Cape Town and internships, revisited April 27, 2008

As we know, I bombed my interview last week — which is to say, the interview for the internship that I was banking on having for the summer. The internship that would be the very good reason for me to turn down my awesome adventure at the end of the world. The internship that would nearly guarantee me a job in Barcelona at the end of the MBA. The internship that would re-shape my professional trajectory and send me spinning off into a new and exciting career. The only internship that has interested me this year, really. That interview.

After a week of drowning myself in despair and indulgent self-deprecation, I finally came up for air, only to find that I was… relieved, actually. And extremely confused. I started thinking about what I want, I mean REALLY want, to do after the MBA. This internship would have been great — really interesting, a LOT of work, and I’d probably learn A LOT. But as soon as it was off the table (and, to be fair, it’s not actually off the table yet — they haven’t told me no, but seriously, I’m pretty damn sure it’s a no) I started having this nag nag nagging in my gut about… yep, you guessed it: Cape Town. I started kicking myself, actually, for turning down Cape Town for an internship that I had ultimately made unattainable. (Uh, yeah, self sabotage, anyone??) And then I had Rupert, Carol and Cathal all collectively say “why wouldn’t you go to Cape Town?” (and the subtext would be: “what the hell is wrong with you??”). So of course, I started thinking, AUGH! What the hell IS wrong with me? I can’t believe I said NO, for an internship I’m not getting!

Long story short (I know, too late): I’m going to Cape Town. I think. I mean, I’ve officially told my school that I want to go, and the woman in charge is just checking to make sure they still have a spot for me, but: if all goes well, I’ll be in Cape Town on October 1, or thereabouts. Whew! And I am SO excited about it! I had SO much remorse about saying no, but, so far, I’m not having any remorse about saying yes, which is great. (An aside: I stole these photos from my buddy Langdon, who went there over Semana Santa. Yeah, um, looks pretty nice, right??) It is, as Laurent put it, an OIALO, or, Once In A Lifetime Opportunity. Literally. Feels much better to say YES to an OIALO than NO, believe me.

Now: on to this summer. What the shit am I going to do this summer?! I honestly never considered the possibility that this internship wasn’t going to work out, so I didn’t look for anything else, which means I have to now confront just how very directionless I am. Or do I? What if I just go to Boston for the summer, move back in with Laura, and beg Lauren for some part time work? (Ahem, Lauren? Need any teachers? Or Becca? C’mon, I’m pretty good!!) Or I live with my grandmother in Portland and work part time somewhere and hang out with all the Portland folks? (And by work part time, I mean, seriously, like pulling beers at a local brewery or making coffee somewhere.) Or head to NY and crash with Mary and Doug and, yeah, wait tables or something? Obviously, I’ve got some thinking to do, and some job searching to do, because I clearly can’t just NOT work this summer (LOTS of plane tickets to buy in the very near future, and they ain’t cheap!), but I have NO idea what kind of (real) work I want to do. I’m starting to lean more toward NGO/non-profit/development type work, but who knows.

So if you know anyone looking for an MBA intern this summer, let me know! Otherwise, I might just end up chilling by the pool at my parents’ house and slinging sushi with my bro. Which wouldn’t be so bad, if it were anywhere in the world other than Stockton, CA. However, at least I know that, come October, I’ll be crash landing at the end of the world, and on to a pretty excellent adventure. An adventure that, I’m convinced, will have some answers to my many questions about which direction to take, which is pretty awesome. (Thanks, Laurent, for kicking my ass on this one. You were so right…) And as far as the summer goes, I am definitely taking suggestions.

Family, hurray!!! April 22, 2008

This last weekend not only lived up to expectations. It crushed the living daylights out of them. Holy crap. I don’t know when I’ve ever had a better weekend. (And man, am I in a better mood now. Whew! Can you tell??)

Mary and Doug got here on Thursday, Rupert and Carol came in on Friday evening, Cathal showed up on Saturday afternoon, and yeah, it was pretty much nonstop eating, drinking, eating, drinking, taking in some sights (but not really) and then back to eating and drinking. I must say that I had a stroke of absolute inspiration and took Mary and Dough to a bar IN La Boqueria for lunch the day they got here, right after we threw back a quick pint of Guinness at Flaherty’s. (The only drag about that, and then subsequently the whole weekend, was that they learned that my 7-year-old cousin was in the hospital after having the first asthma attack of his life so far. How’s that for timing? Poor little dude! But no worries! He’s fine now!!) Anyway, trauma aside, they were sufficiently pleased with the Boqueria, and the meal was, in Doug’s terms, just ridiculous (fried artichoke hearts, jamon, chipirones, sardinas a la plancha, asparagus, grilled wild mushrooms, gambas al ajillo, etc — get excited, Becky, Ben, Sean, Laura, Kim and Martijn, because we’re SO going back when you come here!!). It was the beginning of a series of absolutely INSANE meals that we had, including the major highlight of the weekend, dinner at Commerc 24. The chef there apparently trained with el Bulli himself, and yeah, it was pretty much the tastiest meal I’ve ever had. (FOUR hours of nonstop eating waves of delicious tapas and drinking crazy-good wine and conversing, during which the bulk of the conversation went something like “oh my GOD that’s good…” “I know, have you tried the other one yet? just wait!”)

