The Life and Times

It's almost 10 p.m. and I am still on campus.  I am holed up in a study room with three of my classmates working on our presentation for a case competition.  Tomorrow afternoon I have a midterm for which I have yet to study.  In the words of the Beastie Boys, there will be "no sleep til Brooklyn!" I don't even know what that means (no one knows what it means but it's provocative...it gets the people going!), but I know I won't be seeing my queen size bed anytime soon.

This week has been a killer. I'm smack in the middle of midterms, and am once again way over committed.  Oh, wait!! I just found someone to replace me in an admissions info session I was supposed to do yesterday.  Yay! That's 1 hour of my day I get to reallocate.  I know that I sound whiny, but I'm not necessarily complaining (well I am complaining about midterms, but I haven't figured out how to get them banned yet).  I wanted to do this case competition and thus far I'm enjoying the work.  Actually, I'm more so enjoying working with my teammates.  I think we've come up with a really good solution.  We all come from different professional backgrounds and it's pretty cool to see that diversity in action.  I was able to contribute a pretty solid retail plan.  Our finance guy is figuring out the NPV of our investment.  The hedge fund lady is making sure all of the numbers are tight and our engineer is all over the nuances and numbers behind the market research. I'm looking forward to presenting all of our findings this weekend.  Even more than that I'm looking forward to getting some sleep afterward.

On another note, I just found out that I got off the waitlist for the annual ski trip.  One of my friends kind of twisted my arm about going (okay fine, she simply told me that she was going) so in the next 24 hours I have to dip into my savings and drop some duckets on ski rentals, a flight, lodging, etc.  From what I hear the ski trip is an experience that's worth every cent.  Too bad that that I had to spend 75,000 cents on my car last week.  Silver Betty was wounded in battle against Chicago's potholes.  Car repairs are NOT in the student budget.  Speaking of the student budget, my classmates and I have all agreed that it is not enough to keep us in the lifestyle to which we have become accustomed.  None of us have quite realized that while we are spending money there is none coming in.  I didn't realize just how difficult it is to adjust your entire lifestyle to fit the new reality of being unemployed.  My honeycrisp apple habit is unsustainable, weekly gas fill ups are unrealistic, and daily Thai takeout is a money suck.  So have I switched to Fuji's, taken the bus more, and cooked the majority of my meals at home.  Hardly.  My regular bus riding days ended before classes even started, I eat at least 2 honeycrisps per day, and we don't even want to talk about how much Thai I have eaten this week alone. It's not that I haven't tried. Two weeks ago I brought my lunch to school everyday and cooked for a whole week.  Silver Betty spent almost the entire month of September parked in the garage.  I just can't seem to make all of these changes last nor coincide.  When problem sets are due, coffee chats are scheduled, and classes have sapped my strength, it's just easier to hop in my car or log onto Grub Hub. Maybe by next quarter life will calm down and I can plan my purchases more carefully.

Did I mention that there's a stoplight party on Saturday?

What is a stoplight party, you ask?  It's a party to broadcast your relationship seeking status.  Red = unavailable, yellow = it's complicated/maybe, green = single and looking.  There is brilliance in this absurdity.  With nearly 30% of the class partnered up this is the best way to know if that girl or guy you've been checking out in stats is actually available.  Are there more mature ways to learn these things? Sure. But business school is hardly the place for maturity.  I only wonder just how honest people will be.  Who is really going to admit to being green.  While it's perfectly acceptable to be single, it's still kind of taboo to admit that you're actually looking (or at the very least open).  I'm not quite sure why that is.  Maybe it's a function of my age, but I don't think there's much point to pretending to not feel some way that you actually do.  Besides, it's a very normal, natural human desire to want to find someone so why waste energy trying to hide it?  Plus a lot of people doth protesteth too much.  If you've ever been out with MBA students it's obvious that most are quite eager to get close to a warm body.  Yet in spite of our actions we still feel the need to proclaim the opposite.  While no one wants to be viewed as desperate, does simply being open to the possibilities of an environment that's perfectly set up for mating make someone desperate?  I don't think so.  I just think that people can be up front without fawning.  I know that I'm going to see a lot of red and yellow on Saturday.  I'm curious who's going to have the guts to go green.  What color am I going to wear?  Wouldn't you like to know.