Lava

Introducing the newest member of our family:In an attempt to keep with the weather theme in naming our pets, we changed her name to Lava; the name she came with (Gladys) didn't really roll of the tongue so well.

One of the big reasons we adopted her was for Mr. Squall - with me in school and Jonathan working, he's going to be home alone a lot. While it seemed like a little friend was a great idea, so far, he's not so impressed. Apparently he doesn't think she's as cute as we do.

"It's the economy, stupid" or just the stupid economy?

For those of you not involved in MBA school, here are some rough estimates: typically, out of an average MBA class, about 40% of students want to go into consulting, about 40% into investment banking, and the other 20% of us are apparently just screwing around. At least, that's how it USED to be.

Just how bad is it? So just remember that 40% of my class is about 200 students. And that those investment banking jobs are the most lucrative - those kids pay back the $150k they racked up in loans in no time. I attended a 'pursue your passion' Career Services session with 60 or so of my closest friends this week, and one exercise asked us to choose a function we're interested in and analyze a job description. Marketing? About 10 hands up. Consulting? Another 20 or so (right on target). Investment banking? 4. No, not 40. FOUR.

At this point, I'm tempted to laugh evilly and say 'screwing around looks pretty good now, don't it, you quant nerds??' But then I realize that now I have to compete against all those kids for the jobs I want. F&$#ing economy.

Day 1 (or is it Day 0?)

First day of class - done! I had a 'getting to know career services' thing this morning (which is good, considering that the point of this whole school venture is to get a JOB). That was followed by my first real class in graduate school! Sadly, it did feel somewhat like undergrad - in as much as I didn't finish the readings before class started . . . hopefully that's a one time event :)

I am a little worried about next week, considering the number of emails I've gotten about other activities going on (you know, in addition to class, homework, figuring out what I want to do with my life and researching how to get there, and maybe some time with the husband). If I could only figure out how to survive on an hour of sleep per night, I'd be all set!

Jonathan is still enjoying his job so far - especially the part where they don't call after hours. Or before hours. Or on weekends. I guess you could say the best part of his job is the sweet, sweet silence emanating from his cell phone.

September

Hard to believe this month's almost over, though I do feel like I've been in orientation FOREVER. I know it seems like something called 'orientation' should be easy, but it's been pretty exhausting. They're very much about sucking as much out of you as they can in an effort to raise your 'self-awareness.'

So how's my self-awareness? Apparently I'm an ENTJ (big surprise), which makes me an NT temperament. Supposedly that makes me a 'natural leader', my celebrity counterpart is Bill Gates, and my (annoying) pet peeve at work is people trying to manage me. Fascinating.

I've also attended lectures on leadership styles, diversity, career services, academic services, etc., bid for my classes (managed to get all three I wanted, unlike most of my class), and watched a video of myself interacting in a group.

Two more days and the real work of classes and recruiting preparation begin. Happy first day of fall to me! (and you).

Random Chicago

School starts next week, and there are already quite a few social events that we've/I've attended this week. So that means that, very soon, this blog will probably be all school all the time, so I should probably post about some of the things that happened during the last two months in Chicago.

First, Aunt Jen & Uncle Chris came to visit! As our first house guests they had to put up with our house not being completely put together, but they seemed to survive anyway. As Jonathan and I were both still working for our previous company, Jen & Chris did a good bit of venturing out on their own, but we did try to show them the little we knew of Chicago at that point! Here we are at the Pump Room - kind of an old-school fancy restaurant in downtown (they have black & white pictures hanging on the walls of all the celebrities who've visited):

We also managed to see one of the many weekend street festivals - this one was the Taste of Lincoln Park:

Yesterday, I took part in the GSB's 'Been There Done That' tour - they divided all of us into groups and sent us out into the city to take pictures of what we thought were the 7 Wonders of Chicago (kind of cheesy, but a good way to see what you want in the city and try to make friends). Lo and behold, we managed to photograph two wonders at the same time:The auditorium is called the Pritzer Pavilion, and it's pretty cool in and of itself (feel free to wikipedia it if you're interested in its wonders). But see that dark dot, kind of in between the two sets of seats on the stage? In a dark purple/blue/black top? It's OPRAH!! And oh yeah, all those people on the stage are the American medalists from Beijing, including Michael Phelps. But really, the important thing here is, well, it's Oprah.

Best advertisement we've seen in years . . .

That's real fake turf you see there . . .

Now if only it had an attractive male model in front of it . . .

That's better.

Further proof that the war hasn't ended . . .

Not the one in Iraq. The one here - you know, blue and grey, north and south, blah blah blah.

Being raised in the Georgia, I am quite familiar with southern sentiment regarding the 'war of northern aggression.' And having made a lot of friends not from the south, I've noticed that they find this amusing or different. What I've never heard anyone say is "oh yeah, they're totally like that up north too, just for the other side."

But perhaps they are - we took a trip up to Chicago's north shore neighborhoods yesterday, and walked around Northwestern's campus. We noticed a man on campus whose t-shirt was emblazoned with these words "American by birth . . . Union until death."

Now maybe he meant 'union' in terms of a group of people working together for higher pay and better working conditions, but the graphic design on the back of his shirt makes me doubt that . . .