Thursday, September 24, 2009

My First Midterm

The first Intro to Business midterm has become a semi-legendry event. On our first day of class, our professors warn us that we should expect to fail the test, and the upper classmen all have horror stories to tell. By the end of the first month, as the test looms ominously toward us, first year students begin to fall into hysterics about the ordeal; some look to be on the edge of fainting at any moment. This past Tuesday, I took that test.

At CU, large tests are taken in the Coors Event Center—a basketball stadium. I walked into the center (or more like sprinted because it was cold and raining and I seem to have some strange allergy to wearing proper coats), with a swarm of almost a thousand other Business and Accounting students. My recitation leader then greeted me at the entrance, which was oddly re-assuring—I think because he really seemed to be rooting for me to do well. He handed me a lapboard and pointed toward the entrance to the seating area.

As I walked into the stadium seating area, I noticed a new element to the testing environment I had never enjoyed before—a volleyball practice. “Oh now I understand,” I thought, “I am not paying over twenty-thousand dollars a year for the opportunity to sit in hard little plastic chairs, with a board over my lap, and take a ridiculously difficult test. I am actually paying for the live sports entertainment I get during the test.”

With a sardonic chuckle, I took my little board and my small collection of pens and pencils and walked down the endless rows of concrete steps to the front row—courtside. My friend recommended that I sit in the front row, so that I could lean my lapboard against the rails and write on it like a really steeply tilted desk. This ended up being the best test taking advice anyone has yet given me. I was able to settle back in relative comfort, while watching my fellows try to puzzle out just how one uses a lapboard. I really had it lucky—I even had a footrest on the lower rail.

I was just lounging around, watching the pre-test game, when my professor walked by and said, “Rebecca, why are you sitting here? Don’t you want to sit where there is light?” And my heart stopped. “Right,” I thought in a moment of stunningly brilliant internal dialogue, “you need light to take a test.” I glanced up to see if there were any seats left in the sparse patches of light. No luck. “I have always been a good test taker, maybe I will develop night vision under pressure!”

Luckily, I never got the chance to test this panic-born theory. When seven’ o’clock rolled around, the lights came on to their full strength. The volleyball players tossed in their balls and ended the game, and my professor stepped up to the microphone to address us all. “Good Evening,” she said, “we strongly recommend that you take the test in pen, in case you wish to dispute your grade at a later date. We are handing out the tests now. Please do not flip your test over until everyone has a copy. You have two hours. Good luck.”


And with that, the test began.

Overall, it was not that bad. Hopefully I am not forced to eat these words when I get my grade back, but the test seemed more hype than anything else. Granted, I am one of those freaks that actually enjoy taking standardized tests. But still, it was not the ordeal people made it out to be. The biggest adjustment was not the difficulty of the test, but the environment in which I took it. In a funny sort of way, I think it was better for me to take my test in a stadium—it helped me remember it is game time.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Charles' Story

Leeds has a program called the Diverse Scholars Program, which aims toward providing resources to historically underprivileged students. I was invited into the program by sheer luck—I happened to be introduced to Aswad, the director, last spring. So, I spent this last weekend at Estes Park, attending the Diverse Scholars Program’s annual retreat—where they welcome new members into the community, and say goodbye to graduating members. On the last morning, we all gathered together to share our experience.

It was like a moment from a movie. There we were, a group of about a hundred, sprawled in a ragged circle. If a camera were to pan around, it would show a group of slightly disheveled looking youth, who somehow conquered their vanity enough to bring their ratted old clothing on a retreat to Estes Park. The faces that would appear on the screen would be a rare mix of golden, brown, black, and white. But, what would be most notable to the viewer would not be shown on the screen, but heard; the crowd was collectively holding its breath so as to not break the perfect silence.

Sitting slightly outside the circle was a middle-aged African American Man named Aswad Allen, nicknamed As by his DSP kids, watching the scene. He was holding his chin in a reflective sort of slant, wearing a tender smile on his face, and training his gaze toward the center of the circle.

Where his gaze fell, stood a young black man, holding a stick in the air, and with the stick, holding the silence. Finally, the man began to speak.

“I too tried to run away from the Diverse Scholars Program,” he said. “I tried to run away from love.” Charles jutted out his chin, as if that small motion could dry up the well

of tears that had already been primed by the previous speeches.

“When I came here as a freshman, I wanted to make a change,” he continued. “A few months before I arrived at CU, an African American man was jumped on campus in a racist crime. My focus was to change the feeling of division here. So when I arrived on campus, I joined everything I could—I was involved in the Cultural Event Board, the Black Student Alliance, the Presidents Leadership Class, and the Diverse Scholars Program at Leeds. It was hard to balance everything, and I didn’t spend much time in DSP. But, As was always there; whenever I came back, he welcomed me and helped me get through.”

