It's Saturday night and, unlike most people my age who are out having a good time, I'm sitting in my room hitting the books hard to get a Statistics problem set finished in time to work with one of my study groups tomorrow. Normally, I would be pretty salty about this, but I'm actually feeling good about it because I am lucky to even have the opportunity to be studying at Stanford.
I woke up at 6:30am this morning feeling rough because I'm pretty much getting run over by the academics here and, to make matters worse, I was a passenger in a car that was rear-ended twice yesterday during a 5-car chain reaction accident on US-101. I wasn't hurt badly, but I woke up aching like crazy and would have wanted nothing more than to just go back to sleep. I couldn't go back to sleep because I had to be at a community center about 10 minutes from campus to volunteer at a Special Olympics powerlifting competition through Stanford Challenge For Charity student group. I swear I didn't want to do that joint this morning, but I'd signed up for it and didn't want to fake on them. By the time I left there, I was SO GLAD that I didn't skip out on it because it was such a rewarding experience. It started off rough with me having to carry heavy weight equipment to set up the gym for the competition, but my demeanor changed once i saw the athletes. They all had different conditions, but the one thing they had in common was their enthusiasm for the event. There were about 25 competitors who had a variety of physical and mental disabilities and they were there at 8am with big smiles on their faces so I knew I couldn't be standing there looking sour. As the time for the start of the competition approached, I had a chance to talk with a young man named Aaron with down's syndrome and he was so excited to find out that I (and two of my other classmates) were from Stanford. He talked to us for about 5 minutes and, when he walked away, I couldn't help but have a big smile on my face. The competition started at 9am with the Squat contest and I was amazed at how much weight these kids could do. One young man, who had a mental handicap along with a left arm that hadn't fully developed and was shorter than the right, stepped up and squatted 220 lbs, which was twice his body weight. These kids were amazing. My classmates and I had to leave at 10am, so we didn't get to help out with the bench press and dead lift parts of the competition, but I left there feeling so proud to have been a part of it all. When I got home, I decided that I wasn't going to let myself feel down about having to study my butt off because I've been blessed with a great opportunity. If those kids could go in that gym and struggle with those weights with nothing but smiles and excitement written all over their faces, then I don't have the right to get salty about anything I've got on my plate right now. Hopefully, I'll be able to get some progress made by 1am so I can catch some z's, but, if I don't, it's all good because there's always tomorrow and I'll just have to approach that day with excitement just like those Special Olympians did earlier today.
Wow, it sure has been a while since I made an entry to this blog. I guess I'm always so busy that it's hard to find time to write. I'm just doing so much here at Stanford that I find myself being pulled in a million different directions and I've barely got time to sleep. Shoot, I barely even get a chance to call my mother anymore and, before I left for Cali, I would do that every other day or so. I might as well get started with the update...
Right now, I'm in the middle of my third week of classes and they've been throwing work at us hard and fast. I had no idea that the workload would be heavy. I'm excited because I'm learning a lot of new stuff from scratch, but it's intimidating because I feel like I'm always behind in my readings or my classwork. During the first week, I tried to do every bit of reading and every study question that was assigned, but I quickly learned that it isn't possible to sustain that over the course of the quarter...at least if I want to ever sleep. Oh yeah, I guess I should talk about the quarter system. We've got three academic quarters per school year: Fall, Winter, and Spring, and we will take around 5 classes per quarter, which is what i've got now. Classes are held on Monday and Tuesday and then Thursday and Friday, with Wednesday being our day off. i thought that schedule was weird at first, but now I'm thankful for it because I wouldn't be able to get by without that day off in the middle of the week. Business school is seriously one of the most exhausting things that one can undertake. I think it is due to the constant mental stimulation of class and homework and, in addition, you're always socializing, networking, and talking to companies, so it just weras you down after a while.
Before I go hit the books, I've got to say a little something about the Black Business Student Association retreat that went down over the weekend. Our group left cmapus on Friday after to go to a place called Pajaro Dunes, which is a community of beachhouses a little more than an hour from campus. before the retreat, I knew a few of the second year students in the BBSA and my goal was to get to know all of them and my classmates a little better. We spent all day Saturday doing activities were we told each other about our backgrounds and had discussions about our fears, challenges, and concerns about business school. I already thought that everyone here at the GSb was on point, but, after that retreat, I realized that the Black folks at this school are truly remarkable. As the folk say in church, most of the BBSA kids here have "come from a mighty long way" and the fact that we're all here is a testament to the value of hard work, perseverance, and the power of prayer. I left that retreat feeling an immense sense of pride to be a Black student at Stanford GSB and I know that the BBSA (in addition to others in the business school) will have my back consistentl over the course of the next two years and beyond.
Whew! this has been a heck of a week, which included my 27th birthday yesterday (Sept 30). Unfortunately, I had so much work due for class today that i couldn't even go out and celebrate because I was at my desk plugging away at work until after 2am. It's not all bad though because some of my classmates had a dinner for me earlier tonight and did it up real big (extra shout out to my girl Chantal for letting us have it at her house and my girls Lynn and DeShay for throwing down in the kitchen and hooking up a great meal). Also, I just came from the big 'Welcome Back' party thrown by some second year stdents at their off campus house, affectionately known as "The Compound". My man Dave is one of the guys who lives there and these cats put it down for real, for real tonight. They bought a bunch of 'refreshments', put together some decent music, and opened their home to our entire school. I thought the party was going to be bootleg, but it actually ended up being pretty fun. I am still trying to get used to the social scene at Stanford because it isn't exactly what i'm used to, but that should come with time. Enough about all that non-constructive stuff, lemme get to some more academic things...
Today was the end of our first week of classes and I'm mentally exhausted. I have classes from 8am until noon on Monday and Thursday and then 10am until 5pm on Tuesday and Friday (Stanford doesn't have Wedsnesday classes). I didn't take any exemption exams, so I'm taking all of the Core classes that we are required to knock out before moving on to our second year. The cliche "its like drinking out of a fire hose " has been used too many times, but that's exactly what the past week has been like. I have learned more in the past week in all of these classes than I did in the past year or two back at work. The material tends to be dense at times and the workload is crazy, but I'm actually seeing brand new stuff for the first time in a long time, so I'm enjoying all of the time that I'm having to put in.
I must admit that it is still a little intimidating to speak up in class though. In my undergraduate academic career, I've usually taken classes where I would just sit and have professors speak while I took notes. Then, in my first time in grad school, I had my first exposure to classes where we were expected to talk, but I was reluctant to do so because I was the youngest cat in my program. Now, I'm in an environment where it's required for us to speak in class with the penalty for not doing so being a major hit in the final class grade. I tend to be pretty shy when it comes to that sort of thing, but I'm making myself break out of it...I think I've stumbled coming out of the gate so far, so I'm hoping that I can come through with some major insights by the end of the quarter.
That's about all for now. Time for me to crash for the night.