Scawy Halloween!

Halloween is tomorrow, but last night was a pretty good Halloween party. I met up with a small gang at a bar and we all got comfortable with our costumes before heading to Olivia's house. While at the bar, Jill and Ben met a couple of swingers and they had a great time chatting them up.

Anyway, soon we went to Olivia's party and had even more fun. Plenty of people were there and in high spirits (meaning they were wasted by the time we arrived). Drinking, dancing, talking, drinking, drinking, drinking. Around 2am the cops broke up the party and we left. Kiwi (in the yellow jacket above) drove a group of us back to his place then Aziz (Sir Lance-A-Lot) gave me a ride home (thank you boys).

Anyway, without further ado, here are the pics:
Halloween

Meet Your Mentor

One of the optional programs is the Alumni Mentor Program, which I signed up for. Basically, we complete an application (I had to complete it about 4 times because the computer kept having errors), alumni who are interested also complete an app, then our career center pairs us up. The ratio is currently 2 students to every mentor, so Denise and I were paired up with a gentleman named Kevin.

Let me just say that after meeting him this afternoon, I was glowing. He's worked for several interesting companies mostly in the food industry. A few years ago he bought a company, turned it around and sold it 5 years later for tidy profit. He enjoyed his first turnaround, so now he's Pres/COO for a family biz that's been around for 40 years. They package foods as well as have their own food line, so he spent the last couple of years streamlining operations (my past) and now he's focused on the strategic end (what I want to learn now). Part of this phase includes introducing a couple new product lines and he joked that he should just give me a product and see what I can do with it. Didn't take me half a second to say, "OK!"

Anyway, he talked about his several contacts, how he can help us get an internship that we want, assisting us in starting our first businesses, etc. However, what's most interesting to me right now is his knowledge - I just want to hear his stories and understand how he, specifically, decided to buy that first failing business a few years ago, risk his family's home and retirement $$ and just go for it. Fascinating.

In conclusion, I'm excited that I'm paired with this mentor and look forward to interacting with him more in the future. The End.

B-B-B-BCAP!

BCAP (Babson Consulting Alliance Program) has finally begun. We met our sponsor, Tom, tonight and talked about Gravis a little. Tom is an alumnus of Babson and seems like a really interesting guy. He was pretty casual and easy to be around.

It makes me laugh to think of the others who are doing projects for Fidelity and other boring companies. We have Gravis Footwear a subsidiary of Burton Snowboards! Looks like it's time to learn to snowboard, eh? (Note: In the Burton pic below, that IS NOT me...I'm sure many of you would assume it is since obviously I'll be a natural when I give it a try)

Module I done, 7 more before graduation

So Module 1 is done already (for those who don't know, we have modules instead of semesters since they're all a different length). Admittedly, it was a fun mod. Some complain about the amount of work and the 2nd Years respond with a laughing and saying something about how we're about to get bitch slapped by our Mod II professors. Hm, professors must be good friends with some of my old colleagues.

Anyway, Mod I was all about leadership, management, teamwork, creativity, ethics, communications, beginner's accounting, and some other fundamentals skills.

Mod II will be a little more...business school. Statistics, more accounting, finance, strategy, marketing, econ, more law and ethics, and now we'll start our consulting project. But before we focus on Mod II (in future blogs), let's review what we've experienced so far:

Creativity Project: We laughed, we cried, we worked together and we tried to entertain our fellow classmates.
Leadership: My professor made me co-facilitate a class for two hours with no advanced notice and no time to prepare...she's awesome.
TechMark: What better way to start school than with a 2-day business simulation? Got our brains thinking and our creative juices flowing.
Team Process Day: Who would've thought spending a day stepping on spots, blindfolding ourselves, and playing with string would be helpful? Team Process Day was probably my most beneficial day so far.
Surprise Guests: Imagine reading a case study then having a 90-minute class discussion about a CEO and ripping apart his past decisions...only to learn that he's sitting at the back of the class listening to every word.
Crazy Schedules: No two days are alike. Each day included different classes, starting/ending times, intros to whatever around campus, meeting with different departments, and whatever else. They did what they could to keep us busy.

