Being an Apple

I've been eating a lot of apples at work. Certainly at least one a day and often between the hours of 8p and 11p. Why so late you ask. I can't even go there right now, but I will say this, at 11p on Wednesday I took my eyes off my computer and grabbed an apple. I looked at it, bit it, admired it, bit it again, and thought, what if I was an apple. Then I thought to myself, if I was this apple I wouldn't be building this model right now, and I took a deep breath and buried my face in my computer and continued working. Existentialism has no place at the workplace though. In fact it's downright dangerous at 11pm on a weekday, especially on an empty stomach.

Today I got an email postcard (there's an app for that, apparently) from a friend who was back in Ann Arbor for the Penn State game. It was a blurry picture of a muddy patch of grass with maize and blue-clad students drinking from red Solo cups in the rain, and it was beautiful. Next week Michigan students will come to New York for their Wall Street Week and various other "professional treks". I chronicled this weird event back in 2007. This year I've been asked to speak to current MBA1s about the program, the process, the economy, the whatever. It's almost comical how different my world is now as compared to October 2007. So all these wide-eyed, wet-behind-the-ears students are going to come in and ask all kinds of questions so as to seem intelligent, interested, and smart, and all I'm going to want to say to them is, "Please have fun, please for the love of God enjoy yourselves, and appreciate those lazy Fridays where you wake up late, read or not read cases for a few hours, watch The Office and 30 Rock from the night before, change out of your pajamas, head to the gym, grab No Thai, and then go out with your friends". But really what I'll end up saying is something like prepare for your interviews blah blah blah, and then the MBA1s will look at me and see the tired look on my face and will say to themselves what I said to myself two years earlier which was, "whoa, it must suck to be this dude right now". As much as I hated standing in those godforsaken circles of chit-chat for all those months of recruiting, nodding my head at a bunch of guys I know would rather be doing anything else than talking to me, I would trade places with a first year MBA in half a second.

Today, Sunday, I'm actually "on call". I was asked to be ready to possibly come in and work today. So today I wait, with an imaginary guillotine over my head, and every time my phone rings a little piece of me dies, but so far the calls have only been good calls, ie friends and family. It's the first time, but I'm sure certainly not the last I'll be in this situation. I suppose in situations like this the question is whether it's better to know working on Sunday is a possibility or is it better to be surprised and have to come in on short notice. Is it better to be told on Friday that you might get punched in the mustache on Sunday and have to think about it all weekend, or is it just better to be sucker punched on Sunday out of nowhere. I'm not sure which is worse but I am sure that if I was an apple these aren't things I'd have to worry about. Enjoy the week.