Wednesday, August 11, 2004
I went to the big Wharton kegger. I mingled. It turned out to be fun. I think my low expectations, and the strange experience of setting "goals" for the party (meet 10 people, don't stick with one person, mingle), actually helped me enjoy the experience. Because "fun" was not one of my goals. Fun just kind of happened. I wasn't even ready to leave when my new friends were. I am not socially incompetent. Although I did seem to piss off one guy by asking where the bathroom was in the middle of him interrogating me about reality TV. I honestly needed to go to the bathroom, I wasn't trying to get away from him. Oh well, I will hopefully pick up some ettiquette lessons along the way here.
Week 2 (now on day 5) is having the effect of making me feel like I suddenly fit in. A big part of that is that I have started to make real friends. So far I've always had at least one person to have lunch with. I had two people to go the party with. I have people to do weird campus errands with. I am not bored and lonely at school at all. My social anxiety is starting to diminish. I do need to learn to be as friendly as the people around me - it's astonishing how much everyone wants to meet each other. People in Philadelphia in general are insanely friendly. I love it, but it's an adjustment to take that guard down and start randomly talking to strangers.
Yoga may start to be a problem. I went to a pretty good class today, but I have serious fitness needs from my yoga since it's the only physical activitiy (besides walking as a form of transportation) that I do. Philly does not have the wide range and depth of yoga offerings that NYC has. Especially within a five block radius of my house. Whatever, I will stop writing about this since no one but myself could possibly care.
I'm getting a DVR!!! It turns out that Comcast does actually have them, although they did not tell me this when I first signed up for cable service. Because it's lame ass Comcast, they do not have a "dual band" DVR, which means that I can only record one show at a time. And that sucks, but I think I can work it out since almost every show on cable repeats at least once. This will mean some creative scheduling on the DVR - recording the entire season alone is not going to cut it - but I am up to it if it means not missing shows I want to see anymore. And, conversely, not watchiing every repeat of Law and Order because it's the only thing on when I want to watch TV.
Some of you may wonder why I don't buy a TiVo and am instead totally devoted to the DVR. This is why: 1. TiVo requires a phone connection, which is dumb. 2. TiVo means a whole other item to put in my TV stand. There's not a lot of room there. 3. TiVo means yet another remote (although I imagine there must be some way to use your TiVo remote for your cable and DVD player too, so maybe that's a dumb reason) 4. The biggest reason - you have to buy the TiVo box, which most importantly means a big cash outlay, and less importantly means you own this piece of technology that may become outdated within a year or two. With the DVR you just rent the box, and can upgrade when they finally get a dual band DVR at Comcast without buying anything new. Plus when you calculate monthly fees + buying the TiVo box, the DVR is a lot cheaper.
I am becoming a crazy Time Warner cheerleader - I spent like five minutes telling my Comcast customer service representative that I really loved Time Warner and that Time Warner was fantastic. I am a TV junkie. It's sick.
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Week 2 (now on day 5) is having the effect of making me feel like I suddenly fit in. A big part of that is that I have started to make real friends. So far I've always had at least one person to have lunch with. I had two people to go the party with. I have people to do weird campus errands with. I am not bored and lonely at school at all. My social anxiety is starting to diminish. I do need to learn to be as friendly as the people around me - it's astonishing how much everyone wants to meet each other. People in Philadelphia in general are insanely friendly. I love it, but it's an adjustment to take that guard down and start randomly talking to strangers.
Yoga may start to be a problem. I went to a pretty good class today, but I have serious fitness needs from my yoga since it's the only physical activitiy (besides walking as a form of transportation) that I do. Philly does not have the wide range and depth of yoga offerings that NYC has. Especially within a five block radius of my house. Whatever, I will stop writing about this since no one but myself could possibly care.
I'm getting a DVR!!! It turns out that Comcast does actually have them, although they did not tell me this when I first signed up for cable service. Because it's lame ass Comcast, they do not have a "dual band" DVR, which means that I can only record one show at a time. And that sucks, but I think I can work it out since almost every show on cable repeats at least once. This will mean some creative scheduling on the DVR - recording the entire season alone is not going to cut it - but I am up to it if it means not missing shows I want to see anymore. And, conversely, not watchiing every repeat of Law and Order because it's the only thing on when I want to watch TV.