With a glace at Aswad, Charles continued, “Then, in the summer of my sophomore year, I got a call from a man named Charles Johnson, asking me to serve as Student Group Funding Board Chair. And around the same time, things started to get bad,” he said with a pain filled chuckle. Charles paused for a moment, closing his eyes.

He opened his eyes and continued, “See, my family ran into some financial…trouble, and that really threw me off track. My family is my foundation; I was sending money home that I needed, I was almost evicted, and I was so distracted by hunger that I could not focus in class. At the time, I didn’t have the wisdom to listen to the advice that As gave me. I kept running from the love that DSP had to offer.”

“At the end of my sophomore year, I pledged to my fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha Inc. and was surrounded by men that had been in similar, or worse, situations and still succeeded and that had reached a level of happiness in themselves as men that I was seeking after. My God, it was ridiculous. I think that was the first thing that helped me come back to DSP.”

“By my junior year, I was a tri-exec of the University of Colorado Student Union and was handling 36.8 billion dollars. Meanwhile, my family was still in trouble. That year, the DSP office really became my refuge. I must have been working fifty or sixty hours a week for UCSU and was working three jobs. I remember As would always ask me, ‘How are you doing?’ Even though I was not directly involved, the community was always there as an unconditional presence, and that was very powerful.”

“That year was rough because I was stuck serving my fellow students while struggling myself. I needed to be refocused. But, As was always there, asking me, ‘What are your goals?’ and reminding me that graduation was the task that would free me for what I wanted to do.”

“If it weren’t for As, I would not be here. When I was in the darkest place in my life, people would advise me to just quit, because I was only going to fail anyway. Why waist my money? As was the one who told me that I could do it, but that I had to learn that success doesn’t mean that you didn’t need help. You know, freshman year I nicknamed myself Atlas, ‘cause I was a punk, and ‘cause I could hold the world on my shoulders,” Charles scoffed.

“But no one can do that. I would not be here if it weren’t for my God, and for my DSP family. DSP was always a resource for me, but I didn’t make it my heart until my fourth year.”

“But I made it,” he said, losing the fight to tears, and not realizing that the rest of the circle was already in tears. “Don’t run from love, don’t run from this family.”

With that, Charles slowly placed the speaking stick on the ground, still sharing tears with the rest of the group. And as he walked out of the center, a young woman looked back and saw that As was crying too.

Monday, September 14, 2009

When They Said "Get Involved" I Did Not Know They Would Throw Things.

The first piece of advice that everyone gave me when I entered college was, “get involved.” They relayed this ad

vice to me with such utterly earnest looks, like this was the difference between emerging from college showered in degrees and honors, and dropping out to sell vacuum cleaners to old ladies with lots of cats, that I had to believe them. So, when the

first week of interest meetings rolled around, I put out an honest effort to get involved. However, I did not realize that they would throw things at me.

The first meeting I attended was for the Multi-Cultural Business Students Asso

ciation (http://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/mbsa/students_news.html). I happened to know a few people there from the Business Leadership P

rogram (http://tinyurl.com/ouqs29) that I participated in this summer. So, I sat down and started to chat with my friends. After a few minutes, a group of well-dressed upper classmen arranged themselves at the front of the room and kicked the meeting off. They told us about themselves, about the organization, and about the benefits of joining their organization, while we munched happily away on Chipotle (I love how everyone in the Business school is dedicated to feeding me)!

I was very impressed with the organization itself. They do corporate meet and greets, resume building sessions, volunteer activities, and visits to corporate offices. They have already scheduled Accounting Night for accounting students to meet with representatives from the Big Four Accounting Firms (Ernst and Youn

g, Price Waterhouse Coopers, Deloitte, KPMG) and a case study with Shell. Apparently attending these nights is a good career move. My friend Ashley said that she went to one of MBSA’s interview practice sessions. She looked really nervous, so a corporate representative grabbed her, forced her to sit down, and proceeded to interview her. A few months later, she applied for a Summer Leadership Program with the same company. She walked into the interview, only to find that the interviewer was the same person who interviewed her for MBSA. “Oh, I remember you,“ the woman said with a smile, and they proceded to spend the next forty five minutes chatting about their favorite movies and what they liked to do in their free time. She said that it changed the whole tone of the interview, and she went on to be accepted into the leadership program.

In a drastic contrast, I also went to the interest meeting for the CU Alpine Club (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=34233386799). When I walked in, I went through the same routine as every other first year. I walked through the door, looked around nervously, saw a few other people lo

oking just as painfully awk

ward as me, gravitated toward

on

e of their clusters, ducked my head, and sat down—only to enjoy long, long silence, punctuated by a few furtive glances. Eventually I found the courage to chat with Stephanie, a senior who was also checking out the club. We chatted about climbing gyms in Boulder, classes, and majors—the usual. Then the meeting began.

