Durham, Day 0: Fuqua Friday

Fuqua Friday: Enjoy a beverage (or two!) and network with your classmates

Fuqua Friday.  A fantastic tradition where the Daytime MBA class gets together each week on Friday to have a few adult beverages and some hors d’oeuvres.  What better way to end the week than to have some quality networking time with your classmates and Fuqua staff, before everyone breaks off for their weekend plans.  I’ve always found this to be a great tradition (the University of Delaware also did this when I was there), as it’s easy to go through a week, a month, even a year seeing people in a working environment and never really getting to know them.

Continue reading

Who has two thumbs and is ‘Russian’ around?

This guy!  (Really?  Stooping to old man jokes?)

In less than 24 hours,  I’ll start the journey to St. Petersburg, and I’m as un-prepared as always.  You’d think by now, the last overseas residency for us Americans, I’d have done a better job of managing my time leading up to the plane flight.  As it turns out, procrastination just couldn’t wait!

I got in to work today to clean-up any last minute issues, and now I’m home enjoying the beautiful day in Philadelphia.  After the latest heat wave, it’s good to get a taste of what St. Petersburg is going to be everyday…low 70s during the day and cool at night.  But that enjoyment is only going to go so far, as I still have to:

  • Do laundry, specifically making sure I have clean “business attire” (I wore flip-flops today to work!)
  • Pack 75 pounds of crap into two or fewer bags
  • Cut the grass (or, pay someone else to cut the grass)
  • Finish the Accounting pre-reading (two more case studies)
  • Read all of the GMI pre-reading (or at least make printouts)
  • Read all of the Operations Management pre-reading (or make printouts)
  • Do CCL pre-reading

Continue reading

In Soviet Russia, language butchers you!

You can call me 3Bитц рэнди вилльям…or R6NDI VILL98M VZVIT3 for short.  I don’t know what to even make of that…Cyrillic, you look so much like the alphabet I am used to, but then you have to add in all the backwards and squiggly characters.

Now that semester 4 is in the bag, I guess it’s time to start getting ready for Semester 5.  Even though this semester’s pre-reading arrived last Tuesday (less than 12 hours after Finals were due, which is quite the mean trick by Fuqua), I only got around to opening the box this Monday.  Although each successive pre-reading seems to be lighter than the previous one, it doesn’t seem like the semesters are getting any easier.  All I have to say is, look out textbooks, I might even take the shrink wrap off of you this week!

Actually, lets say one more thing:  Not.ready.for.another.semester.  Heck, I’m not even mentally ready to travel.  I don’t want to say it’s good that St. Petersburg is the last overseas trip I’ll be taking as part of this program, but having to go from Philly to Newark to Dusseldorf, Germany to St. Petersburg isn’t going to be a great experience.  Unless of course, I get a beer and a bratwurst in the airport in Germany.  Maybe if I’m lucky, Lufthansa will serve beer and brats on the plane flight as well; if so, then I can say that I’m excited for Semester 5!