Deliverables -
End of Mod Paper: What did we learn during these 5 weeks? Our section was encouraged to be creative, so instead of handing in a paper, most of us turned it into something else. Some creative ideas were case studies, a picture box, a PowerPoint presentation that only had pictures, etc. I made a scrapbook and received my first EXC (the highest grade you can get...of course Babson can't be normal and grade us "A" through "F")
Accounting/Law Exam: Two courses combined into one exam. Were people nervous? Yes. Did everyone do okay? Yes.
Business Idea: A paper on a biz idea that was voted on by our peers and the 5 best in each section received an automatic increase 1-letter grade and gave a short presentation to the class. I didn't make the top 5, but at least a few people voted for me (we're not allowed to vote for our own)
Creativity Project: I was in fiction and had to write a short story and read it to the class. I wanted something that would be more "interesting" like improv, movement or puppetry, but I got fiction. It was okay and I had a good group, but I didn't grow a lot.

Overall, this is still one of the best decisions I've made of my life...now it's time to prepare for Mod II.

Never Going Out to Dinner Again!!!

Last night B and I were on our way home discussing dinner. He mentioned some disgusting Stouffer's pasta dish that's in the freezer and our conversation "somehow" quickly changed to eating out.

We decided to try an Indian place near our house. Now we tried this place a year ago, but the service was so horrible that we decided never to go back. Sure enough, we walked in and noticed 4 employees had to take care of the entire place. Basically, we stood waiting for 10 minutes and at no point did the host acknowledge us or the other 4 groups that walked in after us and piled up in the front. One lady got up from her chair and asked for the check. A table of 3 came up to the front to get their own menus. A couple from the bar commented to the host that they had been forgotten and should've been seated before another group did. B and I looked at each other and walked out.

We then decided to hit Applebee's. We parked in front, walked to the entrance and the manager met us at the door. "I'm so sorry," she said as she handed each one of us a biz card with her name and the words '$5 off' written on the back, "but we're experiencing technical difficulties tonight, so the kitchen is closed. Please accept these coupons as our apology." We thanked her and left...

...then went across the street to Uno's. While waiting for our seat, a lady commented to the manager that she had been waiting 25 minutes for her to-go pizza and was getting frustrated. He left to figure out what was happening and never returned. Oh well. Anyway, this time we actually got as far as being seated! Wow. We selected drinks and waited for our waiter. He arrived and I ordered a beer, "I'm sorry, but we're out of that." So I selected another, "I'm not sure we have that. Let me check and get back to you." It took him about 10 minutes to return to us, but we did see him stop at the table before ours and clear a plate...then check on another table...then give the check to another table (after they had requested it)...then he came back to us. "No, we don't have that, either." So I picked another and we ordered apps and our meals all at the same time.

The couple that asked for their check commented towards us as they got up, "We only had to wait half an hour to get our check."

As the manager set our nachos on the table, he let us know that he'd bring plates. So we started eating and worked our way through half of the nachos until I gave up. I walked halfway across the restaurant, found our waiter and asked for plates and napkins. He handed them to me and asked if we had silverware yet (which he promptly delivered to the table in a pile with napkins and handed the stack directly to me to sort out). We noticed a few other funny oddities and I asked our waiter for the check before we were finished. He delivered it by the time we were done and I had to chase him down for a to-go box.

I know: negative, negative, negative. I should describe the evening like this: We stopped by an Indian restaurant and the poor staff was overutilized. We felt bad for them and moved on to Applebee's where we got $10 for the next time we go! Then we went to Uno's where the waiter was really nice and got our entire order correct. All of that AND we still have a Stouffer's pasta dish at home to eat some other night. What a great dinner evening.

(In all honesty, we did have a lot of fun)