Painful Admission

I find this song hilarious and awesome.

Feel Good Fuqua

I'm studying for a Corporate Finance exam that I will not do well on tomorrow (though I'm actually enjoying taking my time and reading lecture notes/the book, although those things won't help me on the exam). Even with the time crunch, I feel the need to say: the people I've met at Fuqua - the class of 2011 - are some of the most inspirational yet down to earth and genuinely good people I've ever met. I'm very proud to be with a class that supports each other in the way that we do, and I feel strongly that these friends will last a long time.

Feel good story of the day.

Birbigs

I went to a Mike Birbiglia standup comedy show tonight. Got my picture taken (in the first photo he's asking me what my t-shirt means). Great show. What I noticed the most is how Birbigs is a very skilled storyteller. His routine is basically a 1.5 hour story with a bunch of side stories.

Glorious Me

Here's my bio on the Education Pioneers site. Here are the bios of everyone in the Bay Area Cohort.

Getting Corporate

Some of what I'm doing this week at Fuqua:

Through COLE, had a session with John Allison, the ex-CEO of BB&T Bank. Very impressive. 75% of his talk was about the importance of knowing your values, reflection, and leadership practice. If he were running business schools, he would take one whole year and teach leadership and ethics. He takes 2 weeks off each year to do something non-business-y, e.g. he'll go on a week-long workshop on philosophy. He also makes a point to read one serious non-fiction, non-business book a month... says there is tons of value in stepping outside what you know. This supports my observation that the best leaders are extremely well-read and well-rounded. The CEO also said his best quality is his honesty, especially with oneself. He's a huge believer in knowing your faults.

Guest lecture from the founders of Eurosport in my Entrepreneurial Finance class
Highlights:
- Founded by two brothers
- They went away to college and let their mom run the business, which she grew to revenues of $1M
- On the day of the US-Brazil World Cup game in 1994, they decided to switch their order taking systems. The new system didn't work and they weren't able to take orders correctly for 3 months. Had to send apology letters to all their customers to regain trust. Received one letter that said "I empathize with all of your technical difficulties. What I suggest is that you take a shotgun to your brother's head, and then shoot yourself. Please let me know when this has happened."
- It's really amazing how nobody realized how big the World Cup would be in 1994.
- The brothers admittedly "don't like business." They are in the business to support the soccer lifestyle.

This afternoon I'm going to a seminar with Duke's Muslim chaplain (one of only a few Muslim chaplains in the U.S.) to talk about Islam, business, and ethics. I interviewed Chaplain Antepli for my Ethics class, and he's a very interesting guy.

On Friday, I'm in a working group on Fuqua's career strategy. One of the participants is Michael Heisley, who is on Fuqua's Board of Visitors and the owner of the Memphis Grizzlies, among other things.

Also on Friday, I'm one of 10 pilot testers of a new class on Leadership in the Service Industry taught by Alan Schwartz, who is the ex-CEO of Bear Stearns (apparently he tried to save the company... he didn't cause their problems. I don't know).

Also, Rick Waggoner is teaching a class at Fuqua in the spring on "Corporate Crises." Pretty cool.

Education Press Roundup

Here are good education-related articles I've read recently:

How to fix our schools: A manifesto by Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee and other education leaders

Let's stop ignoring basic economic principles of supply and demand and focus on how we can establish a performance-driven culture in every American school -- a culture that rewards excellence, elevates the status of teachers and is positioned to help as many students as possible beat the odds. We need the best teacher for every child, and the best principal for every school. Of course, we must also do a better job of providing meaningful training for teachers who seek to improve, but let's stop pretending that everyone who goes into the classroom has the ability and temperament to lift our children to excellence.

Just as we must give teachers and schools the capability and flexibility to meet the needs of students, we must give parents a better portfolio of school choices. That starts with having the courage to replace or substantially restructure persistently low-performing schools that continuously fail our students. Closing a neighborhood school -- whether it's in Southeast D.C., Harlem, Denver or Chicago -- is a difficult decision that can be very emotional for a community. But no one ever said leadership is easy.

For the wealthiest among us, the crisis in public education may still seem like someone else's problem, because those families can afford to choose something better for their kids. But it's a problem for all of us -- until we fix our schools, we will never fix the nation's broader economic problems. Until we fix our schools, the gap between the haves and the have-nots will only grow wider and the United States will fall further behind the rest of the industrialized world in education, rendering the American dream a distant, elusive memory.

AV Club: Interview with Davis Guggenheim, director of Waiting for Superman

AVC: Was that intimidating? It’s such a vast problem.
DG: This thing almost destroyed me, it really did. There were days where I thought “I’ll never get this,” and the minute you think you’re onto something, something else contradicts it. The minute you think someone makes sense, someone else contradicts them. It’s a world where people devour each other, and destroy each others’ ideas, and almost stand on the sidelines and argue, which in its own way is part of the Blob: perpetuating the status quo, the educational elite that are constantly having a perpetual debate about things. So it’s like cutting through thickets of really smart people’s ideas with really nothing to grasp. And the things I felt myself drawn to were these pragmatists. I think you really can call it a revolution, these reformers.
These are people who say, “This is broken, this is ridiculous, I’m going to change the world in front of me.” So over here, Geoffrey Canada, over here, Michelle Rhee, over here, the KIPP guys. Hundreds of them, and they’re pragmatists, they’re not politically driven, they’re not ideologically driven, they’re pragmatists, and that’s what I think makes them win. This is hard work, but it’s not as complicated as you very smart people tell us it is. It’s about longer days and great teachers and hard work and changing the culture of a school, and that’s what so exciting now that wasn’t there 10 years ago. The sense that it’s possible.

Why Aren't our Teachers the Best and Brightest?

Dave's comment: the issue of teacher recruitment is incredibly complex, with lots of interdependencies on teacher evaluation, union contracts, the quality of teacher schools (vs. the quality of applicants). It is not an easy problem to solve.

These countries also foster a professional working environment. Finland, for example, grants teachers the kind of autonomy typically enjoyed by doctors in this country: They have wide latitude over how they teach, they share responsibility for their schools' operating budgets, and they belong to a culture that emphasizes the need to continually update one's skills.

In the United States, by contrast, teaching is often seen as an "unprofessional" career track, even by teachers. For example, we found that only 3 percent of the U.S. teachers we surveyed who were in the top third of their college class think that people who do well in teaching can advance professionally.