Some of you may wonder why I don't buy a TiVo and am instead totally devoted to the DVR. This is why: 1. TiVo requires a phone connection, which is dumb. 2. TiVo means a whole other item to put in my TV stand. There's not a lot of room there. 3. TiVo means yet another remote (although I imagine there must be some way to use your TiVo remote for your cable and DVD player too, so maybe that's a dumb reason) 4. The biggest reason - you have to buy the TiVo box, which most importantly means a big cash outlay, and less importantly means you own this piece of technology that may become outdated within a year or two. With the DVR you just rent the box, and can upgrade when they finally get a dual band DVR at Comcast without buying anything new. Plus when you calculate monthly fees + buying the TiVo box, the DVR is a lot cheaper.
I am becoming a crazy Time Warner cheerleader - I spent like five minutes telling my Comcast customer service representative that I really loved Time Warner and that Time Warner was fantastic. I am a TV junkie. It's sick.
Friday, August 06, 2004
So far business school is overwhelming. Mostly in the social sense. Imagine being suddenly plopped into a space with 819 other people you'll be spending the next two years with, and imagine that all of them are pretty good at mingling and introducing themselves to you, no matter what you do. Imagine also that you have only met about 10 of them prior to this "meet and greet" session. It's not a scenario that would be pleasant for anyone with any social anxiety issues. I don't consider myself to have much social anxiety - especially in the professional arena. Working freelance will remove any of that type of anxiety pretty quickly. But, even though I consider myself fairly friendly and generally find it easy to meet people and make friends - the sheer numbers of new people I was surrounded with on Day 1 made me want to run and hide. After having superficial conversations with about 20 people, and then finally running into someone I had once spoken to for more than a minute, once - we were all herded into our welcome address from the Dean. He was a very suave and entertaining kind of guy - which is what you would expect from a business school Dean. Then we were treated to an incredibly entertaining lecture from a magician and memory expert who taught us all tricks to remember each other's names. (I'm not being sarcastic, it really was very entertaining). My two thoughts on that were pleasant surprise that they picked that topic, since I had been thinking before I started school that I better figure out how to remember people's names better, and following that thought, extreme relief that professional school means they feel some pressure to entertain us.
Later on Day 1 we had another huge eating and drinking thing featuring all 820 of us - which again, made me really uncomfortable. I also had the pleasure of speaking to the first unfriendly person I had met there, which sent me right back to memories of the first day of middle school. I have generally liked all of the French people I have ever met, but this woman was the totally stereotypical rude frenchperson. I will remember to never speak to her again. Then I spoke to a group of interesting people, then couldn't handle it anymore and went home to have a big headache. I have realized that my comfort threshold in encountering a new group of people is way exceeded by 820.
On Day 2 we started "math camp." It's basically designed to review math concepts for all of us who have been working in non-math oriented jobs so that we can pass this qualifying exam. The professor started off by saying "almost none of you have never taken calculus. It would be a fluke if you were admitted without calculus, so it's probably only about 20 of you." Ha, I am that fluke. I have never taken a calculus class. After that scare, I was pleasantly surprised that the material we covered on that day was all very familiar. Day 3 got into some stuff I don't know, but I was glad that almost the first 6 hours of class seemed easy. The other big event of Day 2 was that we met our Cohorts. Cohorts are basically just like your elementary school class. We take almost all of our classes together, we elect Cohort officers, we have parties with each other, and it's a manageable social size of 60 people. I was relieved to finally have a reasonably sized peer group. I was also relieved that several people I'd met before, and who seemed cool, were in my Cohort. I'm in a "health care management" Cohort, which basically means that there are lots of people in my Cohort who are studying health care management, which is a specialization of Wharton's. That also means that several people in my Cohort are MDs, biogeneticists, and other insanely brilliant science types. My general impression of my Cohort (and, by extension the whole student body) is that everyone is incredibly smart, very friendly, is either from an exotic country or has worked in an exotic country, and, despite all of these impressive qualities, they all seem basically normal.
Day 3 was today - which consisted of math camp again, and a microeconomics class. Math had been leading me to re-examine my presence at business school. I had several thoughts like, "How the hell did I get into this school?" and "Is this really what I want to do?" Oddly enough, it was microecon that made me feel like I was doing the right thing. I had one of those experiences where your brain suddenly wakes up and starts being interested in what the professor is mumbling incoherently - and even starts having its own independent thoughts about the subject matter. It's a big relief, because I was getting nervous about the next two years.
