December « 2011 « ((little fat notebook))

Mollusks

laelene Posted in video blog，Tags: animals, ocean, videos

11 December 2011

I always imagined mollusks to climb around the bottom of the ocean floor, not swim around rather gracefully.

Mischievous Molly

laelene Posted in photo blog，Tags: animals, behavior, cats, pets, pictures

10 December 2011

molly the cat keeps warm on top of the laptop's keyboard

Mischievous Molly likes to sit on the keyboard to keep warm. Unfortunately, that doesn't bode well for getting work done and it screws up the keys.

A lesson in apostrophes

laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: english, grammar, language, opinion, punctuation

08 December 2011

I was writing an email recently and wanted to indicate the possessive of Charles. I vaguely remember being taught that it should be Charles’ with no extra “s” but since then I had read styling guides that said technically it should be Charles’s, though really either is acceptable. To some people, Charles’s may seem wrong, but it is not. For the sake of not confusing people, I tend to use Charles’ since I know that was commonly taught in schools across the nation. However, I much prefer using Charles’s; if it weren’t for the fact that some people were never taught that was correct, I’d use it more often. After all, who wants to go into a grammar/punctuation lesson in the middle of an email exchange?

I actually did do that in this case, but only because the thread included very bright people who probably knew exactly what I was talking about and maybe even experienced the same hesitation using Charles’s vs. Charles’. I was happy to have that feeling validated when one of the girls replied confirming my statement and offering a source that explains the use of apostrophes: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe (This site is also a great source for other interesting, entertaining, and information infographic cartoons.

This incident gave me confidence to go forth using Charles’s from now on. Who cares if other people think I’m wrong and don’t know the rules of English? Those who really know what they’re talking about will know the truth. ;-P

Stanford GSB Knight Center art

laelene Posted in video blog，Tags: art, norcal, stanford, videos

06 December 2011

Berkeley City Club view

laelene Posted in photo blog，Tags: berkeley, golden gate bridge, hotel, nature, norcal, pictures, travel, view

05 December 2011

I woke this morning to find this wonderful scene outside my window. The night before it was too dark to tell what was out there, so this was completely unexpected. Click to see the full size!

view of the golden gate bridge from the berkeley city club hotel

I woke up to a beautiful clear morning and discovered we could see the Golden Gate Bridge from our room!

Here are things more to the south.

closeup view of the golden gate bridge from the berkeley city club hotel

There's a closeup of the famous bridge.

Another step towards an MBA

laelene Posted in mba，Tags: future, mba, school

03 December 2011

I finally got my GMAT over with! That’s the first big hurdle in the process and I did alright with a 710. It’s not as good as I had hoped I could do, but right on par with how I had been performing on practice tests. It’s also a good enough score that it won’t hurt me in my application, though I was shocked to find I only scored in the 76th percentile on the quantitative section, even with a scaled score of 47 (which I thought was decently high). In the verbal section I got a scaled score of 41 and that put me in the 92nd percentile, which was also the overall percentile I ended up in with my 710. Curious – do many people do that well in math but poorly in English? Am I competing against a lot of foreign test-takers or something?

With that off my back, tomorrow I’m heading off on a site visit to check out both Berkeley and Stanford’s MBA programs. I’m hoping to make some friends with my fellow travelers, all of whom either took a class with my GMAT teacher or know someone who did. Hopefully we’ll all end up at our dream schools! I’m looking forward to seeing the Stanford campus again and maybe even learning something I didn’t know that will help me with my application. Once I get back from that, it’ll be time to buckle down with my application essays! At least I’ve gotten the recommendations underway, with all of my recommenders aware of the questions and deadlines.

I have just over a month to complete my applications and I’m really hoping I can put together a strong profile that will get me in. I don’t have as much work experience as most of the other applicants, but my experience has been a super-condensed rollercoaster ride that has taught me a lot. That should make up for a lack of years worked. That’s the great thing for working for a small company! You end up learning and growing so much more than you might have at a large corporation, espeically with all the hats you have to wear. I’ve even been adopted into the engineering team more recently, since I’ve been working with our CTO on some things that he used to take care of.

It feels good to have time to dedicate to my applications now, but those essays are daunting. I really want to present myself in such a way that they can’t help but take me. That will be the hard part!