Pre-term: out with a bang, not a whimper. I had my econ exam on Tuesday, and my business law exam on Wednesday, and I’ve gotta say: it was a freaking blood bath. The economics exam went, well, not exactly well, per se, but at least I didn’t leave the exam feeling like every last one of my brain cells had been bled dry. Not so in the law exam! (Which, by the way, was, in some respects, more of an accounting exam than a law exam. Damn those balance sheets with amplified capital, damn them all to hell!) It was an hour and a half of pure terror. I felt reasonably okay about it until I started talking to other people about it afterwards, and then, yeah, I drank many beers. However, I’ve been trying to re-assure myself: it was a very intense month, and if I look at where I started (essentially at “0” with all of this business-y business business), I do feel like I’ve gained a lot. Whether it was enough to pass my exams is another story altogether. And that is just freaking scary. It is totally unacceptable to start my graduate school education with failed exams. Ugh. As I have been mentioning, it makes me more than a little nervous that none of this seems to be coming very naturally, and I do wonder, from time to time, (and when I say “time to time,” I mean pretty much daily) whether this is the right place for me. Luckily, I am far, far too stubborn to consider throwing in the towel this early in the game. Also, having essentially borrowed the equivalent of a mortgage for this endeavor I am, at a minimum, financially obligated to continue. I console myself that at least I’m not the only one who seems to be suffering. Graduate school is hard, and a lot of people are struggling. I’m told it’s part of the strategy of the school to saturate us as much as possible, so that we learn how to be efficient with our time. I get it, but man, it’s a cruel, cruel strategy.
So pre-term is over, and now we have a weeklong seminar on business and management. It basically involves doing case studies about upper level management decisions—specifically, how to choose a new CEO for a company from a selection of candidates when there’s no obvious successor to the current CEO. I’m thoroughly enjoying the class, as it’s much more conceptually oriented (no balance sheets, yay!), but it’s causing my group certain meltdowns. Most unfortunate. I suppose this is the part where we’re supposed to learning as much from our peers as we are from the classes, and how to negotiate the varying opinions of very large personalities, but after two successive days of incredibly frustrating group meetings, I’m pretty sure the only thing I learned was how to avoid pitching my group mates out the nearest window. (It was hard though. I really, really wanted to pitch them out the window. Okay, not all of them, but a couple, for sure.) One of my group mates, a self identified fascist, (no, really, he was part of a fascist party in France, and he also went to military school), told me that I need to relax, and be less American, because in my frustration over lack of efficiency I’m being an imperialist, or something. What?! That’s a pretty serious accusation! (And I’m not sure I see the correlation, actually.) I’m probably one of the least efficient people on the planet, but it honestly bothers me when people show up unprepared for a meeting. Is that so American of me? It’s interesting feedback, though, because working culture is obviously very different back at home… I’ll certainly be thinking about my American-ness over the course of the next couple of meetings. I have another group meeting this afternoon, and my horoscope today actually said to maintain harmony today and not pick any fights, because I’ll just be seen as the bad guy and be met with resistance. Timely advice, I’d say. Whatever, I’m sure it’ll be fine. It was a rough couple of days, but I think we all felt frustrated, so I’m sure we’ll all be on our best behavior today. We’ve been working really well together up to this point, so I see no reason why we shouldn’t continue to work well going forward. Anyway, we have this seminar until Wednesday, then “real” classes (i.e. not pass/fail) start on Thursday, which is when I think my life gets seriously hard. (It’s hard to imagine life going from “freaking hard” to “waaaaay freaking harder,” so I’m a little nervous about that…)
The best thing about next week is that Friday is a holiday, and Thursday classes finish at 12:30, so I think I’m going to jump in the car with a classmate from Madrid and head there for the weekend. (I had really hoped to be able to go to London to see Patrick and Laleh, but alas, the flights were just too, too expensive. Sad!) In any case, I’m looking forward to a weekend out of the city. I love Barcelona tons, but my world here is beginning to feel pretty small (I guess that’s what being in a room with the same 55 people for 8+ hours a day will do to a person!). I’ve never been to Madrid before, and I’ve only ever heard great things about the city, so I think it’ll be a good time.
Oh! But one exciting thing about this last week is that I finally heard from Jordi, my favorite professor from college, who is living in Barcelona again, and we’re going to meet for drinks Wednesday night, which is very exciting–al menos, I definitely have things to look forward to in the next few days, right?
Man, it’s been a full 6 weeks… One of these days we’ll have internet in my house, and I’ll be able to update this more frequently, so it won’t have to be a novel every time I write, and I won’t risk putting any of you to sleep! (Ahem, Laurent.) But I’ll say briefly that my life here continues to be very, very full, far beyond the boundaries of just school, and I think my Spanish is finally starting to progress. (I received an excellent compliment from a classmate earlier this week when he said that he wished he spoke English the way that I spoke Spanish! Yay!) There are all kinds of funny observations about life and culture here that I’m dying to share, but will leave them for another day. I will say this, though: mullets? Alive and well in Barcelona. NOT ironically, either. Weird.
Alright, that’s enough for today. I should probably get ready for my group meeting…
HELLO
So it’s not coming naturally: big deal. At what point did you stop seeing this endeavor as something crazy and start expecting that all this business stuff would come naturally.
You are not a business jerk!
You are a superspy, undercover in a Spanish business school.
As with any assignment for a new superspy, you will have some close calls. You will accidentally leak some information that gives you away as an overall-wearing Santa Cruzian, or JP townie, or imperialist American.
Your job will be tough- supertough. It’s not easy to fit into business school when you are person of conscience, soul, and passionate interest in things totally unrelated to profit.
Thing is, close calls are how superspies learn their trade and a girl who cut her teeth leaving Stockton and diving headfirst into the civilized world has the guts and gumption to get past some cheeky exams. If you didn’t thrive on the challenge you’d be back home at the farm.
After all, if you aren’t doing anything hard, you don’t get the satisfaction of making it look easy.
-L
I love Laurent’s comment. I’d like to add SUPASTAH to superspy. So glad you’re surprising yourself with good exam scores! Be proud to be too American (as in Mollie Ivins)but be horribly insulted if it implies anything Bush. Maybe you can get to Madrid next month…how long a break do you get around Thanksgiving/if any? Love, Mom