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.