What's the Difference

Week 2 in Ann Arbor brought much of the same as week 1. As I was sitting with my management and operations team in the cafeteria on a Sunday night I felt like I'd never left Ann Arbor. The time last year my fellow MBA1s and I were neck deep in group work, case readings, and recruiting. What a difference a year can make. My group had to do a 4-page crisis write-up for a Lockheed Martin case, and this time around we all "got it", as in we all seemed to know how to sit there, get shit done, and move onto the next task. I just want to illustrate some of the group dynamic differences between this year and last because I think it's interesting.

Silence, silence, silence
Last Year: Sometimes you don't know when someone is thinking, or you want to give someone time to collect their thoughts before they talk. So last year you could be sitting around and everyone is looking at their screen on the four sides of a table and you don't know whether they are reading what they've written, or looking at ESPN, (espn), so you were patient because it was the beginning of the school year and you were trying to be nice, welcoming, warm, and a team player.

This Year: You are not looking at ESPN, and you know that the difference between silence and talking could amount to an extra half hour of sitting and staring at each other. You talk things through and then you move on to the next subject. Done.


My Country is Niiiiice
Last Year: Maybe you were in a group with someone from not the US and maybe he or she was shy and had a hard time communicating. Last year you might've been very patient, and you might've hung on every word this person tried to say. And genuinely you appreciated the effort, albeit at times it was not helpful in the least.

This Year: Okay, you've had a year of getting cold called, prepping for interviews, and hurling insults in English after drinking half a beer, so if you are international and can't get your point across in a few cogent sentences, I'm sorry, but your airtime is getting cut down by half. And the international students know this, and for the most part they've stepped it up in group work. So while last year they might take a solid 20 seconds to say, "um yes, I have a question, and I hope that you explain this again, because to me, I do not understand what this means. Yes. Thank you", this year it's more like, "ayo, I don't know what the eff ya'll mean, nah mean?".

This Ain't Le Bernardin, It's Iron Chef
Last Year: At Le Bernardin, not that I've been, but the devil is in the details, and the ingredients, the service, the plating, etc etc is apparently exquisite. The dinners are long and expensive and memorable, again, apparently.

This Year: Someone peel the potatoes. Someone butterfly the lamb. Someone reduce that balsamic. Who is reducing the balsamic! Someone needs to be reducing the balsamic, like right now. This year we divide and conquer. If you are good at something you do it and you volunteer to do it because you want to get it done. The difference is that the Iron Chefs are as good as the Le Bernardin chefs, and the ingredients are as good, but this time around we move with speed and purpose, and when we plate the thing it might look a little rough around the edges, but we just cooked five freaking dishes in an hour. We've realized the marginal benefit of spending that extra time making everything perfect is just not worth it, yet we are committed to a very very solid end product. And the result is that getting the work done isn't all that bad.

And lastly, I think the major difference is that as people start to get offers, or have offers, they can relax a bit. I am definitely feeling like someone took some weight off my shoulders as last Friday I received an offer.

"Dear 8 pound 6 ounce Baby Jesus, or as our brothers to the south call you, Jésus…we thank you so much for this bountiful harvest of Domino’s, KFC, and the always delicious Taco Bell, and a full-time job offer. Amen"

A Different Kind of Bristol Scale

Yesterday my body said, "yo, chill out", so I'm listening. I'm not sure what it is, but when these MBA folks leave the workplace they all of the sudden start treating their bodies like garbage. I'm not even talking about the greasy food and cheap pitchers, I'm talking about stuff like forgetting to drink water. Some girl apparently passed out at The BUS on during Saturday's tailgate. I thought it should go without saying, but I guess maybe people do need to be reminded to drink water. During class today some girl left the class and about 20 minutes later someone from facilities came in to tell the professor she had to be taken to the hospital. Hopefully she's okay, and it was nothing serious. So I'll say it just this once, but please readers, hydrate.

