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.