A bunch of us went to the first Gardner After Hours of the season tonight at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, one of my favorite places in Boston.
I marked the occasion with another first: walking from the SOM to the Main Campus. Of course, I've been to the Main Campus lots of times before, but never walked from point A to Point B.
What a glorious walk! After only a few hundred feet of concrete and highway, you are encased in green, surrounded by gardens, flowers, birds, and trees.
I will definitely be enjoying that particular stroll more often, now that I have learned my way.
The Gardner was great, of course, very well-attended by a rather diverse group of swanky and fascinating people. But I am afraid that I must dive directly into bed without writing more about it. I am *trying* to adhere to a strict midnight bedtime these days.
It isn't easy -- late night is when I do my best work! It's very hard to turn my brain off at this hour.
BUT my capacity to take in new information is seriously diminished when I get less than 4 hours of sleep, it turns out.
Who knew?
Anyway, don't forget: tomorrow is Talk Like a Pirate Day!
Posted: September 18, 2008 11:58 pm | 0 comments
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I drove in to school today, thinking that I would enjoy the change of pace, and the freedom from the tyranny of the bus schedule, that would allow.
I did enjoy zipping along at my usual somewhat-more-than-legally-posted speed, and arriving at my destination in half the time it takes me to cover the same distance by bus.
I also didn't miss descending into the Arlington T stop, waiting for th T, and then climbing back out two stops later. Yes, it feels self-indulgent to me, too. But my laptop and textbooks are REALLY HEAVY and I am REALLY OUT OF SHAPE. Sue me. I'm lazy.
So I liked being able to park two blocks from school, in the D&D lot on Newbury Street.
But, not surprisingly, I did NOT enjoy forking over $30 clams to park there.
Also not surprisingly, I resented having to sit in rush hour traffic on the way home.
Perhaps more surprising than anything, however, was how much I missed just being able to sit back, zone out, and let the driver do all the work while I listen to podcasts, gaze blankly out the window, and occasional doze off, cheek pressed firmly against the cold window.
Turns out, I am lazier than even I thought I was.
Is it worth all the hassle of waiting for the bus at both ends, taking the extra time, and having to hoof it a few extra blocks to class?
Well, in exchange for the privilege of getting back four hours each day in which I am not expected to do anything with a high level of proficiency and skill besides listen, hum, and sleep... yes.
Also, it is hella cheaper.
Tomorrow, I will be very happy to put those earbuds back into my ear sockets, sit back, and enjoy the ride.
Posted: September 16, 2008 11:20 pm | 0 comments
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you know what isn't nearly as refreshing as it sounds? Sleeping on the Plymouth and Brockton bus each day for an hour each way.
My everything hurts.
Posted: September 11, 2008 7:36 pm | 0 comments
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We had our second (and second-to-last, alas!) class of Communications Strategies this morning, and spent a lot of time talking about how to create and deliver a powerful presentation.
In fact, our final deliverable for the class is a brief (seven-minute) presentation, recorded by a Simmons media specialist sometime over the next two days.
So, knowing this was coming up, over the weekend I took my friend Cindy Caughey out to lunch.
Cindy is an independent presentation design specialist, which basically means that she gets paid to create and edit powerpoint presentations.
Cindy wishes, and many of us join her in this wish, that the very word "presentation" didn't necessarily equal "Powerpoint presentation," but it still does to most people, so that's what you sort of have to go with.
Yes, you can give a great presentation without a slidedeck, but I think that there is a real chance that someone in the audience will be quietly snickering to themselves, "She doesn't know how to use Powerpoint!"
Also, there's nothing wrong with Powerpoint, per se. It's just a tool, and it can be wielded for good or for evil. Sadly, we have all seen the evil side of Powerpoint.
So I asked Cindy what tips she had for our class on making a good presentation, and I recorded it and posted it on my blog, Small Dots.
I would have posted it here, but this site doesn't seem to host video. Alas.
Check it out! Extra bonus: Cindy is adorable!
Posted: September 8, 2008 5:07 pm | 0 comments
Tags: interview, powerpoint, smalldots
So today was the first day of classes at the School of Management, and the first day that I ventured to take the bus in from Hyannis.
All spring long I've been driving myself in to Boston, interviewing at the SOM, visiting, attending the odd lecture, stalking the odd professor of whom one thinks a great deal... and forking over various ungodly amounts to park and gas up my vehicle for the privilege.
That was all fine when I was only an occasional visitor. But now that I am a full-time student, with classes five days a week, I am a committed bus commuter.
It's not so bad. By car, with no traffic or impediments whatsoever, I can make it from my house to 409 Commonwealth Avenue in one hour and fifteen minutes flat. The buses are not quite so cavalier about the speed limit, sadly. That mode of transport takes a solid two hours.
But it's so great to be chauffeured and carried about effortlessly, you have no idea!
