I wonder if it’s true that the older you get the faster time goes by. It sure feels like it sometimes. Certainly, my week at the beach was not nearly long enough. It was very relaxing however, and it was nice to spend time with my family. Unfortunately, realization that school is about to start came quickly as I started receiving emails from my professors with assignments for the first week of classes. I also spent a couple of hours on Wednesday morning trying to rearrange my schedule a bit and pick up some classes. I wasn’t able to get everything I wanted and my Q3 seems a little heavy but I’ll keep trying. I am excited about picking up a GBE to India over spring break though. Woohoo!
This morning I got up bright and early, okay okay, it was around 9 and headed to the Darden Exchange book store to pick up my books and texts for Q1. Wow! I’ve totally forgotten how expensive books are! I walked out $450 lighter but weighed down by two very heavy bags. I do have to say that I really like the bound booklets for SY cases vs. the loose leaf packets from FY. Aside from the course books I also have two text books which I’m going to order online used, since the bookstore is all out of used copies. I think I’ll save almost $100 by going through AbeBooks. And that’s including expedited shipping.
Before I head off to do some reading for tomorrow, here’s a run-down of my classes for this quarter:
Early Week:
Venture Capital
Integration & Innovation in Services - The New Economy
FY is in full swing for the class of 2010. I just came back from sitting on a panel during the Entrepreneurship Forum. I know it’s just the beginning of the year and everyone hasn’t gotten sucked into attending recruiting events just yet, but I’m excited to say that it feels like there’s a good number of entrepreneurs in that class. I hope they continue exploring it as a serious career option. I know that I am very happy to be where I am today and I look forward to talking to first years about their ideas and business plans.
Personally, my calendar is already filling up with meeting requests and club fairs and all that good stuff that comes along with Darden. Soon I’ll be checking my calendar reminders to tell me exactly where I need to be at any given time. Until then though I’m off to the beach for a week. See y’all in a few!
In the process of doing a lot of research for my incubated venture I’ve come across dozens of websites that allow you to customize, well, pretty much anything. Since this is a topic that interests me greatly, I’ve created a separate blog to review the services of those websites that deal with clothing and shoes. Check it out at Made to Fit. As always comments and suggestions are welcome!
I’m generally pretty terrible at taking my clothes in to get tailored. Mostly, I just end up wearing dresses, skirts and pants that are way too long. That’s why all of my jeans end up ripped in the back and disgustingly eternally dirty. While too-long jeans actually don’t really bother me that much, I realize that at my height skirts and dresses that hit mid-calf make me look short and stocky. Yes, yes, I know, I AM short, but that doesn’t mean that I have to look all stubby. I like to think that I have pretty nice legs. In light of that, I decided to have a dress I’m planning on wearing to a wedding later this week, shortened. I searched online for a tailor here in Charlottesville and while I got quite a few listings, only one place came with a review. Two reviews, in fact, and both very good. I decided to give Heidi’s Perfect Fit a chance. I have to say I’m pretty happy. The turnaround time was exactly a week, although when I spoke with Heidi on the phone, she mentioned it could be done faster if necessary. The dress was shortened about 5 inches, the seams are even and expertly finished. And the price seems reasonable - $20, not that I have anything to compare it to. In conclusion, if you’re looking to have something tailored, I recommend Heidi’s. I’ve already made a mental list of several more items that could really use to be a few inches shorter.
Now if someone could suggest a good shoe cobbler in Charlottesville…
I am so loving the 2.0 upgrade on my iPhone. Not only am I writing this post through the new wordpress application on the iPhone, but I also get Darden email, contacts and calendar sync over the air! That is so much better than going through webmail and having to sync everything else by physically connecting the phone to my laptop.
Sigh, less than a month left until year 2 classes start. Pretty amazing how quickly the summer flew by. I have a week left in the incubator, officially. I’ve made good progress in the past 10 weeks on getting my venture going. I hope that I have enough hours in the day to continue working on it as well as classes and my involvement with several clubs. They do say that the second year classwork is not quite as intensive as first. We’ll see. For now I’ll be “stalking” the add/drop period so I can pick up another class and hopefully rearrange my schedule a bit.
Oh, before I forget, everyone tune in to watch Adam Nelson in the Olympics!
I can’t believe how quickly the summer is going by. Some of my classmates are already half way through their internships. I am, of course, working in the incubator and I have to say that starting your own venture is A LOT of work. I mean, I knew that going in, but it exceeds even my own expectations. I’m enjoying it though and hopefully will be at a good place in August to continue my work during the school year.
Charlottesville is an interesting place in the summer. It is obviously a lot less crowded since most of the students are gone. It also rains pretty much every afternoon/night. I don’t remember it being like that when I was here as an undergrad. Yesterday, my boyfriend and I drove out to Skyline Drive and took a hike on Turk Mountain. It was fun, but tiring. We came across a huge black snake and a cute little orange frog. The picture you see is the summit, it’s about 1.1 miles from where we parked.
I have a complaint. I went to the gym earlier this month and was turned away because apparently you have to pay extra to use it during the summer. Now, I don’t remember if it was like that when I was here a few years back in undergrad but frankly it pisses me off. I pay 45K in tuition every year. I think that is a ridiculous amount as it is, especially considerign that I have to pay for books and everything else on top of that. But to pay for the gym too? North Grounds is virtually empty most of the day. The school can’t cover $80 for a few people, especially when they pay an arm and a leg for tuition? It really irritates me. They constantly send me solicitations and I know I can expect even more once I graduate. But why would I want to give the school money in the future when now that I’m basically broke as a grad student and they can’t help me out? This, of course, is not specifically a Darden issue, more like a University of Virginia issue. That’s not to mention that you have to pay extra to take group exercise classes. Now, I went to several gyms in NY over the years and never have I had to pay extra for classes. Blah.
