Good Jury Duty Book? "Spreadsheet Modeling & Decision Analysis, 5e" by Cliff Ragsdale

It is one of the most boring books that I have ever, ever read in my life, and furthermore, since I haven’t touched real math since senior year of high school, it is quite challenging, and regularly hurts my liberal arts feelings.

However, I need to take this book with me because I will be forced to read it, locked down in the courtroom with no other alternatives. I’ve only done a third of the assigned reading.

God, graduate-level math really sucks.

*Pow*, MBA B!tch! What Up?!!

Seriously, my friend Cornelius.

He cracks me the feck up, serious.

And the MBA conversations continue between yours truly, the MBA novice who is only halfway through her first trimester, and Cornelius, my friend who will graduate his program this week.

LoveMeDeux: This week one your fellow Anderson students told me about the “secret MBA handshake”.
Cornelius: ?
LoveMeDeux: I have no idea.
Cornelius: Me neither, and I’m an Anderson MBA too.
LoveMeDeux: She just said “Yeah well, it doesn’t matter if you’re Graziadio, we have the secret MBA handshake”
Cornelius: Alright…if she says so…
LoveMeDeux: Yeah. I’m like WTF? At the time I was like, “Uh, yeah..the secret handshake, right…”
LoveMeDeux: I don’t “get” MBA people.
Cornelius: ?
LoveMeDeux: It is almost like…a little arrogance? But “justified” arrogance?
Cornelius: Ok no. Cornelius’ MBA Rules.
LoveMeDeux: Ok, tell.
Cornelius: #1 – Any MBA student that tells you directly, or somehow implies, that his or her completion of an MBA has somehow made them better at any one of the following: 1) Project management, 2) Finance, 3) Leadership, 4) Sex, or 5) Any area related to life or business is lying to you.
LoveMeDeux: HAHAHaaaaaa!!!! I think that’s what she was implying with the secret handshake!
Cornelius: It’s the ultimate in MBA bullshit.
LoveMeDeux: It is! People act like they’re somewhat more entitled! Like they’re more equipped.
Cornelius: The only thing an MBA is allowed to say is that they completed a rather arduous application process that is more thorough than what companies have the time or interest in doing themselves. I challenge them all the time. I know what they learn, I know how they learn it. There are some of the skills good, yes. But show it!
Cornelius: Don’t just go *pow* MBA, bitch! What’s up!
LoveMeDeux: Seriously. Don’t act like God reached down & touched you.
Cornelius: If that happened, I’d expect to cum.
LoveMeDeux: OMFG!!!!!!! You are fucking hilarious!!!
Cornelius: Too sacrilegious?
LoveMeDeux: Nooo noo, that’s not what I’m laughing at! I’m laughing at the “MBA, bitch, what up!”
Cornelius: 🙂 You missed my witty banter.
LoveMeDeux: I did!!! I just saw you say it: “Pow! Mba bitch, what up!!” In your whiteboy way! That was amazing. Thank you, I totally lost it laughing.
Cornelius: Gracias! 🙂

…But It Beats Working.

School is hell, but it beats working.

Oh Matt Groening, truer words have never been spoken.

I find myself in this kind of weird half-state a lot of times. Like, sometimes I really give a sh!t, and am scared sh!tless and dreading that whatever is taught in the next class period is something that I won’t understand.

Then I alternate between that and not really giving a sh!t, thinking “Oh well, if I don’t get it, then I’ll pass it next semester.”

Also, I freak out and write good papers two hours before they’re due…but some other times, I can’t be bothered, even though I know I really should be busting my butt on something.

Seriously, I don’t know where this range of emotions is coming from. I clearly need to work on this. Here’s a list:

• Time management: Clearly, I have little to none in this arena of time management. I have come from a work environment that was working in a constant state of being reactionary. Which means I am still used to doing everything last minute, as I was given no real lead-time. Now that I have all this lead time, I really don’t know what to do with it.
• Discipline: I sometimes succumb to having no discipline in my life. It’s literally been nearly a decade since I was a student last, and I have no disciplinary infrastructure, where I come home, do my homework, and go play. I need to self-enforce the idea of get up in the am, grab coffee and breakfast, hit the gym, shower, do some reading+homework, go home, make dinner, sleep. It is so hard, because when it comes down to it, I really just want to sleep in–and I end up kicking myself when it ends up being 5pm and I have read 4 pages out of this humongous chapter.
• Quality(?): This is something I need to work with my classmates on, using them as a standard/reference, because oftentimes, I am finding that I have no idea what my profs expect from me. I’m feeling like, “Thanks for your übergeneric, seriously vague description in the syllabus of what you want from this paper, but what the heck is it that you really want?!”