Here are just a few reasons why it's so great to take the Plymouth and Brocketon bus in to school, each day, two hours each way:
1. I don't have to drive.
2. It is MUCH cheaper than paying for gas and parking. MUCH.
3. I can sleep.
4. I can take one last look at my notes for the day's classes.
5. It's air-conditioned (my 12-year old Honda, sadly, is not).
6. It is clean (let's not talk about how my car measures up on that metric.)
7. It has a bathroom on board. (I can NOT overemphasize the awesomeness of this feature!! If you are saying ew, then you have not the weak bladder of my clan, and should be kneel in heartfelt gratitude. And not judge.)
8. It is two consecutive hours of quiet alone time, which I require each day without fail, or risk mental ill-health to the detriment of all who surround me.
9. It allows me to finally listen to all my friends' podcasts that I have been promising to listen to. For YEARS.
10. I have fond associations of bus travel, having used the P&B to get from Cape Cod to Mount Holyoke for holidays for four years. Anything that makes me feel like I'm 19 again is entirely welcome.
Also: I can sleep.
Really, truly, the vast unearthly power of a nap to restore and refresh cannot be underestimated.
And now, I'm going to sleep some more.
The first day of classes was a big pile of awesome, and thoroughly exhausting in strange and powerful ways.
Good night, and see you on Monday. I'll be fresh from a nap.
Posted: September 4, 2008 10:55 pm | 0 comments
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Well so *that* was one of the most mentally exhausting days I've had in a long time. My head was nodding the whole drive back to Cape Cod (dangerous but true!), and when I got home I staggered into my bedroom, changed into sweats, and collapsed in an unsightly heap and slept like a stone for two solid hours.
LIKE A STONE.
Of course I didn't help my case by only getting about four hours of sleep and then spending all day trying to charm the pants off of a room full of strangers.
I don't know why, I can't help it! I meet new people and I get all lounge act-y.
No, actually I was pretty well-behaved. I did have a heck of a good time with someone I had met in the spring at the Simmons Leadership Conference. Liana and I are similar in age and professional background, and it would seem in temperament as well. We're also both commuting from over an hour away to the Simmons SOM night classes, which makes us a special kind of crazy. Really looking forward to being in classes with her.
One of the first things I noticed about Simmons was how, when I was going through the application and interview process, every time I went to an event at Simmons I would drive home ELATED. Literally I would feel like doing that arms-spread-wide-over-the-bow-of-the-Titanic thing while driving back home over the Sagamore Bridge. And I never even SAW that awful movie!
Tonight I had the same feeling, mixed this time with a profound sense of relief. It wasn't so much relief that I had gotten in, or that classes had finally begun, but because, during the day today, I felt like I belonged.
I had been worried.
I don't come from a corporate background, and I had had a lingering fear that I would be terribly out of place amongst all the junior executives from State Street that I imagined would be in my class.
What I felt today was a wonderful sense of certainty that is all too often missing from life: the deep, internal knowledge that you are doing the right thing.
I'm in the right place.
(Let's see if I still feel that way during financial reporting and analysis.)
Posted: August 23, 2008 10:53 pm | 1 comment
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Foundations of Business starts tomorrow, it is past midnight, I need to leave at 6:00 am to make it to class by 8:00 am (stopping for coffee and gas along the way, and making time for the unexpected).
Am I the least bit tired? OF COURSE NOT.
I finished working on my homework -- the McCaskey case -- last night, reviewed it during lunch at work today, and printed it out with a shrug (what do I know how good it is? It's my first case!).
Tonight I've been reviewing and memorizing my route, even though I know it by heart after all the trips I made to 409 Commonwealth Avenue in the spring while I was applying. I also needed to figure out where my parking garage was, so I don't have to go spiraling around early morning streets of Boston in a panic, trying to find parking. It'll be expensive, but I don't have the patience for the T just yet, and I can't be feeding a meter every 2 hours during orientation.
Do the meters run on weekends in the Back Bay? I have no idea. I am sure I will find out in some sad-making way.
I am excited and nervous. Excited because I can't wait to be back in school again, and nervous because I am anxious about how I will juggle this with a very demanding job.
I was working a concert this evening, enjoying the cool late summer breeze, and reflected on how the last time I was in grad school, I was after a degree. This time, I am looking to learn -- to gain actual knowledge about leadership, management, and analysis. Some areas I am already strong in, some I am not. In all areas, I expect to experience a rapid growth curve.
I can't wait.
When I was a kid, a little kid, my mother would always take me to Sears or to JC Penney's to buy one really nice outfit for the first day of school. As I grew older, it became increasingly uncool to mark the first day of school with a special frock or shiny brown shoes that screamed their newness. It bespoke an unbecoming overeagerness that we didn't want to be branded with.
But I never lost the desire to wear something special on the first day. My love of ritual started young, and I always wore something special, even if it was hidden, or encoded so that only I knew.
One year I wore my father's socks, for strength.
One year I wore my best friend's sweatshirt, for solidarity.
One year, when we were all dressing like (Lucky Star era) Madonna, I wore my great-grandmother's lace gloves. Because my great grandmother was awesome.
Tomorrow I will be wearing a talisman, too. If you see me, ask me what it is.
Right now, I should really try to sleep.
Posted: August 23, 2008 12:27 am | 0 comments
Tags: anxiety, clothes, first day at school, mom, school, shopping