This meeting was so big that they had to book one of the large lecture halls to host it—and there were still at least twenty

people sitting on the floor! The clubs leaders briefed us on what the club does (leads climbs, supports climbers, arranges discounts and classes with local gyms, and even rents a boat to live on for a few days after finals). They had a raffle—where they tested the agility of their new members by hurling the prizes at their heads (no one was hurt, luckily). Then they invited their corporate sponsors to talk about their companies and the benefits for members (there were great deals on gym memberships). They even played the ”sleeping bad game” where two boy-girl teams had to crawl into sleeping bags and switch clothes faster than the other team. This was a particularly hilarious and delightfully awkward game (especially if you don’t know anyone).

I had a great time at both meetings, though they were worlds apart. Where MBSA was well put together, organized, and friendly in a professional way, CU Alpine Club was rowdy, spontaneous, and a great time. They both seem like great organizations in different ways. MBSA is a good community and a great career move, while CU Alpine Club is a good time and a great way to get out and climb.

I was most impressed by the level of responsibility that both organizations had—they could lead trips, arrange workshops, connect you to Vice Presidents in Shell, and rent boats. I now understand why they said to get involved—clubs here are nothing like those in high school. Back in the day, we would sit around, eat pizza, and occasionally organize events if we were extremely ambitious. For organizations in college the sky is the limit (literally in the Alpine Club) and you join because they make things happen.

Coming soon: Running Around in the Mountains with DSP.

Friday, September 11, 2009

I Thought Size Mattered



I thought I would be physically bigger when I got to college. At five foot three (on a good day) and one hundred and fifteen pounds, I am exactly the same size as I was in seventh grade. Granted, I do not look like a seventh grader. But I always thought I would be a five-seven goddess, with men panting at my heels, by the time I reached college. I am not. I am a midget who can’t believe she is allowed to walk among the giants.

For my first few weeks, I had no idea what a big deal most of my professors are. Some of them may be smaller than me in stature (shockingly), but they are all amazingly accomplished in the real world. They are published authors, researchers, former successful businessmen and businesswomen, and even former professional ski instructors.

I never really understood that professors aren’t just the high-end models of teachers. Until one afternoon in my literature class, when my professor lovingly mentioned the big, shiny new Borders in 29th Street Mall. “Yeah, it is really nice,” he said with a boyishly excited smile, like he was telling a close friend about a new toy over a couple of sandcastles in the playground sandbox. “Except they didn’t have my book,” he said with a dramatic sigh, “but you should go there anyway.”

Just before class, I had eaten a very large and tasty lunch, and the room was hot. So naturally, my head was beginning to sag delicately into the crook of my arm. But, my professor’s comment snapped my head up. Your what? You mean I could have strolled into Borders and pulled your book off the shelf—and now I am sitting here, fighting off my food coma in your class? For me, this was a moment roughly equivalent to man landing on the moon—the whole universe opened up to me with an almost audible rumble!

As I walked down the hall of professors’ offices forty minutes later, I couldn’t help but stare into each room with big round eyes, thinking, “Wow! They are all authors, and researcher, and important people.” Quite a few of them stared back at me, probably thinking, “Wow, I wonder what is wrong with that girl.”

I still cannot understand how such important people can take the time to teach a couple hundred eighteen-to-nineteen-year-olds to think and speak intelligently at cocktail parties. College was just something that came after high school. I did not realize what an opportunity it is. We get to chill out in a small city of like-minded academics and pass our time discussing our passions with the big names in our fields. Whoever though up the idea of college was a genius!

Perhaps the strangest thing is, after the initial intimidation and awe wore off, I realized that my professors didn’t seem to care that they were educated at Harvard and Cambridge, that they literally wrote the book on their subject, or that they are directing national research projects in their areas. They are willing to draw ideas even from a lowly freshman like myself.

In my stats class, I asked my professor a question about the difference between a line graph and a scatter plot with a line drawn on it. I was thrown off, I said, by a graph on the front of The Onion, about the outlook of the economy in relation to the number of beers consumed(http://www.theonion.com/content/news/nations_unemployment_outlook).
After skimming the article, she cracked into a big smile, explained that it was a scatter plot, and asked if she could keep the article to use in her later classes. When I dropped by her office hours the next week to ask her a question, she became so excited about my work in Google analytics that she asked for access to my account to lecture on the data tracking software in class, and to present to the Air Force as a method of gathering information for her research!

