the level below me! But nothing could be done because our section leader was following the rules. This I appreciate. I'm fine with following the rules, as long as the rules are applied to everyone. Anyway it was a big mess and people were angry (and continue to be) and now, just as I'm getting over it, I get an email saying there is one more switcheroo mess and would I like to switch sections? Geez. Stay tuned...

4. I went to a touristy flamenco dinner with some friends visiting the US on Saturday. Flamenco is really an Andalucian thing, so this wasn't the real deal by any means, but it was still hilarious to do something so touristy. We had a blast. Thanks to Mike and Crisanta for taking me out!

5. Friday and Saturday brought the annual Doing Good Doing Well conference, which was started by an IESE student a few years ago. The conference brings companies that are ethically sound and also doing good business to the school to talk about business practices and also round up some potential interns or future hires. I was asked, kinda last minute, to film it. I sat in on several of the talks with the video camera and heard about some pretty cool companies. The students that organized the event put in a tremendous amount of work... very cool.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

MultiCulti Madness

Imagine it's the middle of the night and you're not feeling well and you go to the emergency room. And now imagine that, while you're sitting there in your state of delirium, you see two bloodied men in lederhosen and an unusually tall guy wearing an orange crown and orange clothes walk into the emergency room. At this point, you'd probably think you were dying. Or maybe that you were already dead and that this was some sort of hell or purgatory.

But you'd be wrong. Well, maybe you'd still be dying, but the appearance of these seeming apparitions wouldn't be the sign. Because this really happened yesterday.

Yes, the IESE Multi-Cultural Fair last night was a tremendous success. Excellent food, too many strange drinks from faraway lands, fabulous entertainment, and a floor that got more slippery with each passing moment. What started out as a relatively tame festival of sharing and understanding turned into a sort of rollerderby as the combination of alcohol in systems and alcohol on floor made for a hilarious (and dangerous) multicultural deathtrap.

Today the walking wounded bore the signs: Billy with a big bandage on his face after wiping out and getting a bad cut under his eye, requiring stiches. Robain with a cut and broken nose after falling in the bathroom. And finally the boys of the lederhosen. Nick slipped on some fabulous American apple pie and took a nasty spill. Demian helped him up and proceeded to slip in exactly the same spot, cutting his arm. Martijn the Dutchman took them to the hospital.

As all of this was happening, I was attempting to play my part of Master of Ceremonies. I was supposed to cohost with Bill, but he disappeared after a few minutes and only reappeared sporadically, each time with more stains on his shirt and a deeper swagger to his step. The acts were from a dozen different countries and all would've been fine had the schedule not allowed for a German beer-holding (and spilling) contest to go on immediately before the Greeks took to the stage for a dance. The entire Greek population of IESE was nearly wiped out by weisse beer. And when the Americans took to the stage, something happened to me... Suddenly I was calling a line dance. Something I'd never done before and probably will never be able to repeat. After the line dance came the pie eating contest that prevented the Brazilian capoeira demonstration from performing onstage. But it didn't stop the Mexicans and their mariachi band. The final act of the evening brought everyone together in a way only mariachis truly can.

Bodies were flying everywhere. On the stage, off the stage, over tables. At the time, most people who fell laughed, got up, and proceeded with whatever they were doing - eating, drinking, swapping spit with members of foreign countries. But in the light of the morning, things looked a little different. Today people were bruised mentally and physically, squinting in the cafeteria and holding their heads, yet still claiming it THE BEST PARTY EVER. And indeed it was.

Evgeny at the well-stocked Russian stand:


Andorran drinking contest: Patrik (Sweden) keeps an eye on Jaime (Spain). No cheating!


Atsh and Marc


Spanish flamenco dancers: Alvaro, Christina, and Javier


Dutch guys in their scary red-light booth


Persia and Israel together


Greeks getting down: Achilleas and Thanos


In a moment of heartwarming friendship, I traded my cowboy hat for Kyle's Canadian hockey helmet. Ah, neighbors!


Sato loves hanging with Spaniards


Uri (Israel) and Boris (Croatia)


Mexican madness


Martijn.


Tip of the old hat


After the American show

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Oof... Wednesday

Yesterday was the 2nd day of the 2nd half of the 2nd term. And it was a very long day. In fact, this is shaping up to be a very long week.

Yesterday Section A went to the SEAT factory for operations class. This is one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my life, and I could easily have spent the whole day there, staring at the robots. But we were in and out of there very quickly. In fact, it's the only thing that went quickly the whole day. After the factory tour we came back to school and my team met during lunch to work on a group assignment for today's microeconomics class. In the afternoon, we did an exercise that took four hours but should have taken one. We were broken into 4 teams, which meant each team had nearly 20 people. Unfortunately, only six people were actually busy during the exercise (we had to build "chips" out of Legos as part of a production line) so most of us - me included - spent several hours sitting around watching. And the day was wrapped up with a discussion of the Lego game that went until 7:30pm. This could have been a really great activity (and at times it was certainly entertaining) but it was frustrating to have so many of us standing around, feeling useless, when we knew how much work we had to do.

And then it was time to start preparing cases. I stayed up till 2 but still didn't get anywhere, since I'm completely confused by our Capital Markets class and the latest cases in Accounting. But in good news, we got the last of our three midterms back yesterday - Managerial Accounting - and I seem to have managed B's in everything. Now we're three weeks away from finals!

This morning I got a frustrating email. I didn't get an interview with the one company I actually would want to do an internship with next summer and I'm extremely disappointed. The email was very confusing and they called me "Mr. Sadler" in it so now I'm thinking my cover letter and resume weren't even looked at. Hmph. So I was already grumpy this morning from not sleeping enough and not understanding the cases and that email bummed me out further. I'm having trouble finding the value of all of this. The idea of going to the mountains, having a couple of kids, and opening a ski chalet after the MBA is sounding better and better. Hmmm... then again, why should I wait till after the MBA?

Tonight is the annual Multi-Cultural fair. It has been majorly hyped and is sold out. Angry emails have been going around because some students couldn't get tickets and everyone is frustrated. Other emails have been going around with threats between the Chilean and Peruvian booths. At the end, it all just adds up to my email inbox going over the limit and me not being able to receive emails. I have been asked to co-host the event along with fellow lunatic and admissions mistake Bill, which will hopefully take my mind off of everything else for a couple of hours. So after class I need to run around and put together a Western outfit (as that's the theme of the American booth this year) and then try to come up with funny things to say about other nationalities.

Full report to come tomorrow or Friday!