But you know what? All that delicious food and partying isn’t really even the best part. (Although, seriously, it was all totally spectacular. Hyperbole aside, I swear!) The best part was how much I enjoyed having my family here, as well as some of their best friends. What an amazing group of people. I think not altogether infrequently about how lucky I am to have been born into such an excellent family (on both sides!), and also how I seem to have been happily condemned to a life full of scores of wonderful friends, but it’s not often that I think about how awesome the friends of my family are. (Because, honestly, how often does that come up?) And I was sitting with them all at dinner on Saturday — Mary and Doug, Rupert and Carol, Cathal (who couldn’t bring his wife and baby, unfortunately, but apparently his wife was a relatively well-known punk-rock screamer in Zurich in the 80s–um, how cool is that??) — and it occurred to me, holy shit, these people are who I HOPE to be in 20-odd years. They are successful. They are cool. They are smart and knowledgeable and interesting, and share their interests with their cool, smart, knowledgeable and interesting kids. They take cool vacations. They read good books and see good movies. They’re all still damn attractive. They have cool friends who they fly to Barcelona for the weekend to see. They, in short, are kicking ass at being grown-ups. So of course, at said dinner, I might have made something of a speech (when Mary asked us all to go around and say what we’re excited about in our lives right now) and said to them that, for the love of Buddha, I hope you guys know just how damn cool and inspirational you are! Because I doubt, in the course of their insanely busy everyday lives, they often zoom out and think, hell ya, this is the life I created, and shit, isn’t it f***ing cool? To me, that’s just damn exciting.

All this to say, the weekend was incredible and provided quite a bit of the perspective I’ve been so effing desperate for lately. (Holy crap, have I been “cambiante” lately. Ooof, it’s exhausting to be so freaking all over the place!) Mary is always such a calming, reassuring, relentlessly positive and infinitely loving presence, and Doug does a great job of reminding me that stuff just doesn’t have to be a big deal. Plus, everything in life looks better over a delicious bottle of cava. Also: somehow, over the course of the weekend, I was nearly totally talked out of my interest in HR (at least, working in an HR department at a company, ugh…) and my interest in Africa was sparked all over again (totally Rupert, Carol and Cathal’s fault — a collective “why the hell wouldn’t you go to Africa??” sentiment was pretty much all I needed to tip the scale back toward Cape Town…). So there may be developments on that front, still — I’ll keep y’all posted, promise.

Of course, in a lot of ways, I’m even more confused than ever (what DOES it all mean???), but at least I had a kickass weekend with some of the bestest folks on the planet, and for a minute, I got to stop feeling dumb and incompetent, which feels freaking great.

Yet further exercises in humility April 15, 2008

Well, I finally had that second interview I was so excited about this afternoon. And folks, it was probably the hardest interview of my life so far (including when I started at S!, and had to do FIVE interviews). I felt like an idiot most of the way through it. Which is awesome, because at least it’s consistent with how I feel ALL THE TIME lately. I actually went in feeling pretty good, relaxed, confident, etc., but, yeah, got backed into a corner by a few questions, and did NOT do a good job digging myself out. Plus, he gave me a case! A case! I mean, it was appropriate, because it’s a project they’re working on right now (with my LEAD coach! at the company he works for! the LEAD coach I had such a crush on in the fall! and I had to answer what I could offer HIM in terms of helping him define a strategy to train all of his directors! eek!), and it makes sense to see how I would approach the project, but I don’t think I did a very good job AT ALL… Like everything I’ve learned in all of those strategy classes just went STRAIGHT out the window. And seriously seriously seriously, I don’t know how much more of this feeling-dumb-ALL-the-time crap I can take. Today I started to fantasize about going home for the summer, working with Ricky in the Japanese restaurant, sitting by the pool at my parents’ house, going to the beach house for a couple of weeks, and not doing any kind of internship at all… That sounds better than facing the reality of what an absolute debacle business school is turning out to be, right? Right. Uuuuggghh.

At least Mary and Doug are here in a couple of days, and I can take advantage of some serious family time. And they do a pretty good job of helping me to not feel like such an idiot, so that’s good, too. Plus, I’m pretty sure we’re going to spend the entire time eating and drinking, and there will be NO talk of any kind of corporate strategy, finance, law, or accounting, so I can take advantage of this brilliant city for a few days without taking any further hits to my ego.