Tomorrow night is my first Wharton party as a Wharton student. I'm attempting to approach it in the right way - as an educational experience to improve my mingling skills.
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Later on Day 1 we had another huge eating and drinking thing featuring all 820 of us - which again, made me really uncomfortable. I also had the pleasure of speaking to the first unfriendly person I had met there, which sent me right back to memories of the first day of middle school. I have generally liked all of the French people I have ever met, but this woman was the totally stereotypical rude frenchperson. I will remember to never speak to her again. Then I spoke to a group of interesting people, then couldn't handle it anymore and went home to have a big headache. I have realized that my comfort threshold in encountering a new group of people is way exceeded by 820.
On Day 2 we started "math camp." It's basically designed to review math concepts for all of us who have been working in non-math oriented jobs so that we can pass this qualifying exam. The professor started off by saying "almost none of you have never taken calculus. It would be a fluke if you were admitted without calculus, so it's probably only about 20 of you." Ha, I am that fluke. I have never taken a calculus class. After that scare, I was pleasantly surprised that the material we covered on that day was all very familiar. Day 3 got into some stuff I don't know, but I was glad that almost the first 6 hours of class seemed easy. The other big event of Day 2 was that we met our Cohorts. Cohorts are basically just like your elementary school class. We take almost all of our classes together, we elect Cohort officers, we have parties with each other, and it's a manageable social size of 60 people. I was relieved to finally have a reasonably sized peer group. I was also relieved that several people I'd met before, and who seemed cool, were in my Cohort. I'm in a "health care management" Cohort, which basically means that there are lots of people in my Cohort who are studying health care management, which is a specialization of Wharton's. That also means that several people in my Cohort are MDs, biogeneticists, and other insanely brilliant science types. My general impression of my Cohort (and, by extension the whole student body) is that everyone is incredibly smart, very friendly, is either from an exotic country or has worked in an exotic country, and, despite all of these impressive qualities, they all seem basically normal.
Day 3 was today - which consisted of math camp again, and a microeconomics class. Math had been leading me to re-examine my presence at business school. I had several thoughts like, "How the hell did I get into this school?" and "Is this really what I want to do?" Oddly enough, it was microecon that made me feel like I was doing the right thing. I had one of those experiences where your brain suddenly wakes up and starts being interested in what the professor is mumbling incoherently - and even starts having its own independent thoughts about the subject matter. It's a big relief, because I was getting nervous about the next two years.
Tomorrow night is my first Wharton party as a Wharton student. I'm attempting to approach it in the right way - as an educational experience to improve my mingling skills.
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
It's a good thing that I really like Law and Order. And that TNT plays episodes of it all day long, one after another. Otherwise I might lose my sanity while attempting to put together IKEA furniture with names like Bekvam.
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I start school tomorrow. Other than that, everything is pretty much the same. I continue to be very upset that I missed both "Amish in the City" and "Trading Spouses" both times that both of them aired. I really cannot function without the DVR. Now that I don't have one anymore I realize anew that TV watching is totally different with and without the DVR. With the DVR you think things like "I should take my dog out for a walk now, I'll just pause this show I'm watching and do that." Without the DVR you think: "I should take my dog out for a walk now. Shit, that means I will miss 15 minutes of Joe Schmo. Hmm, dog happiness or Joe Schmo?" It's really annoying. I don't enjoy being a slave to the TV. As compensation for missing "Amish in the City" I should get "Devil's Playground" from netflix tomorrow, although I will probably be too busy networking or something to watch it.
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Sunday, August 01, 2004
I now have Philadelphia cable, with Comcast. I miss Time Warner. The guy who installed my cable not only showed up an hour late, but then took like two hours to figure out how to make the cable work. Besides the obvious lameness of not offering DVR, Comcast has the worst interface. Time Warner digital cable has a very easy to use guide that gives you lots of info, and lets you scroll around while still watching tv. Comcast has some crappy looking guide that doesn't let you still watch your show, and barely gives you any information. I think it's sponsered by TV Guide, because the stupid TV Guide icon keeps popping up when you change channels and look at the guide. And there are ads on the guide!!! It sucks. Not to mention that the feature that allows you get more info about the show you are watching is nice and discreet on Time Warner, only taking up about a quarter of the screen. Comcast pops up some full screen bullshit, again, with ads and the TV guide thing. Not to mention that the cable box looks like it's straight out of the 80s. I didn't really know that the aesthetics of my cable box and interface were so important. It's kind of weird, but true.
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