Tiring Weekend

February 28th, 2009 by RVD · No Comments

What a tiring weekend. Every now and then (a few times per term), we have 3 day sessions where we have class on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday instead of the normal 2 day Friday, Saturday schedule. These 3 day sessions are good in some ways and bad in many ways.

They are good because:
1) It sort of feels like you’re really in school since you’re in class so much day after day.

2) I can kind of settle into the hotel a little bit because I’m there for 2 nights instead of only 1 night.

3) There are usually a lot of social events going on because we have 2 nights to hang out and do stuff instead of just 1.

But these 3 day sessions are bad because:
1) Regardless of how well you prepare your boss at work, your work doesn’t actually get put on hold when you’re in school. Most of us are in pretty important roles at work so there are always a lot of conference calls, emails, and panicked phone calls coming in from the office. In my case, I got 3 calls (and text messages when I didn’t pick up) on Thursday from various people at work all saying “EMERGENCY. CALL NOW!” which basically means that I should excuse myself from the classroom to make a call right now instead of wait for my next break. It seemed like every time I put out one fire, another one would come up an hour or so later.

2) There is just so much time spent in class. I was in class from 9:30-6:45 with only a one hour lunch break (which was spent listening to a presentation). I don’t know about other classmates but I start going a little nuts after being in class for 6+ hours. In addition, we had a Finance midterm on Thursday which was just brutal so that took a lot out of me as well. But I was glad to get the exam done and over with on Thursday.

3) Saturday is tough…really tough. I was ok this morning but in my afternoon class I was really struggling hard to stay awake and focused. The last hour especially was tough…I felt like I might not make it.

The social calendar was also full. On Thursday night, we had a Rock Band party at school where we got a lot of drinks and played rock band in one of the classrooms. It was cool because we projected the game onto the big screen and turned up the music. I got back to the hotel at about 10pm and worked on email for about 2 hours (remember all of those work emergencies I told you about above?) before heading to bed.

Friday night was our term outing. Each term, our coordinator Amy organises a class event outside of school. For term 1 we went to Gordon Biersch. During term 2, we went on a nice dinner cruise around the Bay Area. And for this term we went to the Thirsty Bear, a brewery and Spanish Tapas restaurant. The events are always a lot of fun because the spouses and partners are invited and everyone in the class shows up for a good time.

After the event, a bunch of us went over to Temple, a local SF club. I actually used to hang out at this club way back when I was in college. It wasn’t called Temple back then and the decor was completely different but it did bring back some nice memories.

By the time I got back to the hotel it was past 2am. After some random late night conversation in the lobby discussing random things that seemed important at the time, I finally went up to my room after 3am and didn’t get to sleep until almost 4. It was fun though and I know that when I’m done with this program, it’s not the finance midterm that I’ll remember but it’s the fun night that I’ll remember.

I try not to post too many incriminating photos in this blog but here are a few somewhat tame ones.

From 2/26/2009 - 2/28/2009

Giant pan of paella - I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pan this big before.

From 2/26/2009 - 2/28/2009

Taylor lying down on the front desk at the Le Meridien Hotel at 3am. I’m not sure why he did it but I think I encouraged it (seemed like a funny thing to do at the time).