About growing pointy hair

I bet some of you have no idea what the title is getting at. But then again, maybe you do. :)

In any case, I haven't been able to update my blog lately because of the deluge of work that I've hit in my first two weeks in Business School. But after a week of classes, and going into the long weekend, I decided that it's time to put some pen to paper (figuratively).

The first week of school was a course. Yes, a five day course worth 2 credits. They call it Integrated Learning Experience. I went into this with a great deal of scepticism but found myself enjoying the learning experience. It definitely was a learning experience because we had all kinds of weird stuff to do as a team. The entire course focused on team building and leadership development. First of all, we were all split up into teams of five people each. Incidentally, this team was going to be the team with whom we would work out all our homework assignments. We were to be graded as a team too, and I was terribly apprehensive about the kind of team that I was going to be put into and whether we'd be able to work together. It's very much like joining a new team in a new company. Very strange to begin with. But it turns out that all the guys (yes, we are an all male team) are great people and we get along (so far) quite famously. Career wise, we're pretty diverse with two engineers, sales, purchase and finance in the mix. Good stuff! One whole day was spent at the Triangle Training Center. Another day was devoted to Difficult Conversations and Ethical Dilemmas (yes, terminations included). We had plenty of pre-assignment readings to go through for this one that included writings by Abe Lincoln, Machiavelli amongst others. Very interesting. We also had a session on Leadership Development and another on Cultural Personalities. The Culture session was really insightful into the different cultures in the world. The strange thing was the the culture tendencies of most of the students were one particular called Linear Active. This was in spite of the fact that say Asians are NOT usually Linear Active. I found this stuff just fascinating.

This week was the beginning of classes....like, real classes. :). I'm taking 4 courses this term (not semester, we have two terms a semester). Added to the humungous amounts of work they're throwing at us, we have to also organize our lives enough to take part in the various clubs and meet people. I have been forced to rely on my PDA to keep up with the pace of life right now. I hate to say it, but if I was a snooty sort before this, I've become even more of a snoot. LOL. For example, if someone were to come up to me and ask if we could hang out sometime, my response would be to whip out my PDA and say "Let me check my schedule"! Can you imagine?!! I can't believe it myself. The Boss hardly sees me these days and she's not pleased about it. My schedule is approximately like this: Leave home at 7AM and come back at 11PM. It's a whirlwind. The second years say that it'll get a lot better as time goes along but for now, I'm really riding a roller coaster that going really fast!

Having said that, I'm enjoying myself...not the stress so much, but the experience and the people...well, most of the people. :).

Well, it's back to my Statistics assignment now. I have to figure out how to advise a 65 year old woman on some investment decisions. Woo hooooo.