Although I'm somewhat oriented already, Orientation Week lived up to the hype yet again this year. And Michigan football did not fail to disappoint yet again this year. My expectations for Michigan football are very modest, but my expectations for a solid year of social endeavors is very aggressive as it should be. What I didn't expect was my apparent lack of "class stamina". I had two classes today and while it was a pretty light day my eyelids started getting mighty heavy at around 4pm.

A bunch of my friends are in my 2:10 class and when I showed up I three of us were wearing the same exact blue polo shirt with a red horse, and not just that but another friend in the class before had the same shirt on and then three other people in my class had the same shirt on. The class was a finance class and most of the people in the class worked on Wall Street this summer, so I guess we played into every cliche of the predictable, lemming-like "finance guys". Kudos to Polo for being the "Official Outfitter" of the MBA first day of school.

Guys in b-school have much worse hairlines by the way.

It's funny to see the MBA1s all dressed up though. It'll be about a week before they are wearing t-shirts and flip flops. This is Michigan. And before it gets to be -5 degrees in three weeks people are going to want to enjoy the days of flip flops and t-shirts, and standing outside the building and throwing the football while the undergrads stroll by. And speaking of undergrads, who's the newest girl on the block to have a little baked Alaska cooking in the oven. Oh yes you are Bristol Palin. Oh yes you have a little baby baked Alaska in that tummy. So adorable. When you are 17 or whatever and have a baby in tow, it kind of kills your game at Skeeps, no? Like, do you wear a Gucci baby carrier out to the bar to match your bag?

The scary thing is that it took me about .5 seconds to find such a ridiculous item. I'm going to put this thing right up there on the ridiculous-ometer with the $400 Goyard dog bowl I saw once. Anyway, Bristol my dear, well done grabbing the local hockey stud. Those guys stay cool forever, trust me, I see them all working at the delis when I go home. Free chicken parms for life though. That's pretty awesome. Anyway, my dear Bristol is 17 going on 26, and I'm, well, 26 going on 17 or something like that these days. It's funny how things work out sometimes I guess. Enjoy the US Open.

Everybody Go To College. Like, Now.

It's about 9pm on a Tuesday and the air smells of fresh paint and hair conditioner, which means only one thing...it's August and I am back on campus. I've only been on campus for about 2 hours now, but I can already tell the slumping economy has caused major cutbacks, even in Ann Arbor. Sadly, the portion sizes at my thai takeout place have decreased and their prices have increased 50 cents. Not sadly, shorts manufacturers, facing less beneficial exchange rates and subsequently, higher prices for materials from Asia, seem to be using less fabric for their women's shorts. No complaints there. I too was affected by the economy and decided to use my computer less frequently in order to save power and reduce my electric bill...and that is a lie. I really just got lazy. Believe me if you want, but I have several half-written blogs hanging out waiting to be published, and for whatever reason I just couldn't pull the trigger. It's a different story now though, because I actually have stuff to write about, and as much as I enjoyed work this summer, I mean, I'm pretty sure you didn't really care too much about what I was doing. And while I'm talking jobs, the talk around town has of course been about offers, who got them, who didn't, who hasn't heard, and who's hooking up with who, wait what, she is, really, what a slut. I need to catch up on my gossip apparently. I fall into the "who hasn't heard yet" category, which is kind of frustrating. I will let you all know when I hear, in case you actually care.

Sitting here at my Ikea desk I really feel like I've never left school, and then I look at

a. how empty my fridge is
b. how tan I am
c. how much less clothing I have in my closets
d. my unconnected TV

and I realize that I've been gone for a few months. Am I looking forward to school? Define school. Am I looking forward to class, eh, mezzo forte. Am I looking forward to extracurriculars, um, forte. And football...fortissimo. I actually am excited about class because I finally get to choose my classes, and if I can't do well in Sneakers 201: Advanced Collecting, and Hamburger Cooking 101: Touch My Buns, then I really should rethink this whole MBA thing. My classes are primarily financed focused, which is what I want and need and hopefully come exam time I won't be curled up in the fetal position in the corner of my room. Because despite what people are saying, that did not happen last year. I haven't actually be in a formal classroom setting since February, because if you faithful readers remember, I was working on that consulting project in San Fran and by consulting project I mean the Spring of Fing...er...and I really worked (out) on my own timetable. So what I'm saying is that it might be a tiny readjustment back to reading cases and take tests. Anyway, enough about school, right guys? Right. It's Tuesday, and I just drove 10+ hours from Connecticut to Ann Arbor and I'm tired and my back hurts from sitting so much, but it's Tuesday, which of course means Skeeps with the boys. I suppose unpacking can wait until the morning. It feels good to be back, in Ann Arbor and of course on the blog. I hope you'll tune in again.