Crucially, these other countries provide competitive compensation. Of the three, South Korea puts the greatest emphasis on salary, with starting pay equivalent to about $55,000 and top salaries reaching $155,000. According to Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University, these earnings place South Korea's teachers somewhere between its engineers and its doctors. Singapore, in addition to competitive pay, offers retention bonuses of $10,000 to $36,000 every three to five years.

Life Lessons from Business School

In the spirit of my previous post (simple, yet profound lessons), here are two total game changers that I learned in business school (of all places).

- Attitude is everything. We've all heard this maxim before, but only recently have I seriously reflected on its meaning. I have two personal examples of how a positive attitude - and nothing more - made the difference between success and failure: persevering through chemo and surgeries, and picking myself up last year after a few months at Fuqua totally beat me down.
- Knowing your values. In my Leadership and Ethics classes, we went through a few reflections on our core values. Few activities have given me as much clarity. Knowing, reflecting upon, and acting on one's values has given me a powerful explanation of past behavior and a guide for future behavior. Game changer.

Coach K talking Leadership on MSNBC

Here's a video of Coach K on MSNBC. Check out the 3:45 mark, where he talks about his partnership with Fuqua and the COLE program.

I read Coach K's book "Leading with Heart" before coming to school, and thought that his lessons were a bit simplistic. However, as I study leadership and, more importantly, experience leadership, I find that Coach K's lessons are incredibly profound: communication (mainly eye-to-eye, 1-1 contact), trust, accountability, pride.

At the bama Tennessee game in Neyland Stadium

Duke Haters

Strong language - don't watch, mom.

Fall weather and Pearl Jam

I have few rituals in my life. I don't really celebrate my birthday, nor do I have a morning routine. One ritual I do have is when I feel that fall weather has arrived, I pop in Pearl Jam's No Code album. No Code, the album when PJ moved away from mega-singles like Evenflow and Betterman, was released on August 27, 1996. It's by far my favorite PJ album - it's very introspective, signals a cleansing with the fall weather, and the sound is much rougher and thicker than in other PJ albums.

For me, the transition to fall is my favorite time of the year. College football, high school football, leaves turning color in the South, soccer practice, being outdoors with good friends. No Code is the soundtrack. Here are a some songs from the album:

In My Tree:

Some lyrics from In My Tree:
i remember when, yeah
i swore i knew everything, oh yeah
let's say knowledge is a tree, yeah
it's growing up just like me, yeah
i'm so light the wind he shakes
i'm so high the sky i scrape
i'm so light i hold just one breath and go back to my nest
sleep with innocence...
up here so high the boughs they break
up here so high the sky i scrape
had my eyes peeled both wide open, and i got a glimpse
of my innocence... got back my inner sense...
baby got it, still got it

Hail, Hail:

Smile:

Mini

Sitting next to this in the library. It's like someone took a shrink-
ray gun to this person's computer and mouse. Not sure if you can tell
how small the mouse actually is in the photo.

Bringing human to business

In our Ethics class, we've been talking a lot about working with a company rather than working for a company. The distinction is important, and related to the thought that there might be a trend toward employees choosing work that means something to them. Think of a Venn diagram: one circle is your personal life/values, and the other circle are your professional life/values. How much do they overlap? My Ethics professor and a good number of people who study these things (including Jim Collins) would say that employees increasingly want the circles to have heavy overlap. I can only speak from my personal experience - I have chosen deliberately to make these circles overlap as much as possible. I choose to work for a "social enterprise." But one thing I'm realizing is that working in a social enterprise isn't the only way to align personal values with work values. Not by a long shot.

One a-ha moment I've had in Ethics is that we can choose, either as employees (through choosing to work for this or that company), founders (by creating a company's mission, a la Whole Foods), or investors (investors voting for board members) - we can choose a company's stated values. If employees are interested more and more in bringing their humanity to the workplace, a company's values (what they are, and how assessable they are) become more important.

Here's a company that's very clear on their values - Herman Miller (they make furniture) - and a very cool video they put together on the type of employees they want to join them.

(side note: Johnson & Johnson is usually held up for being one of the most ethical big companies out there, but a recent event around not being forthright about risks of the birth control patch would indicate otherwise).

Kid doesn't want to go in the Auburn Store

Check out this video of a kid in Alabama who throws a tantrum when his mom threatens to "put him in the Auburn Store" in a Birmingham mall. Roll Tide.

Words

Courtesy of Geetha. Pretty cool.

Good thing about Durham

Good Durham, Good Durham. Last Friday I chilled at a sweet apartment owned my a married couple... friends of mine. They pay $1300 for two big rooms, sweet dining room and kitchen, and a killer backyard. Highly decorated in a quiet neighborhood. Contrast to

- San Francisco paying 900 a month (rent controlled) my own room, kitchen, sweet back porch, kickass location. Good value.

- DC in Kalorama. $1450/month for a 575ft^2 studio in a really nice building in Kalorama. Phenomenal neighborhood, but probably too much for what I need.

Tonight - went to a free show at the Duke Coffee House on East Campus. Very college-y. Very lively rock and roll with some college kids and blacklights. Loved it. Reminded me of crappy bars in Memphis with really good music. Also reminded me of the weather - nighttime in the South is sublime with the window down and the humidity gone. Just quiet outside, driving my trusty old acura from the coffee house back home to station nine. This feels right, and I could do this forever. This feels like home? Hold on, now. Maybe it does. Slow down and come back home to Durham? Yikes don't know what to think about that. It feels good, though, and I think I could make this work. Less stress. Community. The same people. Yeah.

Doin hood rat stuff with my friends

Rhodes Do Gooders

This makes me pretty proud (Rhodes College ranked #1 for promoting "doing good").

Full Day at Fuqua

Not every day is as busy as this one, but most come close:

7:30. Drive to Fuqua listening to Neil Young's Harvest Moon album. Eddie Vedder wants to be Neil Young, so I am going to listen to more Neil. Harvest Moon is pretty phenomenal.

8:00 - 10:15. Managerial Accounting class. I'm taking this class because of the professor, an Aussie who has been voted the favorite prof at Fuqua for the past two years. He has 210 students on the first day of class, and has already memorized each of their names and faces (he went down a row and nailed each of our names), and in many cases where we went to school, our backgrounds, etc. The class isn't as quantitative as I thought, which is good.