Working with all of these academic giants, and having them want to work with me, has had the strangest effect on me—it makes me think that it is possible for me to become a giant as well. Maybe I could write a book, or radically change the nation’s environmental policies, or even start a medical practice.

In class this afternoon, my literature professor told us the story of how he had met the author of the novel we are reading—a couple of times. We are reading Who’s Irish?, by Gish Jen, who had her short story “Birthmates” named one of the best short stories of the 20th century. He said that the first time they met, he was a student and was asked to introduce her during a guest lecture. The second time, he ran into her in the toothpaste isle. “Cambridge is the sort of place where you see people like that,” He offered with a shrug, “Who knows when you will walk into the dry cleaners and run into Julia Child?” It seems CU possesses the same magic that Cambridge has—and you never know who you will run into in the toothpaste isle.

Perhaps the fable of the lion and the mouse (where the lion is saved by the little mouse after he spares the mouse’s life) has some truth in it. Maybe my professors only grew to their current stature because they work with mice. Maybe they too were once mice. It makes me hope, that someday this particular midget can become a giant.

Coming next: When they said, “Get involved,” I did not know they would throw things.

Friday, September 4, 2009

One Card Gets You in the Buff

As I walked into the mailroom to pick up my first package, the smiling woman behind the counter asked me for my ID. Unfortunately, I realized that I had left my wallet back in my room and the only things I was carrying were my keys and my Buff OneCard (CU’s student card). For fear of suffering the humiliation of admitting that I lacked the foresight to bring any ID, I smiled my most trustworthy smile and said “Oh, I don’t have my ID on me; will my Buff OneCard work?” To which the woman responded by turning her left cheek to me, cocking one eyebrow, and glancing at me through the slitted corners of her eyes, in one of the most profound “did you really just say something that stupid to me?” looks I have ever seen. I felt my face flush as the woman held her glare. Then sipping in breaths of air as if she were trying to forcibly calm herself, she strained to unclench her lips and said, “At CU, your Buff OneCard is your ID.”

“Oh,” was all I managed to force out of my throat before hastily handing her my card and fleeing with a big package full of books and embarrassment.

So, to avoid future embarrassment, I promptly asked all of my roommates what my Buff OneCard was for—much to my disappointment, they too had no idea.

So, I sought out an expert. Who would know more about these mystery cards that the woman who handles hundreds of them every day? But, when I asked the lunch lady at the dining hall what my card was for, she responded by glancing kindly, but pointedly, at the sign taped to the front of her kiosk: “1 swipe= 1 entree + 2 sides”. “Right,” I said, handing over my chosen food, “never mind.”

Finally, I decided to consult my most knowledgeable and non-judgmental resource at CU—the website. According to CU’s site, my Buff OneCard is the superhero of little plastic cards; it does just about everything I can imagine (besides fetch my morning coffee, but I hear they are working on that feature).

The site agreed with the horrible woman in the mailroom, your Buff OneCard is your primary form of identification. All students and employees are required to carry it with them at all times and present it to any official upon request.

Next, as the lunch lady informed me, your card is your ticket to meal plans. Just present your card at any dining hall and one swipe can get you a ticket to an all-you-can-eat buffet, or an entre and two to three sides at any grab-and-go. Thanks to my peer mentor, I also stumbled across another trick; you can swipe up to four meals in one day. So, my roommate and I regularly go “shopping” at the grab and goes and stock up on food for the weekend or just for late night snacks.

Your card also holds your “munch money,” university funny money that you can use to pay way too much for late night snacks at convenience stores in the residence halls. I recently bought a small block of cheese for $5.73 and have spent at least $15 on ice cream in the last three weeks (hello freshman 15).

But, now the cards capabilities become more complicated. On top of munch money; there is Campus Cash—more funny money, of a different category, that can only be used to pay for printing and for laundry.

However, the card holds real money too. You can set your card up to work as an ATM/Debit card, if you are willing to open an account with Buff One Banking—the university bank.

Your card is also your buss pass; gaining you access to the RTD, the skip, the hop, the jump, the charger, the stampede, the buff bus, and the light rail. This one magic card can get you almost anywhere in Boulder (and to the Denver airport).

Cards act as keys to dorms, classrooms, and some buildings.

But, the cards capabilities don’t stop there. You can set up the Buff Advantage on your card and get discounts in many restaurants and retail outlets in the local area.

Finally, your card can get you student sports tickets. When you buy a student ticket or season pass, simply present your card at the box office and they will give you access to the student section.

With all of the things that this all in one card can do, it is really no surprise that I had no idea how to use my card. Even now, I have decided that the safest bet is just to hand over my card to anyone I come in contact with, and hope that I have done the right thing.

Coming next: “I Thought Size Mattered”