The Wildlife Learning Center in Sylmar had a special day for Bruin alum because the founder was a UCLA grad himself. We got to see lots of cool creatures!
They start so small and light, but then get HUGE!
What a curious fellow. Too bad I couldn't put him in my purse to take home.
Well, over the course of the last couple days, it has become public knowledge that I put in my two weeks and will be leaving my company at the end of the week. Today one of the CEOs said bye to me since he’s off to NY tomorrow and I won’t be seeing him again before I’m done. It hasn’t quite hit me yet that I won’t be seeing these people again (at least not in a consistent manner). The good thing is I will likely need to come back to train my replacement whenever they find one, so it’s not completely the end of seeing my coworkers! I’ll definitely miss them a lot.
Still, it’s time for me to move on, both personally and professionally. I don’t get to see Panda nearly enough, so I want to dedicate some time to that. Also, I have some of my own things I want to pursue and it’s a great time to do so. I don’t feel I can really give it a solid effort unless I were to work on it full time, so that’s the plan. Luckily, I have so much support around me and not a single person has discouraged me from my dreams. I have a lot to look forward to and I’m excited to be able to set my own schedule and take control of my life in ways I haven’t yet.
This week, I have done my best to “rally the troops” as I like to say, encouraging them to all join me for my lunch plans. Many have been working on various health efforts, like juicing or the caveman diet, so they don’t get out to lunch anymore. Happily, they have been taking a break from their efforts to save money or lose weight and I’m hoping everyone will come out Friday to the last hurrah! After all, it’s the people who make the place what it is and it’s the people I’ll miss.
We spent all day Friday out working on a Habitat for Humanity house as a company event, which was quite nice. Since it was overcast and a bit drizzly, we were limited to painting and cleaning. Originally we were supposed to help rip off the roof! Oh well, the guys still got to go to another house down the block that needed some demolition work.
One of the first things we enjoyed upon arriving was a wonderful backyard with a lemon tree and avocado tree.
This backyard was strangely reminiscent of China for me.
This picnic table in the yard served as a lunch table as well a commemorative item for the family that will eventually move in here. We all left our mark!
The garage was used as storage for all the supplies to fix up the house.
One Habitat employee and one of my company's engineers work together to get paint into cups.
A bunch of my coworkers begin to paint the side of the house.
These adorable little kittens were grooming themselves outside of a house just down the street from the one we were working on. I wish I could have them!
I stumbled upon this hotel chain when looking for a last-minute place to stay back in the fall. It turned out to be the best discovery ever! Not only was it a good deal, it had the most amazing and comfortable bed I had ever slept in. Plus who doesn’t love a place with free internet, breakfast, and gift basket of snacks? I even wrote a rave Yelp review.
It feels like we might be entering a cabin in a mountain somewhere.
We had a nice little kitchen space and they even had a gift basket of free snacks waiting!
I got set up right away to take advantage of the free internet service.
What a glorious bed! It was the softest I'd ever felt and they had amazing down comforters. For extra enjoyment, I had my big blue body pillow with me too. 
Free breakfast included all kinds of fruits, bagels, muffins, hot drinks, juices, and even string cheese! I really enjoyed that string cheese...
Tonight a car started to merge into me, which made me grateful that I was an alert driver, noticed the drifting, and promptly moved and braked to avoid a collision. I would have honked too, to warn the guy, but I was just about to take a sip from my tea so my hands were too occupied. I wonder if he ever had a clue how close we were to scraping against each other.
It used to be common for me to be tired on my drives home and if this had happened last year when I was commuting, it may not have panned out the same way. Thankfully, I have a secret weapon under my belt that has been helping me stay alert during my drives. It has been very effective and I can’t wait to unveil it someday! For now Maven and I are working on launching it so I’ll keep it under wraps. One day though, you’ll hear about it!
Haha, check me out doing aerial acrobatics on ribbons! It was fun and tiring.
Holding myself up on the ribbon with one foot and my armpits! Now that's skills. 
This time I let the ribbon hold me up as I let go with all but one leg.
This time I let the ribbon hold me up as I let go with all but one leg.
Today was move-out day and boy did I get beat up! My poor legs and feet are throbbing and I’ve developed a couple of bruises from getting banged up.
Squirt the frog with the water gun!
My wisdom teeth started to bother me today and now the back of my mouth is sore. I think it was because I decided I wasn’t brushing well enough back there so I gave them a good scrub. They definitely weren’t used to all that action and I think my gums got inflamed. I’ve been holding off getting them pulled because it’ll cost a pretty penny, but I’m really getting tired of the crowded feeling I have in my mouth.
Back in China, I was going to have them removed, but then I changed my mind when I realized I might not get to enjoy the food there if I went through with it. I thought it’d take a week or so to recover, but as I later found out from my parents, it could have been fine after a day or two. Oh well, it’s too late for that now! Unfortunately they’re bothering me these days, so I really want to get them out. I’ll have to review my coverage and see if it’s worth it right now.
I’m very tempted to find something to prop my jaw to help ease the tension, but what is there? I tried using gum for awhile and also putting food on that side of my mouth to chew so I couldn’t accidentally bite my cheek. Those solutions proved too temporary for my needs. Maybe a night’s sleep will reduce the swelling and make me forgetting about those annoying buggers. Why didn’t I have them removed long ago?? I’m regretting that now. :(
Yesterday was the deadline to apply to Stanford’s Graduate School of Business in the second round (there are three rounds and year and you can apply in any single one you choose). This entire week, I had been working to perfect everything for my application, particularly my essays. I had found the Harvard Business School essays to be easier to tackle, with only a few rewrites. When it came to Stanford’s though, I was a mess. Let’s take a look at both schools’ prompts:
HBS
Stanford GSB
I felt like Harvard’s were more practical and Stanford’s were more emotional, if that makes sense. What made Stanford’s challenging for me was how personal those first two are. It was really getting to the core of what is meaningful to me and it’s hard to express something you believe in so deeply. I had to work backwards, first sharing stories of my workplace successes, then tackling what I want to do and what matters to me.
The first versions of my responses to questions 1 and 2 came out extremely idealistic. I realized that I sounded like my mind was in the clouds and my feet weren’t on the ground. I knew I had to present things in a more concrete manner so the selection committee could see the logic behind how what mattered to me drove what I wanted to do and why that all tied into going to business school. Unfortunately, I cared so much about properly expressing something so close to my heart that nothing sounded right. I would write a paragraph and start the next only to decide that I wanted to add a paragraph to the beginning instead. I labored over those two for so long!
Finally, I was satisfied with how the second essay came out, but I was still pretty stumped by the first. How do you share your greatest dreams without sounding unrealistic? Again and again, I would rewrite my response to that question until I started to create a structure that made sense. I then made the very smart move of sending my writing to Maven for a proofread. One of my greatest challenges in writing essays is making everything flow. I tend to let my ideas out stream-of-consciousness style, which usually results in random connections and scattered ideas. He was able to help me reorder some of my sentences to make my structure infinitely better! At that point, I was finally ready to turn everything in. I had put forth a great effort and now it was time to officially apply to one of the most prestigious programs in the world.
I feel so relieved now that it’s in and strangely, I’m not really nervous about decision day. That’s probably just because it’s still over two months away! As the time nears, I’m sure I will nervously anticipate the news and hope for the best. I can really see myself going to a top business school and excelling.