10:30 - 12:45. Ethics in Management class. I've been thinking a lot about ethics and leadership in the past year, and this class is somewhat of a capstone of that thinking. The professor is a very kind soul - at the beginning of class he went around and shook everyone's hand. He's an older guy and had worked mostly on Wall Street before coming to Fuqua a few years ago. The crux of the course is "can we separate our normal human selves from our business selves," how to create an ethical org. culture, self-reflection on our own values (we can say we're ethical, but being an ethical leader is hard - what will we do when the crucible moment comes?). Our next talk is on the purpose of business - to simply create wealth for shareholders, or is there a responsibility beyond the corporation (community, employees, etc.)? Ethics in business is becoming a hot topic as businesspeople learn that it's something that actually increases the value of its firm. There's a chart in Jim Collins' Good to Great that compares the growth of "values driven organizations" vs. organizations that purely seek profit without any core mission (i.e. the core mission is profit). The former companies dramatically outperform the latter. Anyway, as people realize this, ethics becomes much more relevant. One can argue that, taken this way, ethics are just another tool for making profit. However, there's a good argument to be made that people - humans - are realizing that they can't separate their working lives from their "normal, human lives." Having gone through a personal transformation of a similar kind, I tend to believe that others genuinely want to work for orgs that speak to a mission more than profit. Plus, turns out that it's good business to have an ethical compass. It's going to be a good class.

12:45 - 1:30. Lunch outside with friends. Nice day.

1:30 - 3:45. Forecasting class. I was falling asleep in the first half of class, so during the break got a coke. I've never really worked with pivot tables before, but we played around with them today and they're pretty powerful. The class is mostly about how to do regressions. It'll be dry, but it's material I want to learn.

4:00 - 5:30. Training to be a Management Communications TA. I'm looking forward to being a TA. I have to give feedback to the First Years on their presentations. I enjoy giving feedback. Some presentations will be horrendous, some will be good.

5:30 - 6:30. Free dinner sponsored by a Deloitte event. Get picture with Apollo Anton Ohno. Two damn good looking dudes.

6:30 - 8:45. COLE Fellows training. Last year I had some anxiety, to say the least. As a COLE Leadership Fellow, I thought I'd have a platform to push a "mental health agenda" at Fuqua. The premise was really simple: I knew a lot of my classmates who were extremely stressed out last year, and I wanted subsequent classes to be able to talk about managing stress, or to get professional help. So, I floated the idea of getting the Duke Counseling people to come and give the COLE Fellows training on how to help First Years deal with stress. The session went very very well, and it got a lot of people thinking about the issue. It wasn't a typical "here are the signs of stress" presentation. Rather, the psychologist went into the deeper reasons why we're feeling stress. I think all of us really related to what he said... it was very eye-opening.

Lesson: float a powerful idea, and people will make it happen. I simply proposed the idea of a training session and did some leg work to connect COLE with Duke Counseling. The power is in the idea - people really latched onto the need for this training, and it was fun to see how people would say "we totally need this type of training; we need to have these conversations", etc. It feels good to have driven this thing through.

My last first day of class ever

Today my entire class started a 4-day leadership workshop, and we'll start full-time classes next Monday. Since I'm in business school, I'm bullet pointing this one.

What I feel about Fuqua

• I honestly love being back here because of the people that surround me. It's an amazing feeling to come back here after only one year of school and feel connected to so many kind, accomplished, and generally great people. After spending the summer with people from other business schools (and policy schools and education schools), I'm pretty sure there's something legitimately special about my business school. The culture is, in my opinion, distinct from other schools in a very real way. When I walk down the school hallway and can't stop saying hi to people and actually wanting to spend time talking to them (vs. just giving an unenthusiastic hi... going through the motions) - that's a great feeling. I feel very lucky to have ended up here.
• As our dean said, Fuqua's student brand is "whip smart, but real (can drink beer and champagne)." I agree with this wholeheartedly.

Fuqua update

• Applications were up 21%. There are two schools in the top 20 that had an increase in the number of applications: Fuqua and MIT. All others were flat or declining.
• The % of accepted students went from 30% to 24% - a very important figure in school rankings.
• The male/female ratio for the incoming class was 70/30. It should be 60/40. Our dean's explanation was that other schools know that Fuqua is recruiting the right people, so they're sniping our women by offering them scholarships that we can't. Player haters.
• Building a reputation among leading companies...
• John Chambers, CEO of Cisco: "Fuqua is the only school that gets it"
• Wal Mart: wants Fuqua to be their primary source of MBA talent
• HCA (and the Frist family, all graduates of Harvard and Princeton): "Fuqua is my school."
• Bob McDonald (CEO of Procter & Gamble): Bob is dropping every volunteer board except Fuqua's
• GE was about to cut Fuqua from it's list of schools it recruits from (they were cutting the list by half). Jeff Immelt saw the list, personally intervened, and now Fuqua's back on the list.

Impressive speakers

• I was thinking today about the most impressive speakers I've heard at Fuqua. Two characteristics distinguish the really good ones:
• 1) They are incredibly well read. The most impressive ones (and these are business leaders, mind you), can cite lessons from history, politics, etc. just as much as they can from the business world.
• 2) They're very, very self aware

Observations

• It's a damn good feeling to answer the question "how was your summer internship" with "lifechanging."
• By and large, the stereotypes of business schools hold up pretty well. You can guess what these are.

Borf Lives

DC memory: the Borf graffiti guy. I remember seeing these tags all over Dupont Circle and just being confused (as were most people). "BORF WRITES LETTERS TO YOUR CHILDREN" was tagged on a trashcan right outside of the Dupont North metro stop.

Back to Durham

I'm about to drive 10 hours up to Durham. After flying back from SF on Tuesday, I've been working nonstop for three days - mainly on Fuqua stuff. I can already tell that the school rush has begun, and it won't stop until I graduate. Last year I handled the stress of school for the first month, mostly because I was enjoying myself socially; everything was new, and we were certainly in a honeymoon phase. Then the reality of the internship search, academics, and all the things that b-school students volunteer for... they hit hard. Last year I didn't handle the stress very well, but this year I feel well equipped. Yes, it will be hard work, and it won't stop. But now I feel like I have a better perspective on how much to care about academics, job search, etc. It's my nature to work as hard as I can at these things - I admit this. But, I understand now that success at every little thing isn't required or realistic. So, I'm looking forward to my second year being about priorities, taking chances where I can, and having perspective on which things are important, and which are not.

Anyway, life in Birmingham is good - very good. It kind of reminds me of last summer after I came back from Spain and Italy. My life consisted of waking up at 7:30, swimming some laps, and then reading the Wall Street Journal for an hour down by the pool. The past few days have been work-filled, but I've managed to get in a few swims and read "Blink" - very cool book. Life is good.

Kid Speaker

This kid is tripping me out:

The tyranny of small cups for water at restaurants must end

Give up or keep trying?