Shits and Giggles

Short post today...At the job I had before I went to school I had an office. Theoretically, if I wanted to take a cat nap I could. Of course I didn't, but I could. When you sit on the trading floor you can't take a nap, even if you wanted to. I was having this discussion yesterday with one of the analysts who came in after a long night and was saying that she would love to just close her eyes for a few minutes. I don't know what your offices are like, but there's a couch in the women's bathroom where I work. I imagine this is pretty common in offices in Manhattan. Well my friend decided that she was going to go into the ladies room and kick back on the couch for a minute. She went into bathroom and came back not a minute later only to report that there was a woman passed the heck out on the couch, shoes off, wrapped in a blanket, taking a nap. I was shocked. And from what I was told this wasn't some hungover intern, this was someone who was kind of senior. In some ways I was jealous though. The ladies can nap one off but the guys can't, after all there's nowhere we can shut our eyes in the men's room. Well apparently there is a place. An hour later I went to the bathroom and while standing at the urinal I heard snoring. I saw a pair of shoes sticking out from under the last stall. Some guy was passed out on the toilet. And in full disclosure, these toilets just are equipped with just a toilet seat and no lid, so you can imagine how comfortable that probably was.

The executive bathroom

I guess grownups need to be put down for a nap sometimes too, especially after the post-lunch food coma kicks in. I had to admire the guy's resourcefulness. Some people can fall asleep anywhere. I happen to not be someone who can fall asleep sitting up...in a bathroom...on a toilet. I guess practice makes perfect though. And speaking of stalls, I'll be talking about paper thin walls and more inappropriateness in my next post. Hopefully you'll stick around for it.

Guns Germs & Steel

There's a significant portion of Jared Diamond's book Guns Germs & Steel that's devoted to hunter vs. gatherer debate. I'd like to chalk up these past weeks to "hunting" or perhaps, "being hunted", and also "gathering" material for future blogs. I'm going to call it a sabbatical. As some of you may know, over the past few weeks I've been embroiled with some craziness that will give me a fireside story to tell for the rest of my days. In fact, last night I was at a clambake, and as we were sitting around a fire at about 11:30p, not 100% sober, I unleashed this beast of a story on a few friends by the fire and definitely "ooh-ed" and "ahh-ed" and "holy-shitted" the crowd for a solid 30 minutes. This story is going to take more than a single blog to tell so at some point I'll get to it. There's still not an ending so as I look for closure on this thing I'll think about how I want to tell it.

Last time I dropped some knowledge was around July 4th. I'm now 7 weeks into my 10 week internship. So far so good. I don't want to bore you with the details of the actual work, but all I'm going to say is that I'm hoping that there's an offer at the end of the rainbow because the more I look at Michigan's upcoming football schedule the more I look forward to the possibility of not having to recruit again right in the middle of it all. Apparently I find out about an offer on the last day of work. I kind of envision it going down in a Gladiator-like fashion, when I step into a room, the king/head recruiter gives me a thumbs up or a thumbs down, and I either die (inside, of course) or I live to fight another day.

Oil is at what?!!

