Orientation

Today is the first day of b-school, otherwise known as orientation.

I started getting ready at 6, said goodbye to Brian at 7 (he's in Louisiana this week and I hope he didn't get hit by the storm), took care of the cats until 7:20 then drove to school.

A bunch of us thought the events started at 8 but learned that it didn't start until 9:30, so we had social hour. However, the pace sped up pretty quickly. We had a 45 minute formal welcome which basically started with us having to put on colored t-shirts representing the section to which we belong; I'm in section 1 and got to wear the red shirt (my fav color). This time also included the stats of our class. Among other things, the following was listed:

• 162 full-time students
• 29% female
• 45% International (27 of the 45 is from Asia & Pacific Rim)
• 4% management consultants
• Ave age is 28

Next 2 hours were allotted to taking care of administrative details such as loan status, parking stickers, etc. One of the suprises I had was to stop in at health services and get my 2nd hepatitus B shot! Ow!

Lunch was consumed while in our group sections. Section 1, the group I'm in, is a fun group. There were quite a few people I was happy to see there, but I was sad to learn that some were in other groups. Waaa! Oh well. We played a little meet & greet game where we were given a list that showed one "fun fact" for each classmate in our section. While standing in line for health services earlier, I started getting people's fun facts (Kiwi thinks I'm nerd for starting early, but I'm okay with that), so I completed all but 3. My nerd-like fact was "Around the age of 11, I sang the National Anthem for the Seattle Sonics once and the Mariners twice."

At 2 everyone regrouped in the auditorium where we listened to an alumni panel then we broke into small groups to ask questions of another alumni panel. I have to admit that Babson is really good at ensuring your questions are answered since this is probably the 10th panel discussion I've participated in and we haven't even started school yet! They also had 2nd year students roaming around all day in case we had questions for them.

Afterward was a "networking cocktail reception" where I spent a little time goofing off (like we hadn't done enough of that already) then I came home for dinner, am quickly writing this and will now go play with my kitties.