Sometimes it feels like I'm working, working, and working... but with very little measurable progress. Being at SFUSD this summer has been an education in many things like

- How to get things done without having any actual power (I'm an intern). Answer: it's difficult, but one's demeanor, sincerity, and humor go a long way toward getting people on your side. There is another component - power and authority - that I still haven't figured out how to leverage.

- How organizational silos are a serious hindrance to innovation. I've had many instances this summer where I'm looking for a particular piece of information and have to go from person to person to person. By sheer persistence I've usually found what I need, but it's hard. Classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.

- How organizational history matters. At SFUSD (and, to be honest, at other organizations too), there is the expectation that initiatives will die. School districts go frequent leadership changes, so employees become accustomed to "change" as the norm. So, they ride out that "change", knowing that new initiatives will eventually peter out.

But, we persevere. Yes, it is frustrating and I would be lying if I didn't say that at times it's discouraging. But, I have to remind myself why I am doing this.

Yesterday I went to an elementary school to help out with opening day. I...

- watched over recess to make sure no kids got outside the playground

- had a kid come to me and say "he's not sharing the basketball" (didn't know what to do other than to tell the kid to ask the other kid if he could share the ball... which worked)

- helped a ton of kids open their milk cartons

- etc.

That is inspiration (probably more inspiration to go be a Kindergarten teacher, but I don't think that's my role...). These kids couldn't care less about my work at SFUSD. I'm just one small piece in the education world, but it's important to remember that my tiny central office job does have consequences. It's just hard to see that sometimes.

"Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it." - The Talmud

Great weekend

This weekend was one of the few when I had no plans. It turns out that - without plans - I did more things this weekend than just about any other.

Friday night I watched the totally awesome movie Hot Tub Time Machine (this follows last week's viewing of Harold and Kumar go to White Castle). Excellent, stupid flick.

On Saturday I went with my friend Geetha to the de young museum and the exhibit "Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musee D'Orsay." Turns out that the event was sold out, but a couple women walked up to us and offered to sell us their tickets since their husbands couldn't find parking. Too bad. We took the tickets.

The D'Orsay is being renovated, so they're shipping all of their masterpieces to museums around the world. I've always been partial to the impressionists (there is an impressionist wing at the National Gallery of Art in DC - one of my favorites), but didn't really understand the context leading up to the impressionist movement. This exhibit brought it together for me. I bought a print of Gustave Caillebotte's The Floor Scrapers.

Afterward, we tried to check off a few restaurants on my friend Meryl's "must eats in SF" list (Meryl was a gourmet chef in SF before coming to Duke). We tackled the Arizmendi Bakery Cooperative (decent pizza and coffee cake) and Chinatown's Fortune Cookie Factory (a soup nazi-like experience where you have to pay 50 cents to take a picture and they start bugging you to buy something if you stand idle for more than 30 seconds). You can see them making the cookies right in front of you. A machine churns out a pliable cookie dough, which a woman grabs along with the fortune, and she molds the fortune cookie into its typical shape in about 1 second using some tool. I got four fortunes in one cookie - the process isn't perfect.

I had planned on going to my friend Paul's birthday party and was about to head back to my apartment, but we decided to keep up the culinary expedition. I had heard about a place called Pirate Cat Radio Cafe, where they serve a maple bacon fat latte. We walked in and didn't really know what to think - there was a 3-piece band (shaggy homeless looking dudes) tuning up. I walked up to the bar not really knowing what to ask and then blurted "we're here for the bacon fat coffee." Given that there were only 2 available seats in the 6-seat cafe (the others being taken by the band), we heeded the barista's request to "take a seat anywhere you like."

It turns out that maple bacon fat lattes are delicious, and actually have little bits of bacon fat floating on top. The "cafe" doubles as a pirate radio station, complete with a recording booth. The band started playing, which was being recorded for a podcast (if you download the podcast I'm sure you can catch the cappuccino machine in the background). We sat there for the Hypnotist Collectors' 6-song set. While leaving, the lead singer - our boy Augustus, gave us an EP and invited us to their show at the Crescent Hotel later that night. "We'll see you there."

... note the fortune.

After some tacos at Taqueria El Buen Sabor and seeing a mock protest (a guy turning 40 gathered his friends, created a bunch of posters, and led the "protesters" with a megaphone... going from bar to bar), we joined up with my Fuqua friend Jim Wilson and took a cab down to the show. It was like we walked into an alternate hipster dimension. Half the crowd was wearing fedoras (which are, if you don't know, the totally cool new trend). The place reminded me of Eighteenth Street Lounge in DC, but more secret. It's on the second floor (bar area and separate room for the band) of a very unassuming boutique hotel. I kind of felt like George (of Seinfeld) when he stumbles on the supermodel secret hideaway. It felt like another dimension of coolness. The cool thing is that it wasn't pretentious at all - just a bunch of people looking good and drinking ironic PBR.

Digression: fedoras. The NY Times's man on the street did this short video on the trend. I'm on a mission to find my own, though I'm pretty sure I'll look ridiculous.

My friend Gerardo showed up (not the Rico Suave Gerardo), and we headed to the Make Out Room back in the Mission to meet up with Paul, Jason, Stacey, Eric - my Education Pioneers crew. It was really cool to see all of my different circles come together - Geetha, Jim (Fuqua), Gerardo (random friend), and Ed Pioneers. Very fun time. Night.

On Sunday we went on a free walking tour of the Castro neighborhood, which is the famous gay neighborhood in SF (think Harvey Milk). Interesting stuff, and I learned the difference between Victorian and Edwardian, and Queen Anne architecture.

Afterward we walked around the Mission, checked out some street murals, and walked into a Levi's Workshop. Possibly the coolest thing I've ever seen. Basically you can use screen printing, type setting, and other "design" tools... for free. They have artists in residence giving instruction and have events just about every night. It's a DIY/hipster paradise. I signed up to come back next Sunday and make my own type-set posters.

almost done....

Then went to some vintage clothing shops and stocked up on polyester - for future Halloweens. Then came back home, did laundry, and had an amazing takout meal from Dosa (south Indian food... like an Indian crepe).

Great weekend indeed.

Grammar tip of the day

I've always wondered what the rules for whether to put punctuation inside or outside of quotations marks. Apparently it depends on a combination of logic (is the punctuation part of the quote or part of the sentence as a whole) and punctuation type (comma and period vs. exclamation mark and question mark). Here's the "lesson."

