Good use of time

Wow, I haven’t written in a long time! I’m actually impressed by how long I did keep up with writing everyday… because let’s face it - we all knew it wouldn’t last. ;)

The problem with not writing everyday is that a lot of things happen, and then I don’t know whether to write about the things I didn’t write about, or the things that are happening now. The thing I most want to tell about is that we got a new couch. This isn’t very new - I think it happened around 2 weeks ago. Uri found it on Craig’s List, and I went to see it. He then brought it we the help of our friend Dani. I love it. It’s so comfortable! It’s wide enough that I can fall asleep in front of the TV and not feel like I fell asleep on the couch. It’s actually so big that we had to get rid of the coffee table, which is now standing sideways between the bed and the wall in the spare bedroom upstairs.

To pepper in something from today – I spend about an hour now trying to figure out how to use a panoramic photo stitching tool called Autopano that was once recommended to me by Lior. Needless to say, I was not successful, and after a while I just decided to cut it off since I do have multiple things to do. I love you guys, but still…

9 pm blues

It's actually 8:52 now, but by the time I finish writing it will likely be 9.  I'm writing this in blogger - its spell check is even worse than Word's.  

I am still at Sage working on my weekly case for a course called "Consulting Focus", that trains us in the art of consulting.  I will reserve my vicious comment on that for another time, but I here-by give rein to my dad to add a comment. 

This is the reason that I didn't get around to writing before.  I will likely not be able to finish the write up today, and will have to continue tomorrow morning, along with another small assignment due to the same course.  Classes tomorrow start at 10:10 am, then I have an hour of break and then this class from 1:30 to 4 pm.  Only after that will I get around to studying for my marketing mid-term on Wednesday.  I announce now for all to here (maybe then it will come true): In that hour break I will work on my internship search!

Other random info:

1. I still have not had dinner.

2. We have house guest starting today and until Thursday.  We thought we could get then an extra bed, but we can't because the cots Cornell used to offer have flees in them.

3. I went to the gym today - Yey!

9:03 pm

Some things we never got around to telling

A friend recently wrote us a nice, long email (hint hint, nudge, nudge). At the end, she asked us all kinds of questions as to what's going on with us, and it made me realize that there are a few basic things that we haven't wrote about yet - we meant to, but then too many other things started happening and we either wrote about them, or didn't have time to write. So here is my answer to her, published, because I thought it would be interesting to everyone.

Hey!
It was so great hearing from you. Everyone keeps asking us how we're doing, and not telling us what's going on back home. So it is really great to hear what's going on there and feel that we're still "in the mix".
Here all is well. I recently started my 2nd quarter, which means 3 new courses. It seems that this semester will be a bit harder. Not only are the courses harder, but we also have a lot of other things going on. Most importantly, we have to really intensify our job search. After this quarter ends, we have a break for winter (more on that later) and then when we come back interviews start for internships. So that means that we need to start figuring out which companies we want to interview with and start reaching out to them so that we actually do get invited to interviews.
Also, we have all these things going on with clubs we have - bringing in lecturers, going to events . Last but not least, I'm also involved in something called "Big Red Incubator" (BRI for short). This is a school run program that gives us the chance to do real life consulting. I will consulting for an Italian Restaurant in the area. It seems really cool, but will also be pretty time-consuming.
At the point that I'm in now, it seems like the end of the quarter is really far away, just because there is so much that will happen, but the truth is that it's not far away at all, it will just be really intense. The quarter ends mid-December. And, in answer to your question, we will both be coming home for a visit. I'm really looking forward to it.
It will also be nice to get out of the cold for a couple of weeks. Autumn has started here, which means that it's as cold here now as it is in winter in Israel. You would think I'm exaggerating, but I'm really not - yesterday I wore one of my heaviest sweaters from home.
What else did you want to know?
What do we see from the windows? Well that's probably the 2nd most depressing part of this apartment: from the front window we see the stairs to the upstairs apartment, and from the back windows we see the fence of the golf course and then trees. It's part of the reason the apartment doesn't get much light. Hopefully it will also keep the cold away during winter. However - after those trees and that stair case, Ithaca has amazing views. Here are some pics that Uri and I took last week:

What are we eating? Well - we're certainly eating more meat and less vegetables, but not that much more/ less. The meat (and fish) is much cheaper and tastier than back home, and the vegetables are much more expensive. In vegetables/ fruits there are a lot of things that we have here that we don't have at home - like a million varieties of apples and pears and all kinds of veggies. There aren't a lot of things that you can't find here, but it might be really expensive (like peppers) or really not tasty (like mango). I think probably the biggest change in our diet is that we're eating a lot more sandwiches, because that is the most common thing you can find here, and more often then not, the only thing you'll find on the menu.
You also asked about our neighbours - but I think I'll leave that to the next post. Apparently there are people who think that I write too much...