“Studies reveal that in the dog-eat-dog, look-out-for-No. 1, highly competitive business world, only the aggressive, risk-taking alpha male can expect to succeed as an entrepreneur.”
Now, as this article states, the above is a commonly held stereotype and although personally, thanks to my parents I suppose, I’ve never felt that way myself, I do notice that a much smaller percentage of my female friends and acquaintances chose the entrepreneurial path than male. Do you think that this is a generally accepted stereotype that is affecting the career choices of the two genders or are there some other factors?
Wow, okay, I’ve been slacking on the whole blogging thing the past month a half. Thanks Mandy for a gentle reminder that I need to get on it. As I mentioned before, Q4 was surprisingly busy for me, and unfortunately the end of FY felt a bit anticlimactic… I think this was mostly due to the fact that we all finished our finals at different times. Unlike core classes, electives don’t have a scheduled day for finals. Some of my more determined classmates were done as early as Wednesday whereas some of the less motivated (possibly me…) took until the last minute on Friday. In addition, the FY disorientation took place the Friday before finals, kind of in the middle of Darden Days ‘08. That in itself seemed liked poor scheduling, with various DD activities cutting into exam studying time. Okay, okay, it’s highly unlikely that I was going to use that time to study anyway, but still.
After I turned in my last final, I promptly planted myself on the couch and spent the following week watching movies and reading for fun. First book was one I’ve been meaning to read for a while - Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Maybe I was still tired from taking finals but I was never able to fully get into the book. Up until the very end I felt like I had to force myself to continue reading. I’d give it a 3.5 out of 5 stars. I didn’t realize that this book was made into a movie recently. My friend saw it and claims that it is one of the worst movies she has seen. Oh well, just added it to my Netflix queue. My next book was Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood who also wrote one of my favorite books - Handmaid’s Tale. I really enjoyed this book and read without being able to stop. In fact, I was a bit sad when I was done and wanted it to keep going. I should also add that dystopian novels tend to be at the top of my favorite lists. In any case, I give this one a 5 out of 5. Another book I didn’t absolutely love despite the generally excellent reviews is The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. Once again, I give this 3.5 out of 5. There were definitely parts that I enjoyed but the attempts at philosophical discussion seemed a bit forced and pretentious to me. Judging by all the wonderful reviews of this book, I stand alone in my opinion.
I’m also in the middle of reading two other books. What is the What by Dave Eggers and The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory. I’m having a really hard time getting past the first couple of chapters of What is the What, which I suppose doesn’t surprise me that much since I simply hated A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. The Philippa Gregory book is okay. I more or less know what happens so it’s hard to find the motivation to finish that second half. On my list to read soon: The God Delusion, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The Blind Assassin. There are many more of course, but I think I will tackle these first.
What else is on my plate in the next couple of weeks? The Incubator officially starts on the 27th, although I’ve been going in for about a week now. I’ve even hired my first employee - a web developer! Later next week I’m in a wedding in Virginia Beach. What an expensive ordeal that turned out to be… The following week my brother turns 25 (wow, we’re old) and I’m off to Miami for the weekend with my boyfriend. Can’t wait to hang out on the beach tanning and reading books. Yay for summer!
I seriously thought that this quarter I would have a lot more time. How wrong! Although the class and homework load does seem to be a little bit lighter, or at least much better distributed, I’m inundated by group projects, club meetings, various applications, summer work plans, etc.. Granted, I do enjoy all of my classes so much more this quarter. I suppose it’s because I actually picked 3 of them. Speaking of picking classes… We are supposed to put in our bids for all of next year and wow, it is much tougher than I thought.
The whole first year class received three files - a word document with instructions and two excel files, one with quarter schedules and one with a list of all classes offered. In addition, you can download a pdf with historical bid point information (min, max, avg, and std deviation) for each course offered this year. The sheer volume of all this information caused me to keep putting off choosing classes for a good week. Finally my boyfriend took mercy on me and shared the spreadsheet he used to pick his classes last year. And although I had to spend a good hour populating the spreadsheet with the most recent bid history and current course offerings, it was a great help. Now I just have to get myself to log on and submit my bids.
My incubator application is in and I’m a bit nervous. I think I have a great idea and I put in a lot of time into researching and writing the executive summary but there are quite a few people applying and not that many spots available. Please keep your fingers crossed for me! Though, I think that regardless of whether I am admitted or not, I will be here in Charlottesville working on getting it off the ground.
By the way, I just found out that I and four other Darden bloggers have been nominated for the BoB by Clear Admit. In addition, a future Dardenite was nominated in the applicant bloggers category. Congrats on the nominations everyone! BTW, check out the new pictures of all the Darden bloggers.
This is a really neat concept of using one wood and rubber shoe base and an innovative patent-pending straping system to “create” a virtually unlimited number of sandals. In fact, the mohop website states that their shoe has been dubbed the “infinity sandal.” Aside from potentially saving the custumer money by eliminating the need to [...]
I can’t believe how quickly the summer is going by. Some of my classmates are already half way through their internships. I am, of course, working in the incubator and I have to say that starting your own venture is A LOT of work. I mean, I knew that going in, but it exceeds even my own expectations. I’m enjoying it though and hopefully will be at a good place in August to continue my work during the school year.