The Summoned Life

Another brilliant article by David Brooks. Brooks often succeeds in his articles not because he offers his own opinion, but because he reframes the opinions and philosophies of others. This article on how one approaches finding meaning in life is a great example.

1990s. Better than the 80s.

Mom, you will not understand this video, so don't watch it.

Duke's brand name

When choosing among business schools, the criteria most cited as most important were usually the alumni network (size, industry concentration, and geography) and, to a slightly lesser degree, brand name recognition. I ended up choosing Fuqua because it was simply a good personal and professional fit for me; I felt at home at Duke, wanted to spend two years of my life with these people (as opposed to other schools where I might have had to "suck it up" a bit more just to get a more prestigious degree), and was attracted to Duke's social entrepreneurship center.

But brand name matters, especially when you're looking for a job in a new region, such as California. I was unsure of how Duke's name would be accepted in California, but I guessed that it would be received positively. After living here for 7 weeks, I can say that I've been pleasantly surprised by Duke's brand. One small example - I attended a workshop last week on SFUSD's new school choice formula, and the presenter proudly declared that they've been working with economists from Stanford, Berkeley, and Duke to ensure that the system works. In a world in which Stanford is the undisputed top dog, this was a pretty big signal to me that Duke's brand name has legs. I've got many more stories like this.

Overall, I feel very proud and confident to have the Fuqua and Duke names on my resume. We're not Harvard Business School, but I'd say that in terms of reputation, Fuqua is just a cut below - in line, and in some cases better than, reputations of NYU, Dartmouth, and Michigan business schools. When I tell someone I'm a "Duke MBA", I can see their reaction, and it's almost always a positive one. People want to know more about me because I go to Fuqua, which gives me a lot of confidence when applying to jobs.

I attribute our brand recognition to a few factors"

1) Quality of graduates. Fuqua's reputation of producing graduates from the "Team Fuqua" culture is a known quantity. The arrogance and elitist attitude of other schools' graduates is much less so at Fuqua. In a business world that values communication skills above all else, Fuqua acquits itself well.

2) Dispersed alumni. Because few alumni stay in the Durham area, Duke sends its alumni to geographically diverse areas. We still don't have a good pipeline to Europe, though.

3) Research. I have always been skeptical of the overall value add of "research" to a school's success, but when I see in national press that "researchers from Duke University conclude that...", my degree is slightly more valuable.

4) Duke basketball. It's undeniable.

"not quite noir"

...Overheard on the street in san francisco, referring to cinema
genres. I dontkbow what this means, but I don't like it.

Inspired, sad and inspired

My day. I woke up at 5:45am to walk 10 minutes to John O'Connell High School in the Mission. SFUSD is holding their annual administrators' kickoff meetings there for the next two days, and I went to attend and help my friend Christopher (who helped plan the event) to set up. I'm going to wait until later to describe everything that I learned, but during the course of the event I...

- Listened to presentations from the Superintendent and Deputy "supe" on how our central office reorganization matters for teachers and principals (which, from the outside probably seems like a dull topic, but believe me it's a massive undertaking and one that requires the deftest of political touches).

- Participated in a kickoff for the "Mission Superintendent's Zone" (more on this below)

- Attended small group sessions on the new SFUSD school choice formula (which will be formally proposed in the next month or so), restorative justice, and 21st century learning.

I ducked out of the conference around 3:30 because it was a gorgeous day (which are few and far between in SF) to go on a quick bike ride and work out. I then went to dinner and my first ever book club with 5 other Ed Pioneers. We read a book by Lisa Delpit called Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. The book is essentially about how cultural differences matter in instructional settings. For example, mostly white, well-meaning teachers who have liberal teaching philosophies such as "let the kids find themselves" and "just write creatively" often miss what black students need Whereas white students will respond to "question commands" such as "don't you think you need to take a nap now?", black students are confused by this language; the black students respond to the direct language of "take a nap - now." Another example is how the author observed in Alaska that native students were getting lower grades on their essays. Teachers docked the students points because stories were rambling messes. The cultural misunderstanding is that, in native Alaskan cultures, stories are meant to go on and on; stories are meant to be told so they have no ending (the philosophy being that life has no ending, so the stories should have no ending). There are no easy solutions to these disconnects, and to be honest there is no way to say exactly how often these instances occur.

Anyway, around the table were an MBA student from Columbia, MBA student from Berkeley, MBA student from Yale, education PhD student from Berkeley, and an ex-teacher and education master's student from Stanford.

After book club we went to see the movie The Lottery, where we predictably saw other current Ed Pioneers, alumni, and staff. The Ed world is a very, very connected community. I recommend the movie. It's about the NYC lottery for kids who want to get into a public charter school and the crazy political fight between the teachers unions, elected officials, charter schools, and parents. There's another upcoming movie called Waiting for Superman that is in the same vein as The Lottery.

Here's the good stuff...

The day was inspiring on many levels. Being surrounded by SFUSD principals and central office staff - it just feels like home. Granted, I still feel like a bit of an outsider because I haven't been a teacher. Most, if not all principals and superintendents have been teachers for a significant amount of time.

I often get asked "why does an MBA want to go into education? How does having an MBA help you run a school system?" To be honest, before this summer I was clear on my answer to the first question, but hazy on the second. After working with the Assistant Supes and other administrators for over a month, I can say that this is - more than anything - a management job. Our Deputy Superintendent, who I'm a big fan of, is at heart a very, very good leader through being a communicator, bringing clarity to vision, and playing the politics necessary to get things (ANYthing) done. Granted, he is first a teacher and a principal, and his credibility comes from having done those jobs for a long time. But, I am beginning to see my role in a public school system as a manager and leader. There is, without a doubt, a use for my skills. Is there a compelling reason that most school administrators are ex-teachers? Yes, there is - because the content of education is teaching, and that requires teaching experience; one cannot learn the true nature of teaching without being in the classroom. But, there is no reason why management skills (indeed, leadership skills) can't be brought to bear in education and co-exist with instructional expertise.

This is all a very longwinded way of saying that I can see my role much more clearly, and I'm inspired by these people. I sat in on the kickoff meeting for the "Mission Superintendent Zone" at the conference today. The Zone is basically a group of schools from the Mission District in SF that are chronically underperforming because of the inputs to the schools (english language learners, troubled homes, etc.). Thus, the Zone was created to give this area some special attention. I introduced myself in the ice-breaking exercise. Here's the gist of what I said:

I'm Dave. I'm getting my MBA at Duke and am here working with the central office on a dashboard that will give the Assistant Supes and Principals interim insight into how their schools are performing (nodding heads of encouragement). Why am I here? I'm here because I love being around people who talk about "purpose" and "mission" when they're asked "why do you do what you do?" For me, this summer, and being around these people, has been a gamechanger. It's not typical that an MBA goes into education, but when I go back to Duke in a month, I want to recruit my fellow MBAs to come work in public education like I've done. I honestly can't wait to go back and do this, because I think there are a lot of people who want to do what I've done, but just don't "see it" yet. Thanks for letting me be part of this.

