Question of the day.

Dear Lysol,

When has anybody gotten sick because their toilet bowl cleaner didn't cling to the u-bend?

Sincerely,

Things I want to accomplish this quarter.

• Swept floor.
• Clean toilet.
• Apple-cranberry pie, even if it's made with store-bought pie dough.
• Mashed potatoes with root vegetables, even if there is only one root vegetable, and it's carrots.
• Finish Christmas shopping early.
• Get a little something for myself for Christmas without making it seem totally selfish.
• Transfer rest of CD collection to iPod.
• Smooth job transition.
• Check up on my pal B, who is supposed to take GMATs this weekend. Either that or she took it last weekend. I can't remember.
• Get more sleep.

Oddly enough, none of these are "study hard and pass this quarter".

Why I love my job. A rant.

I love my job because my coworkers and I all know how to write. We don't turn out finely tuned prose like J and Z, but what we write gets the job done. It may be riddled with grammatical inconsistencies, but our peer review process quickly irons those out. And I don't see the problem with starting sentences with conjunctions in a blog.

When I studied for the GMAT, many test questions contained many examples of God-awful phrases and sentences. I used to wonder, "Isn't this obvious? Who on earth would write like that?"

My classmates, that's who. They really do write that poorly, when they can be bothered to write at all. I am not just talking about the engineers. The ones who majored in other things, the ones who really *should* know about writing because they would have taken several writing courses in college, these are the people churning out documents that would have made me blush in middle school.

If these are the college-educated, how are the high schoolers writing?

I am generally willing to give some leeway to those who do not speak English as a first language. I'm impressed at how Z writes so well (and how I write so poorly) considering.

But this quarter's project took the cake. There were four people on my team. The Girl (as in the other female besides me) just sat and nodded her head. She kept saying she understood things conceptually, but couldn't put the numbers to them, and that she was going to study how to do the numbers in detail. I wanted to scream, "You keep saying that, but wouldn't it be easier just to do your homework?"

The First Guy was a little lazy at first, but eventually came through. At least he checked all of my numbers (and by God there were a lot), helped conduct the final analysis, and actually read through and critiqued my argument.

The Second Guy was a moron, almost as bad as the Girl. His major contributions were the templates for the slides and the report. He simply believed all of my numbers. At first glance you'd think he was simply an agreeable, happy guy. It turned out he was just believing everything. Every modification he made to the report I had to undo. His grammar was terrible, and he couldn't decide between past and present tense, very often in the same sentence. His last significant contribution to the report was to move our assumptions from the start of the document to the very end, after our recommendations.

I had to point out to him that it is traditional to end reports with your conclusions, not the assumptions you made while crunching the data. Call me old-fashioned, but I firmly believe reports should end with conclusions.

I downloaded the report at midnight Saturday night. Up until then, I had not been able to look at it, because I did all the numbers for the project. I did all the numbers because FG was checking my numbers, SG was too stupid to replicate the formulas, and the Girl had no idea what was going on. I expected to find a decent argument, to which FG and I needed only to add figures, reference to figures, and analysis of the figures.

Boy, was I wrong. The last time I saw a report this bad was in middle school.

It took me half an hour to adjust the page numbers so the cover page wasn't page 1. He reverted that, at which point I decided I didn't have half an hour to change it back.

He kept losing my tables and figures, substituting his own captions instead. Around version 7 I practically screamed at the group to make damn sure they didn't lose the figures. This was at 5AM Sunday morning.

I wanted to spend Sunday cramming for the final. Instead I was updating the report because SG kept screwing it up. I think I failed the exam as a result.

Now how can I make this known to the professor without sounding whiny?

Five minutes: a study of the mundane.

I bought an electric kettle. It cost $20 plus tax.

It has nearly paid for itself. Here's why: it has given back five minutes of my time every morning. This is because I can boil water while showering, leaving the tea bag to steep while the toast goes. That's five minutes that can now run in parallel with the rest of breakfast assembly time.

Told you it was a study of the mundane.

Annoyed

Midterm tomorrow. We just learned the last of the material for the midterm last night, which leaves tonight to cram, practice, and write up the cheat sheet.

