Friends for life

laelene Post in general blog，Tags: , , ,
17 December 2011
5

So many of my friends have a group from college, or even high school, that they still keep in touch with and hang out with.  A good portion of them also have some friends stemming from childhood as well.  I wonder what that’s like and if I’ll ever have lifelong friends.  The landscape of my life is so variable that dozens of friends have come and gone.  The people I spend much of my time with are only friends I’ve met in the past three years or so.  I’m so used to moving around and making new friends that it’s hard to imagine knowing someone for that long.

I’ve always hoped that each friendship would be one that would last forever, but as our lives changed, we would grow apart.  It also didn’t help that I moved a lot, so many friendships dwindled after not being able to hang out for a long period.  The internet has definitely helped to slow down the process of losing touch, but it still happens.  At this point, the only person in my life right now who I know will be around for decades is Panda.  He’s the best friend I’ve got and anyone else could very well be out of the picture in a few years.

I haven’t given up hope that I can maintain some long-lasting friendships though!  I think that business school will offer me a great chance to meet people who I can consider friends forever.  In addition, any and all future business partners will probably be great friends and a common interest in our business should keep us in contact for a long time to come.  I wish I had a group of close friends who all hung out with each other, but that’s just not the way my life developed.  Instead, I will continue to be a connector, bringing together my different sets of friends for gatherings and potentially facilitating some wonderful new bonds.

Cat and mouse

laelene Post in video blog，Tags: , , , ,
15 December 2011
0

Missy is a playful cat who just wanted to chase around the mouse. Of course the mouse wasn’t aware of this, so it was frozen until it saw an opportunity to run. I was able to help get it outside, but Missy still wanted to have some fun.

Loofah squash

laelene Post in photo blog，Tags: , , , ,
13 December 2011
0

very large squash on the vine for so long it started to rot

I wanted to see just how large this squash could get, but then it went past its prime. Good thing this kind is good for loofahs when dried out!

Afternoon fevers

laelene Post in general blog，Tags: , ,
12 December 2011
1

I used to experience a phenomenon I called “afternoon fevers” in high school.  Every afternoon around 4 o’clock, I’d get a bit flushed, my temperature would rise, and I’d have the chills.  It felt like the onset of a fever that would result in me shivering until I could climb into bed to sweat it out.  Yet, if I kept about my day, I found that it would burn off before it ever became anything.  It was a strange thing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was partly mental too.

I had kind of learned to dread swim practice, which started right around that time.  I was a sprinter, so all the distance swimming we had to do in practice wore me down.  So, as school was ending and it was time to head over to the pool for practice, my body would react.  Most of the time I’d suck it up and go through practice, which was probably what both made me sick and cured from it.  After all, being wet on a brisk afternoon made it easy to feel sick, but then the intensity of a practice session would heat me right up and burn off any illness.

It was an interesting period that was all but forgotten until I started to feel it again.  Perhaps my immune system is weakest in the mid to late afternoon, so I start to feel the effects of stress more vividly.  Last week, I began to feel sick a couple of afternoons in a row and I learned to suppress it just like I had back in high school.  It’s been awhile since I felt that way, so I bundled up and have been staying warm to stave off any virus that might be trying to bring me down.  I can’t be too weak to prepare my applications!

Mollusks

laelene Post in video blog，Tags: , ,
11 December 2011
0

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

Mischievous Molly

laelene Post in photo blog，Tags: , , , ,
10 December 2011
0

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 Post in general blog，Tags: , , , ,
08 December 2011
0

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 Post in video blog，Tags: , , ,
06 December 2011
0

Berkeley City Club view

laelene Post in photo blog，Tags: , , , , , , ,
05 December 2011
0

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!

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

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 Post in mba，Tags: , ,
03 December 2011
2

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!

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