Now, "solving" education is an incredibly complex set of problems, and I don't pretend that everyone in education is as motivated and competent as the people I met today. But I'm still inspired. I'm inspired by the people in education. But I'm equally as inspired by my cohort of Education Pioneers. Why? Because we're good. There is no reason why the education system shouldn't be screaming for MBAs, public policy, law, etc. graduates to come into the system in droves. I've been blessed to have met some extremely motivated, dynamic, etc. people in my life, and my cohort in the Bay Area are right at the top. 75% of us will go full-time into the education world. There are 300 of us nationwide this year (and over 900 alumni), and we're growing. And we're motivated for the right reasons. It is indeed sad to watch films like The Lottery - to be rooting for a kid to get into the school his parents see as giving their child the best chance for success - and to be disappointed.

I've been thinking a lot recently about not just what I know, but what I believe. I believe that our kids deserve better. They deserve to have quality options on where they go to school. I believe that it is simply not right (American?) that a kid is destined to go to an awful school just because that's the way it is.

Anyway, that's my rant. I'm curious to see where all of this takes me.

Slow Reading

Perhaps because I am a slow reader by nature and couldn't read faster if I tried, I like the idea of deliberately slow reading.

I love technology. I would upgrade to the iPhone 4 and buy an iPad in a heartbeat if I weren't so cheap. I crave these things. But I also recognize - in my own life - that technology has changed the way I live in a negative way. I compulsively check email (not uncommon these days). When someone is talking too loud (or if I just don't want to hear them), I instinctively reach for an imaginary volume dial only to discover that I can't actually turn them down (seriously, I do this). I relish slow living... mindful living, but I am very much prevented from living this way by gadgets and connectedness. Maybe I'm fighting a losing battle with myself, but I don't anticipate ever not trying my damndest to disconnect myself from my computer.

Here's the article from Newsweek. Here are some quotes:

The phrase “slow reading” goes back at least as far as the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who in 1887 described himself as a “teacher of slow reading.”

“You see schools where reading is turned into a race,” Thomas Newkirk, an English professor at the University of New Hampshire, told the Associated Press last week. “You see kids on the stopwatch to see how many words they can read in a minute. That tells students a story about what reading is. It tells students to be fast is to be good.”

“One student told me even when he was reading a regular book, he’d come to a word and it would almost act like a hyperlink,” Newkirk said. “It would just send his mind off to some other thing. I think they recognize they’re missing out on something.”

John Miedema, author of Slow Reading, likens the movement to the Slow Food movement, which is as much as about taking your time as it is about consuming locally grown food. Both movements encourage increased mindfulness in the conduct of routine activity. “It’s not just about students reading as slowly as possible,” Miedema says. “Slow reading is about bringing more of the person to bear on the book.”

Recently I saw a recommendation that we give ourselves a sabbath from the computer; that is, we turn the darn thing off one day a week. I like that idea. But computers are only part of the techno problem. We’re bedeviled by machines at every turn, and every one of them whispers, “Hurry up.”

Teacher Performance Measurement and Rhee's Bold Moves

Last week in my Education Pioneers workshop (a weekly, day-long session where we discuss and investigate ed reform topics such as school choice, district reform, the achievement gap, etc.), we looked at human capital issues in public school districts. The most recent news on this front is Michelle Rhee's "victory" to negotiate a new contract with the teachers union. I put "victory" in quotes because I believe it took leadership on both sides of the aisle - Rhee's camp and that of the teachers union - to come to a compromise that looks to be groundbreaking. Again, this is a great example of how leaders (in this case, Rhee and the various teachers union leaders) took bold moves to hammer out a compromise that, while initially divisive, has clear benefits for all sides. While Rhee gets increased power to remove ineffective teachers, effective teachers will be paid significantly more. In essence, ineffective teachers will slowly be removed from the system.

Here's an article that explains the reforms, and another article that explains possibly the most important piece in the agreement - a new rubric for evaluating teachers. It's worth noting that teacher evaluations - one of the most contentious pieces of education reform - will not be solely based on absolute test score benchmarks. Rather, they're based on "value add" (jargon in the Ed world) scores plus other measures. The practice of measuring teachers' effectiveness through multiple measures is similar to that of the balanced scorecard, which has become the predominant method for tracking performance in for-profit ventures. A balanced scorecard uses multiple measures (both quantitative and qualitative) to track performance.

In my view, human capital issues such as pay-for-performance are critical to public education reform. Teachers unions often rally around the trite, lazy, and reductive refrain that "you simply can't effectively evaluate teachers' performance." There is, indeed, some merit to this argument - an effective teacher will do things that don't always show up in a students' test scores. For example, a great teacher will go to the homes of students to involve parents, and they will teach students ethical lessons that won't "show up" in a student's character until years in the future. However, test scores are not the only way to measure student performance. Thus, the teachers unions' argument that you simply cannot measure teacher performance is hollow. There is a better, more complete way to measure performance - a problem that Michelle Rhee's contract is trying to resolve.

The difficulty is in designing and implementing such a performance management system. If we are to rely on other measures such as principal evaluations of teachers (an appropriate role for principals), then principals must have the abilities and time capacity to conduct these evaluations. The reality is that in many many schools, principals have neither the appetite nor ability to conduct these evaluations (which brings up a completely new issue of peer evaluations or evaluations by "master teachers", which would require building new tiered teacher roles in schools). For example, my sister, a first year teacher in the Mississippi Delta, said her teacher came into her classroom less than three times the entire year - a year when Jenny, as a new teacher, needed the most instructional assistance.

So, an effective evaluation system requires a lot more than just "putting the system in place." It requires higher competencies from principals, a new management structure within the schools, and buy in from local teachers unions (not an easy issue to overcome). The bottom line is that reform must start somewhere.

Doing Well by Doing Good

I've previously mentioned on this blog that I believe ethical decisions - particularly in business - can drive a "double bottom line" of doing well (making profits) while doing good (for others). Here's an example from today's NY Times about an apparel manufacturer who has committed to paying a livable wage to factory workers in the Dominican Republic.