The midterm was originally called "quiz/exam" because the professor wanted to put us at ease. Bullspit. It's a midterm. What is more, it is the first of two midterms in a compressed quarter. We already know that professors who have two midterms plus a required final in a normal quarter are insane.

The midterm requires a scantron and a bluebook, both of which I have to dash out and purchase today.

The bookstore opens late (8:30) and closes early (6:00). It is also not open during the weekends this month and you can be sure they won't mail me the scantrons and bluebooks.

Also there is a midterm for the other class next week, which I am not prepared for because I have been catching up for tomorrow's exam.

I got home late from class last night, mostly because the class ends late. I have not had enough sleep for over a quarter now. As a result I am halfway through a 12-pack of Diet Pepsi, and it's only the third week of the quarter. This is in addition to the usual tea habit.

The study abroad book report is due at the end of this month. While it is mercifully short (800-1000 words) and the book is a fast read, I am only 70 pages into the book, and have zero time to actually read it. This is because I have to spend all the other nights of the week studying for the two classes.

Having classes on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday has turned out most inconvenient. At first I enjoyed having half my Saturday back. Now I'm rethinking that. Not only do you lose Tuesday and Thursday as study days, you have effectively locked in Monday and Wednesday (prep for Thursday's session) and Friday (prep for Saturday's session). So that leaves only Saturday and Sunday as flexible days wherein you can choose to study more for the class you're weaker at.

I quit my job. More specifically, I am transferring to a job in another department. It turns out that quitting mid-project makes you Loved, more Loved than you would be at review time, and so Old Boss and New Boss are negotiating the transfer date and the details of the transfer. I am waiting, just waiting, for them to each take an arm and make a wish. At least that would settle things very quickly. In the meantime, I am trying to be very discreet while at the same time divesting myself of all kinds of administrivia junk that, if left unattended, would eat up tons of time just when I need to deliver on my technical promises.

This means transferring ownership of many, many machines to the guy in the organization (okay, one of two) whose job it is to take care of the machines. He asked me why I was transferring everything to him, then said he didn't want the machines. Well, hell. I haven't wanted them for several years either. It sounds petty, but it's one reason I wanted the transfer in the first place.

The department that is supposed to pickup unwanted, unused, and decrepit machines is being stubborn. I want to get rid of an ancient, decrepit machine that I inherited during my first year. It was ancient and decrepit by the time I inherited it. Anyway, the serial number no longer seems to be registered anywhere, which is bad, because you need a record in the database to submit the request to have it collected. They keep insisting I need to give them the record, and I keep insisting there is no record.

Oh, and I found out you can stuff a lot of junk in the cabinet in your cubicle. This will make moving an all-day ordeal, even if I just dump the lot into the moving boxes without sorting or winnowing.

How MBA school is like Harry Potter.

More specifically, MBA school is a lot like Hogwarts.

Although there is a degree of specialization, it is not nearly to the same degree as an undergraduate education. You learn about a lot of different subjects, not all of which are necessarily directly related to each other, but which somehow manage to come in handy in a later class.

Your classmates are all over the map, some academically inclined, others less so.

Your instructors are also all over the map, some competent, some less so, some seeking fame.

Your magic wand is your financial calculator. It is a bit mysterious at first, but then later becomes nearly indispensible.

The ghosts of more famous alumni haunt the halls.

Okay, we don't wear robes and hats. I suppose if we all wore suits, that would count.

I don't get it. A rant.

Quite a large number of my classmates are incredibly insecure about professor selection, despite there being many reviews about many of the more common classes posted online. To their credit, a few actually check the posted reviews before asking the list for feedback. Many don't, and I would like to slap them silly.

"Appreciate any feedback about Prof. F, who teaches this entry-level class, and has done so about a million times." Don't you know any classmates whom you could ask in person? Why do you trust the opinion of a total stranger but not the professor, who is also a total stranger?

If the class is a prerequisite, do you really have a choice? Don't you think some of your classmates would have warned you off by now if Prof. F was really bad?

Isn't dealing with the occasional bad professor all part of the schooling experience? Maturity in general? And isn't the point of continuing your education enjoying the experience of learning, regardless of the professor? You only cheapen your experience by demanding "value for your money".