I will attempt to be more positive in upcoming entries, but man, it’s been a rough week.

Kind of sort of better April 14, 2008

Oooookay…. Whew! After last week’s freakout, I am feeling (somewhat) better. Man, failing another class has been yet another hit to my already extremely bruised ego. (Yes, folks, I know what you’re thinking, but I pretty much put together that I can’t “skate by” as usual when I failed the first AND second classes… At this point, it’s just demoralizing.) Luckily, I have excellent friends here, and they’ve done a good job of reminding me that I’m not nearly as dumb as I feel. Also, as Laura shrewdly reminded me, I didn’t WANT to be a teacher, and that’s why I didn’t study education. Right. I guess I just want to feel good at something again, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that I rock with kids, but I do NOT rock at business school. No kids in sight, and I’m not feeling terribly good at anything.

BUT, I did say I’m feeling better, and so, you know, mostly I am. At least my city provides me with plenty of distractions (ugh, not always good ones — football fans en masse on vacation are one of my LEAST favorite things about local tourism, especially when their chanting and shouting wakes me up at 4:30am on a school night…) so at least I can’t always dwell on my perceived idiocy.

Two big highlights from last week: last Thursday the sun came out, it was a beautiful day, so my group and I headed down to a chiriguito en la PLAYA to drink beers, play frisbee (well, they played — I watched and took pictures with Christian’s camera), and enjoy the fact that we live on the freaking Mediterranean; second highlight, though way less sexy: my interview was postponed to tomorrow, so I didn’t have to fake my way through it. (Oh man, I was having some dark visions of how it would go: “So, tell me about your strengths and weaknesses.” “I don’t HAVE any strengths, but I can tell you ALL about my weaknesses…” or “So, why an MBA?” “I don’t KNOOOOOOOW! Booohoooo!!!” Yeah, it could have gone badly…) Luckily, I’m in a bit of a better mood today (not a LOT better, given that I have yet to understand ANYTHING in Finance or Law, and we’re already 2 weeks in…) and assume that I’ll feel better going into my interview tomorrow than I would have last week… And the work load isn’t too intense tonight, so I’ll get a good night sleep before my interview. Fingers crossed it goes well, and I’ll have a solid plan for the summer, and can stop having buyer’s remorse for not going to Cape Town… I promise, I’m feeling better, though.

Spoke too soon… April 8, 2008

Well folks, I F**KING FAILED F**KING TAX. ARGH!!!!! I am unspeakably frustrated, and once again am left feeling like I’m in the WRONG place… Every feeling I’ve ever had of being a failure, or not belonging here, or not being smart… yeah, RIGHT on the surface. (Which is great. Juuuust freaking great. Feels AWESOME!) I feel like Wile E Coyote, when he’s in the desert, and somehow finds himself in a field of rakes, and everywhere he turns, he steps on one and it smacks him in the face. That’s essentially how I feel about business school — everywhere I turn, another smack in the face. And the silly thing is, I actually felt good about the tax exam, which makes me feel even MORE dumb. I fully expected to pass that class. Man, people, WHY did I think business school was a good idea??? At the moment, I really really hate it — HATE it — and am none too thrilled with myself for making the (incredibly expensive) choice to be here. I am also none too thrilled with myself for not making the effort necessary to pass my f**king classes. Of course, I always THINK I’m making the effort, but no, no, apparently not. Apparently I’m only making enough effort to pass MOST of my classes. Which, when I’m making a $100,000+ investment in my education, is freaking inexcusable. I should be passing ALL of them. ALL. OF. THEM. Uuuughhh… If any of you out there are thinking about business school, I sincerely hope you’re better with numbers than I am. But you know what else sucks? I never thought I was bad with numbers… I taught algebra to the kiddos for years, and always felt reasonably good at it. Once again: ARGH.

Okay, whew. Sorry for the rant. I am sure I will feel better tomorrow, so no worries. I have my interview with Deloitte, and thank BUDDHA I’m at least reasonably convinced that I can be good at the HR stuff. And my friends are doing a great job of cheerleading me through the discomfort of this most recent failure, and the many tears I shed at school this afternoon (yeah, a little embarrassed about that, actually). And on the bright side, after this term, it’s all electives, for the duration of my time at school. And you better believe I won’t be taking ANYMORE numbers classes next year. Ick.

So okay, I need an attitude adjustment, big time, in order to not totally bomb my interview tomorrow and feel even WORSE, so I think I’ll see if Shirin wants to go for a little Guinness-therapy with me. (Oh, sh*t, I haven’t mentioned Shirin yet. She’s my AWESOME new roommate. I was sad to see Jorge go, but Shirin’s so great, I wasn’t sad for long. She’s English/French/Lebanese, and awesome, and I adore her already.)