The interesting thing about this case is that it doesn't deny market forces. In fact, the company is welcoming the market by betting consumers, company employees, and retailers will appreciate its paying livable wages, and will in turn pay more for the apparel. (note: Even though the company says that increased labor costs will not be passed onto the retailer or consumer, I'm assuming that in time these costs will be passed on).

Although the manufacturer is only paying livable wages in one factory, it's an experiment that I hope will give evidence that making ethical decisions (such as paying a livable wage) does not always lead to smaller profits. In order for this experiment to take place, the CEO of the manufacturing company had to make a bold decision that bucks the conventional wisdom of lower costs => higher profits. Refreshing, isn't it?

Narcissism

Is there anything that David Brooks writes that I don't agree with? Here's a decent article from today's NY Times about what the Mel Gibson tapes say about our culture. Brooks cites one dramatic statistic:

In 1950, thousands of teenagers were asked if they considered themselves an “important person.” Twelve percent said yes. In the late 1980s, another few thousand were asked. This time, 80 percent of girls and 77 percent of boys said yes.

I am a singer songwriter

Loyal readers of bookishdave, the past three weeks have been action packed, and I have many thoughts to share (mostly on what it's like to work in the central office at SFUSD) in the next few blog posts. My hiatus from blogging coincided with many good times in San Francisco, which I'll tell you about soon. For now...

My roommate in SF is learning to play the guitar. Last week I picked up his guitar and started playing the few songs I remembered (standards from Ben Harper, Allman Brothers, and a little Yellow Ledbetter), and it felt right. I hadn't touched a guitar in about two years until last week. Note to self: rock out more.

Money

Just got a paycheck for the first time since February. Well, if you don't count unemployment benefits. Thank you Federal Government.

The big game is tomorrow. I admit I'm a bit nervous of a quick goal by the Algerians. It should be clear what Bradley's strongest lineup is (with Edu in the middle), so now we just have to execute.

I sat in on a Superintendent's cabinet meeting today. Only the superintendent was late on account of the Mexico-Uruguay soccer game. Does this mean I can watch the US-Algeria game with no consequences tomorrow? Regardless of what I'll do tomorrow, there's a leadership discussion that could happen around today's events.

Balsamic vinegar

I went to a dinner tonight where we had to make a dish that had balsamic vinegar in it. I made a cabbage something. Observations from the night...

Differences between SF and DC and other cities. Y0u can identify the cities by what their excesses are. NYC=money. DC=power. SF=creativity. I buy this categorization, but only to a certain extent. There are all types in all places. I did have a couple conversations tonight about what types of people fit where, and what's normal to those people. I've never really considered what effect my background (growing up in the deep south) had on me, but I'm sure it's had some effect on my perceptions of difference, and my judgments. For example, tonight I took notice of everyone's visual appearance. In Alabama, these people would not fit in (or at the very least be mainstream). Here, the weirdos and iconoclasts are more of the norm. I admit, I'm partially in awe of this diversity, but part of me thinks "are these my people?" It is cool, though, to consider the diversity of tonight's crowd: totally euro french guy with long hair who is starting an online platform for anyone who wants to create a virtual school, info database guy who I had a "conversation" with for an hour and literally didn't say a word, the host for the night who, after dinner, gave a dramatic reading of a William Wordsworth poem for everyone from his iPhone while standing on a chair, the blogger, the biochem PhD student, the Norwegian guy, etc. Then me. As interesting as these people are, I'll put my story up against any of theirs.

Other observations:

• Because I live in SF, apparently I need to get a quarter-length peacoat thing. It's what everyone wears.
• Everyone here seems to be "starting something." Its really remarkable how these people all have taken their (seemingly) original ideas and "started something." I can't tell how much of this is BS, though.
• Meeting people at a party, and then saying goodbye forever is an awkward position to be in. Tonight at the dinner, I liked a few of the people I talked to and could easily
• The database guy asked everyone who he met, "what are you passionate about?" But he asked it in a non-pretentious way. I liked that.

Mustache Town

San Francisco is a mustache town, indeed.

Here are some pictures of the Mexico-South Africa game (with Mexicans), the US-England game (with friends from Fuqua and new SF friends), and the Mexico-France game.

My fellowship thus far

I'm four days into my fellowship with Education Pioneers, and it's going well so far. On Monday we had our first of six workshops, where all 45 of the Bay Area fellows get together for a day full of training on education issues, guest speakers, and networking with each other.

By and large, my cohort is talented, driven, and are genuinely nice and interesting people. The cohort is intentionally diverse, and I can already tell that I'm going to learn a lot from those with education and policy backgrounds. The most obvious characteristic that distinguishes this group is a sense of mission. I applied to Ed Pioneers because I wanted to be part of something greater than myself. I had a notion that work would be more intrinsically satisfying if I believed in the merit of results. At CEB, I admittedly became disconnected from the mission of the organization. I worked hard because of high personal standards and because I respected my colleagues and didn't want to let them down, but I did not feel driven by a bigger purpose. At SFUSD this summer, I hope I will feel connected to a bigger purpose.

What I did not anticipate happening this summer was that the people around me (i.e. my cohort and coworkers) would be as supportive as they have been thus far. What I mean by that is that we're all working toward the same mission. Especially in business school, it is sometimes difficult to buck the trend and search for nonprofit/do-gooder internships. At Fuqua, I'm very lucky to be around people who at the very least respect my motivations to go into public service. This summer I believe I'll feel even more supported - to have a cohort of 45 people who "get it" is massively important, and makes it "ok" that I've chosen this path.

Side story: I remember talking to a University of Chicago (business school) alumni who had been in the Peace Corps. In the first week of school, he told one of his classmates of his Peace Corps past, and the classmate deadpanned, "why would you do Peace Corps? What's your return on investment?" Hard as it is to believe this story, I heard the exact same thing happened to another student considering Chicago. Needless to say, I'm very glad I didn't end up at Chicago.

Another side story: I was talking with a Harvard Business School graduate who works in the social sector, and he said that after graduation a lot of his HBS "friends" showed their true colors. Essentially, some became assholes. During school they played the game of being nice, but after graduation their true colors sprang forth. I believe that HBS is a bit more well-rounded that U of Chicago, but again - I'm glad I don't go there. Dealing with those types simply isn't worth my time.

I've been working at the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) for three days now. I ride by bike to work (about 8 minutes). It must be said - the weather here makes a difference. Basically I don't sweat when I walk outside. During lunch today I walked over to a square in front of City Hall (2 blocks away), where they had set up a jumbotron for the Mexico-France game. I stood out there for about an hour and didn't get hot at all. Perfect weather.