Love,
Me

More Pictures! Yey again!

This time around, a few more words. It's been a busy two weeks or so. Uri came back, and then Lior came, and now my mom and aunt are here.
I tried my hardest to do as much work as I could while Uri was in Israel, and just before he came back I hit a low point when it seemed like despite my hard work, I was getting as much (or as little) done as everyone else. Well, in the last week I discovered that it wasn't so. I did, somehow, magically, manage to be ahead of the game. This let me go hiking with Uri and Lior, and go shopping with my mom and my aunt. Yey! for me. Now, the pessimist in me has to say that I'll see if I'm, ahead of the game or not when I actually get my grades back for the finals I have this week... but the fact is that I did feel I can take the time off. Let me tell you - it was fantastic! Now I'm back to studying hard - 3 finals in 3 days is a lot. after that, Uri and I will head to The City for a few days, and then I'll be back for the 2nd half of the semester.
What about Uri you ask? Well, he should have his new computer in a few days, so he'll once again be able to write. In the meantime I will say that he is really enjoying his new PS3.

How time flys by

For all of you who might have been worried – I am alive.
Some of you have commented that it has been a long time since last I wrote. My only defense is to say that time has lost all meaning where I am, so I haven't really been aware of exactly how much time has gone by.
I guess it's safe to say that my life is pretty crazy. This week I woke up in a panic. It was 6:20 am, which meant that I had over slept by 20 minutes. I know that to some of you are saying to yourselves “I get up before 6, what's her problem?” Well, for one thing – the reason I was oversleeping was that I want to sleep after 1 am. But that aside, the point I'm trying to get at is how worried I was by the fact that I'm starting the day so “late”. There are so many things happening, so many things I have to do, so many things I want to do, that it can get over-whelming. As it turns out (this is an expression professors use a lot – it turns out it's the intellectual “like” or “ya' know”) this is what is hard in business school. The formal teaching is what it is, and everybody here is smart enough to understand and do well, given enough time. The question is: What is enough time for you? If you are average (for the school) you might be able to do your school work and a few of the other basic things that go towards career building. If your above average, you'll be able to do more extra-curricular.
I assume that I need to explain the phrase “things that go towards career building”. Not only because it's vague, but because it is key to understanding the trickiness of time management in business school. The thing is that in today's market – and by this I am not referring to the economic state, but to the fact that there is a high supply of MBA students, it is hard to get a job. So starting from day one, the MBA program teaches you skills and coordinates events that go towards finding a job. This might mean having a course in Leadership, teaching us how to present ourselves in social events and where to put our name-tags or holding “corporate briefings” - an event in which a slew of people who work in a certain company come to campus, tell us about the company and then interact with us during a small cocktail party (=”networking event”). At the last we get to use the skills that we developed at all the “Sage Socials” and basically try to make the best impression we can, so that come interview time, we might have some advantage over our peers. I'm going to continue on the last example, because it is the best one, as it is the most intangible.
So... “Corporate briefing”, how much time does it require? The company will talk for 45 minutes, but you really really really don't want to be late, so it's marked on the calendar as 50. After that, there is the social, and that's really your chance to make any sort of impression, so you can't miss it or leave early – so that's another 45 minutes. All done? NO! There were at least 20 people in the briefing, how will anyone remember you over them? You need to find a way to continue the relationship: Write them a thank you note, write an e-mail asking to continue the conversation. (I'm cynical about this now, but it if it's a company you think you want to work in, these things are also important in order to make sure that the company is a good fit for you). So how much time does e-mailing require? More than you would think. The email you send is your digital footprint. You do not want any mistakes in it, so you spent quite a bit of time writing and proofing it. Because my natural tendency is to be more informal than formal (part of the deal of being Israeli), I also have someone else proof my emails. So there go another 45 minutes – and we're up to more than 2 hours allocated to career building. And that's just one company's briefing - there are multiple companies and there are more types of events. And they all have that deceiving quality that, unexplained, they might seem like fun. It's not that they are not fun, it's that their main purpose, and the reason you participate, is not necessarily the fun. I will however make the disclaimer that there are clubs and events that are purely for fun (As this is the USA, these things usually involve beer drinking).
The bottom line is that each student has to decide how much time he or she wants to spend doing each type of thing. Nobody is meant to do everything, but no one will tell you which is more important.