In this type of market you have to prepare for the worst, and hope for the best. And if I'm going down, I'm at least going down with a mouthful of sushi. When I first started working in New York I was always jealous of my friends who got their lunch and dinners paid for by their companies. Meanwhile, I was getting paid less than I would've liked and took to brown-bagging it a solid three to four days a week. How great would it be to have the company pay for dinner, and on top of that, it would even be possible to use my credit card, get the miles, and then expense it back to the company. The equation was simple... eat food = see the world. As I sat at my cube eating the same turkey on wheat day after day I dreamed of the day I'd be able to use Seamless Web on the company's account. Well that day came this summer, and it came in the form of a $25 dinner allowance. The first time I ordered, I ordered $25 of thai food for myself. I stuffed my face as I sat alone at my desk, finishing up my work. If I had to work through dinner it might as well be with a stomach full of pad see ew...and soup...and me krob...and some dessert. At about 8:30pm I sat at my desk, wanting to vomit, and all I had in front of me were five empty takeout dishes and two more hours of work. It took about thirty minutes to realize that staying at work and ordering food sucked, regardless of what my dinner allowance was.

I really haven't had to stay late a whole bunch this summer, which I suppose is good, but I can 100% understand why some of my friends who are bankers put on some serious lbs. when they started work. If you are ordering on someone else's dime, maybe you order that extra sushi roll in case you want it, and of course you end up eating it when you probably didn't need to. And if you do that for a year, that one extra yellowtail roll really ends up being 30-40 extra yellowtail rolls, and that extra side of cornbread becomes 30-40 extra sides of cornbread, and the only thing Seamless about any of this is the transition to bigger pant sizes. I'm not advocating smaller meal stipends, although I wouldn't be surprised to see them shrink in this market, but I am advocating restraint, not for the sake of money, but for the sake of well-being. I know that as soon as I realize I'm staying for dinner I start planning out where I'm going to be seamless webbing later that night. Not good. I acknowledge that I'm still an amateur at this and I suppose that if I did this more often I'd be able to find my sweet spot where I could eat, eat quickly, eat healthfully, and get my work done and leave, but with a whopping seven weeks of seamless web experience I'm still struggling with the whole, "my eyes are bigger than my stomach" thing.

I guess practice makes perfect though. I just feel lucky that I've been able to avoid ordering seamless web for dinner at around 8:00pm and then ordering breakfast at 5am the next morning. Some of my fellow Michigan summer associates haven't been as lucky, because as Snoop Dogg would say, they may come in at 10:00am but "they ain't leaving 'til 6 in the, 6 in the morn". Anyway, I've got about nine more hours until my bacon egg and cheese sandwich tomorrow morning and the faster I can get to sleep the closer I can get to my beloved breakfast sandwich.

Even Diddy Would Blush

First, fifty lashes with a wet noodle for being so delinquent on this blog. 

Now, onto business.

Justin Timberlake, stop biting my shit. This link was posted in January and has gone through some iterations. The gist of that January post was as follows...in the midst of the Giants epic playoff run I put some new words to Three Dog Night's "Eli's Coming". If you want this blog to make any sense you should probably click on the link above now and read that post and then come back. 

Again, because I sure as hell can't get enough...

What's 5'6", dates attractive woman, dances extraordinary well, and is behind the originality curve by five months...

You heard it hear first, kinda, sorta, whatever. For you loyal readers, I thought you'd appreciate knowing that when you read this blog, you are, like, looking several months into the future, or something. 

Anyway, on to more pressing matters...Despite what it may say above, today is July 4th, and in true American fashion I am spending the 4th in the epicenter of gluttony, The Hamptons. Despite what VH1 might feed you, coming out here can be a very relaxing, mellow, and quiet. However, fortunately for cable TV networks, the Hamptons are also abound with d-bags, and baygs who provide fuel for the fire, and in this case, my blog. Last weekend, after a lovely dinner, a friend recommended we go to this guy's house. He said something to the effect of, "this isn't going to be fun, but it's amazing people watching". I love me some people watching so I agreed to tag along. We arrived at a very nice house in Southampton that had been rented by a singular person. This kid apparently had money to burn. When we entered the house a cadre of girls were playing around with this pretty sweet looking blender and making strawberry margaritas, with patron, obviously. Anything less would be uncivilized. After standing around and playing some jewish geography I just didn't want to be there anymore. The atmosphere was getting stale, it had been a hectic day at work, and I just wanted to go home. And then someone suggested playing a few games of flip cup...talk about something right in my wheelhouse.