Anyway, my goal for the next week is to get up to speed. My title is "Performance Management Analyst" and my project is around using metrics/data to evaluate school performance. The goal is to give the Assistant Superintendents (who manage the principals) a dashboard of metrics that help them allocate resources to schools that need it. For example, if a school is lagging in their math scores, an Assistant Superintendent needs to (a) know that it's happening, and (b) react by (perhaps) sending a math coach to that school to help out. The bigger theory is called "inquiry based learning", where data informs plans, which informs actions, which informs more data. The process is iterative and keeps going and going. SFUSD is only beginning to use data to make decisions (vs. principals making gut decisions), but there's a decent amount of momentum to start building a data culture in the district.

The office I'm in is the SFUSD central office. 3-story building. Quiet. Probably about 100 people that work here. My boss has cautioned me to not expect things to happen too quickly here. At CEB, I was used to moving very quickly on projects, but things simply don't happen at that pace here. SFUSD is a very consensus-driven culture, and there is an unspoken rule that to make a change, you need to get everyone's buy-in. The other factor (as far as I can tell in my 3 days here) is that resources are very limited. For example, my project would not get done unless I was here to do it - nobody else has the bandwidth. The work-life balance is good here. People work hard, but they also leave the office before 6 (mostly). Everyone is kind - it feels like a family around here.

Links for today

Here's a video of Charlie Davies' workouts, and a cool article I read today.

Video of Charlie Davies' recovery

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet conspiring to get all billionaires to give away their money.

Thoughts on US - England

I'm waiting for the bus and thought i'd give my quick analysis.

First, Landon Donovan said today that if we don't win against Slovenia (or at the very leastw tie), then our World Cup is pretty much over. So, I assume yha Bradley willput forth our
strongest lineup instead of resting key guys.

From a "get to the next round" perspective, we should be satisfied with the England result, though a win would have been a monumental outcome. A win would have certainly been cited for years to come as a turning point in US soccer. Making it to the round of 8 is the only
other way we can signal that the US has turned the corner re: soccer
respectability.

It's difficult to say either team deserved the victory. Enland had more chances than the US, but not by much. Before the game, I was doubtful that findley's pace would justify his starting. He didnt play poorly, but I don't think he gave the us an advantage with his speed.

For Slovenia, I'd put Donovan in a withdrawn forward position (in place of findley), stu Holden in donovans place on the wing, and torres in place of Clark. One can argue that edu also deserves a shot in Clark's spot, but torres showed something special against Turkey and should be rewarded.

A couple more observations:
- no cards for Bradley or Clark. This is a really good sign, as both
of them have learned (it seems) to play within themselves.
- remember the days when the us couldn't muster any offense without
Donovan? It looks like those days are gone.

Love this place

Here's a rundown of my first few days in San Francisco.

Wednesday - My street (Valencia) is filled with coffee shops and bookstores, so I walked about 30 seconds from my apartment to get some breakfast at a cafe. A girl came up to me and asked if I knew of a supermarket in the area, which of course I didn't. We started talking and it turns out that she's one of the other 45 Education Pioneers in SF this summer, and her roommate is also. We started talking about bikes, I noted that I was looking for one, and she said the guy who sublet his apartment to her left four bikes, and I could take my pick. Just like that, I had a bike and a few new friends.

Later that day I went to a year-end meeting/celebration for SFUSD and talked to my new boss and another Pioneer who I'll be working with. He's a public policy student at Berkeley. The year-end celebration was more of a pep talk to get the administrators ready for the next year. California has had deep education budget cuts, and I sensed that morale is suffering (though the tone in the crowd was defiant and optimistic).

Spent the evening walking around the neighborhood and working on some COLE stuff for school.

Thursday - Woke up early to go to a mandatory school visit at a Coliseum College Prep Academy in Oakland (part of the small schools movement). I got a ride from another Ed Pioneer who is getting her PhD in education policy at Berkeley - another friend made. At the visit, 15 other Ed Pioneers and I met with the principal and some students. The other Pioneers are mostly from the Bay Area (Berkeley, Stanford students). They're generally younger than I am, but that's because there's a lot of public policy and law students in the program. The business school students are my age. Overall, the breakdown is: 30% b-school students, 25% policy students, 25% education students, and 15% law students.

My thoughts at the school visit were mainly around "do I fit better being in schools/closer to students, or should I be in the central office? What feels right?" This is going to be one of the big things for me to figure out this summer. My gut tells me that being closer to the classroom is where I need to be, but perhaps there's a middle ground.

My friend Jessie from Fuqua came up from Santa Cruz to stay the weekend. We went to a Fuqua alumni happy hour downtown. There's about 20 Fuquans in my class who are in the Bay Area this summer.

Friday - Woke up early to go see the Mexico-South Africa game. If I walk four blocks toward 24th street, I'm basically in Mexico. I had scouted out a bar to watch the game at, but it was too crowded - couldn't even get in the door. So I walked around the corner (following the crowd noise) to another bar. Jessie and I then went to another bar to watch the France - Uruguay game.

After a nap, I bought a new bike (I'm a sucker for new gear, but I wanted a fast bike that I can take around the city), rode around the city a bit, then later that night went to meet a new friend at a bar in Bernal Heights.

Saturday - Again, woke up early to watch soccer. Jessie and I walked a block to the Phoenix bar (Irish pub). We didn't have trouble getting a seat 2.5 hours before gametime, but it filled up quickly. We met up with a few people there (another friend from Fuqua and a group of guys I know through a friend of a friend). Afterward we went to a rooftop bar/restaurant, chilled, and then I napped.

Interpretation

I say all of this to point out that my life in SF thus far has been very unstructured, impromptu, and loose. Honestly, this makes me a bit uncomfortable. For the past 9 months at school, I've been moving very fast - always checking items off the to-do list, always planning, always running, always trying to "fit things into my schedule." In fact, this is the way that I've been for the past 5-6 years (probably longer). The b-school experience has been the most intense, though. Surprisingly, by working so hard in school, I've probably learned more about myself than I have learned about accounting, marketing, etc. I've learned how to manage my time and how to control stress (to a degree). Most of all, I've been forced to think about what I want my life to be like. Do I always want to be running 100 miles an hour? What effect will this have on my relationships? On my happiness? The fact that it makes me uncomfortable to be unscheduled - is this what I want to be like?

I feel like I'm beginning to answer these questions - confidently - for myself. Ironically, business school (and having to make tradeoffs between my personal vs. work lives) is what did it.