The hilarious thing is, despite the fact that I feel like I’m internally struggling with all these huge “problems”, I have been asked several times during the trimester already, “Hey, what do we have due in this class today?” That just cracks me up, because I was the student in elementary school through to undergrad asking my classmates, “Do we have anything due in __?!”

I guess the fact that I am paranoid and overcompensating for my nervousness of being a student again makes me “appear” to be in charge. Ha!

A Slightly Irrational, Very Fundamental Shift.

For the 6 months after being laid off, all I wanted, and rather badly, was a job.

I wanted a job so I could feel stable again. So I could have health insurance. So I could put more money away in my CD. So I could fly to NYC or SF to visit friends, or just plain go shopping.

But aside from the emotional implications of having a job, which mainly meant gaining stability back, what we were talking about was the money. I wanted a job for the money. Because money meant that I could do things, pay for things I wanted, but maybe didn’t necessarily need.

But ever since the week of May 4th–the week I became a grad student again–it’s not the money that I want. The stability that I need to function, I will lean on my family for.

Now, all that I want, that I desire, and obsess over, is a grade.

Yes friends, now, all that I want is a C or better in my Quantitative Analysis course. That’s all I want. (I got my Organizational Behavior class covered, yo, it’s like a given that I’ll get an A in that class. I love it too much to get anything close to a B.)

Isn’t it funny how life changes overnight? Now, I couldn’t really give a shit about money, or getting a job.

Funnily enough, despite the fact that I stopped applying for jobs about a month ago, last week I got called back for a job interview, for a job I’d actually be pretty damned good at doing. But walking out of that 4-person panel interview, suddenly I got a bit disgusted.

Two of the four panel members were kind of rude and stiff. (Later, a fellow classmate of mine told me that she had a similar experience interviewing for the current job she has, totally rude people, and that she thought she didn’t get it.) All I could think as I went back to my car was,

“How could these people be so rude! As if that job was as important as my Quant grade?!! Don’t these people get what’s truly at stake?!”

[I know it was totally irrational, but that’s why this is being written on my blog, and not anywhere else.] The point is, I just realised my brain made a fundamental shift–I didn’t want to deal with their emotional bullshit, because it only served to aggravate me when I had “bigger” things on my mind than their interdepartmental shite.

This blog entry is written neither to illustrate how stressed out I am, nor to illustrate how irrational I’m becoming. Au contraire, I’m almost being an anthropologist examining the innards of my own brain, a brain that is slowly taking on a cultural shift that I myself am almost not in charge of. It again illustrates how being laid off was a mixed blessing, because at the age of 28, I feel I’d much rather be concerned with my Quant grade, than some arbitrary job that will probably end up being a dead end.

Regarding the job, now I wonder what I would do if I were offered the position. Six months ago, I would have jumped on it. Now, I’m not so sure.

And if Murphy’s Law has any say in it, just you watch, I’ll be offered this job.

It Takes Time To Get Back Into It.

Cornelius is a trusted friend of mine who has finished his master’s degree. He is old hat at the academic experience now, and I am just about falling apart at the beginning of mine. Tonight the subject is about our respective degrees, and then this exchange occurs:

LoveMeDeux: Ooh what a relief! I only need to read 4 pages! Why am I so disorganized?
Cornelius: lol LoveMeDeux, LoveMeDeux.
LoveMeDeux: What?
Cornelius: It takes time to get back into it.
LoveMeDeux: I thought I needed to read the whoooolllle chapter. But it’s only 4 pages.
Cornelius: Remember you’ve been out of school for awhile.
LoveMeDeux: Okay, 8 pages. But better than like 30! Eeeh LoveMeDeux is exciteds!
Cornelius: Oh boy.

Yeah, oh boy is right. I wonder what Cornelius thinks of me, flailing around in the deep blue MBA sea, barely treading the choppy waters all around? In my mind, Cornelius is hanging out, drifting along in his inner tube, RayBan Wayfarers planted on his face, daiquiri with umbrella in hand.

The only hope is that one day, I will get my own inner tube, and my own set of Wayfarers. I’ll order a strawberry daiquiri.