I went outside to the table and saw no beer. Kind of hard to play flip cup with no beer. Never fear, tonight flip cup would not be played with beer, it would be played with Dom Perignon. 

Definitely does not go down as smoothly as Miller Lite.

I'm not really into champagne, but who was I to pass up on this most utterly ridiculous variation of flip cup. This was more offensive than Diddy driving motorcycles off of his diving board into his pool just because he could. After several quick games and four empty bottles on the table, one girl remarked as she pointed to the empties, "that's a pair of shoes right there". What type of shoes were we talking about here? I countered by saying that the equivalent amount of money could've been taken to the Bass Outlet in Amagansett and used to purchase footwear for all 37 Pitt-Jolie children. 

I guess the point is that back in 1776, if the American soldiers had any idea they were fighting so that in 2008 some over-privileged kid could pour expensive French champagne all over a Chinese made table while smoking Canadian-grown marijuana, the soldiers probably would have laid down their guns, gone home, and watched reruns of Entourage. 

On this July 4th 2008, I am thankful for Eli Manning...what? Wrong holiday. On this July 4th I say Americans...grab an American flag (made in China), grab a burger (from a cattle ranch in Canada), grab your stereo (made in Japan), and grab the nearest piece of tail (your Polish housekeeper, nicely done), and just realize we ain't in Kansas anymore. 

Please Stop Pinging My Wheelhouse

So now that I work in financial services I have to be up on the lingo. I have to know the acronyms and I have to know what the "kids on the street" and the "kids on The Street" are saying these days. My job has an abundance of acronyms...CER, VER, REC, RGGI to name a few. I still prefer the simple, yet effective, WT for White Trash.

Two words that have really made their way into not only the industry lexicon, but I think everyone's lexicon are "ping" and "wheelhouse".

PING

Ping used to go with pong, plain and simple. And then when you got old enough you basically stopping saying ping, because you started substituting "beer" for "ping". It was kind of like a rite of passage. Like a dormant sexually transmitted disease apparently "ping" is baaaack. You are walking down the hall. You have your blackberry in your pocket. You feel it buzzing. You say, "dude, who's pinging me?" Or you're at a bar. Your buddy is taking his sweet time in the men's room while you wait entertaining the marginally attractive girl he thinks looks like Jessica Beil. You ping him and tell him to hurry the hell up. Back in the day you'd call or text or if you're really old, you'd go and say something in person. At some point along the line people stopped caring to distinguish between how you label initiating contact, so they just say "ping". I don't have a blackberry, so I'm not sure it's possible to ping someone yet. I guess that's something to look forward to.

WHEELHOUSE

By no means is this word new. If you pinged dictionary.com (is that possible?) you'd find the following under wheelhouse...

"An enclosed area, usually on the bridge of a vessel, from which the vessel is controlled when under way"

For me, wheelhouse was primarily used when describing a baseball pitch that fell right into your sweetspot that you'd crush. Now, everyone and their mother is saying wheelhouse. Wheelhouse made it's way back into my life during my recent trip to Aruba. It started when we were sitting around one morning and we were thinking about what to do. My friend said "drinking beers on the lazy river would definitely be in my wheelhouse". So the whole trip we were always talking about our wheelhouses. At two in the morning after a night out we'd all talk about what kind of food would be in our wheelhouse. Out on the boat deep sea fishing we concurred that catching a marlin would definitely be in our wheelhouse. We met a blonde girl who we all agreed we'd invite into our respective wheelhouses, and by the end of the trip we just simply referred to her as "Wheelhouse". For example, "is that Wheelhouse over there by the pool?"

Anyway, I've been away from the working world for some time now, but people at work are dropping "wheelhouse" every five minutes. Projects, agreements, vacations...I mean, how big are these wheelhouses these days. All I know is that I'm going to start dropping wheelhouse into conversations at least once a day now.

What really is in my wheelhouse right now is sleep.