Cheers to a better tomorrow, and not failing any more classes…

Term 3 — off with a bang! April 6, 2008

Alright, time for a bit of a school update, eh? It’s been an intense 7 months, and now I’m at the very beginning of my last term of my first year of business school. And from what I’ve seen so far, I think it’s going to be a tough one. Classes this term: Global Marketing, Corporate Finance (the project: a financial evaluation of Pfizer — ouch, that sounds like a LOT of spreadsheets…), Global Commerce and Investment (basically an econ class, and I think it’s going to be really really interesting!), Corporate Law (same prof that failed me in pre-term — I promised him a 9.5 this term, but… that’s going to be HARD; it’s basically Merger and Acquisition Law), Information Systems (not going to be too tech-y, they tell me), and Operations Strategy. Whew! I pretty much think ALL of these classes are going to be a stretch for me (especially finance and law — oof!). The good news is that the schedule isn’t too heavy, and, as I’ve mentioned, I have a lot of great visitors coming in the near future, so at least there will be some good play-time/beach-time. (Mary and Doug are here in 2 weeks!!! Yippeeeee!!!) Also, it is SPRING in Barcelona — sunshine, a warm breeze, blue skies, light until 8:30pm… The only bummer about all the awesome weather is that it attracts tourists like crazy, so my neighborhood is, well, going to be swarmed all the time between now and the Fall, as near as I can tell. Ugh. However, the benefits of the awesome weather so intensely out-weigh the disadvantages, I’m really not complaining. The weather here was, after all, one of the driving factors in my decision to come back to BCN in the first place.

One interesting thing that’s going on is that I’m starting to feel like I’m on the right track with this whole HR thing. I spent 4 hours yesterday afternoon helping Graciela prepare for her McKinsey interview tomorrow, and another 4 hours or so helping Dan adjust his resume, and I’m pretty sure that they both felt like it was time productively spent. Seems like this might be the right vocation for me, eh?

Anyway, that’s the school update for now. As usual, it can be summed up with this simple phrase: Business School is HARD!!! (Oh, and by the way, I passed my accounting exam. Whew!!) At least it seems to be less terribly hard than before. (Sure, I say that now. Let’s see how I feel after another couple of weeks, eh?) Oookay, I should start some of that Pfizer research now, I suppose. I mean, I’d WAY rather pop over to the plaza around the corner, enjoy the sunshine, and drink a cafe con leche, but… I’m pretty sure I’d just end up drinking Guinness and spacing out instead, so I probably shouldn’t do that, right?

Ah, but quick shout out first: CONGRATULATIONS Stella and Seth!!!! They’ll be first time parents some time in November. Wooooohooooo!!!

I might not be that dumb… April 1, 2008

As we know, I have seriously struggled with my sense of self, sense of intelligence and sense of belonging since I’ve been here. And while I can’t report any major gains on sense of self or belonging, I can at least say that, today, I don’t feel altogether dumb. Which is nice. I found out, to my delight, that I passed Introduction to Corporate Finance. Thank BUDDHA! (A “6″ has never been more beautiful to me…) I seriously thought there was a risk of failure given that, while taking the exam, had it not been for the presence of my classmates I would have sincerely thought I was in the wrong classroom. But apparently I understood enough to get by. Yippeeeeeeeee! (Honestly, I didn’t think I could take another failure anyway. It’s just so demoralizing…) Also, I had my makeup exam for Cost Accounting today (three months later, ugh), and oddly enough, it didn’t feel that hard. I credit Graciela’s genius, as she expertly explained some of the trickier concepts to me yesterday (of course yesterday! when did you THINK I was going to start studying for the test??). But really, for the first time, I was able to look at the numbers and think (a little shakily) “yeah, okay, I think I can do this.” It sounds super cheesy, but MAN am I enjoying a LONG overdue moment of validation. Whew.

In other good news, I have my second interview with Deloitte next Wednesday, and my career adviser also hooked me up with another contact at another human resource consulting agency here in town (which is apparently part of the biggest HR consulting group in Europe, but seems to be pretty small here), so the possibilities seem to be opening up. AND: I don’t want to say TOO much, because it’s waaaaay too early and I don’t want to jinx it, but I met a guy last Saturday from another business school who is looking to start up his own HR consultancy after the MBA. He is also, incidentally, looking for a business partner. And the startup would be in Singapore, which I think is awesome. So we’ll be staying in touch. I’m excited.

But man, for a minute, I’m just going to enjoy a moment of not feeling like a total idiot, and read a totally NON-business related book until I fall asleep. Word.