Missing

picture from Fall 2008, welcome picnic for CO2010 at Flagler

Being loaded on medication and working in your pajamas gives you plenty of time to think. And be introspective. And acknowledge emotions you have suppressed because of your daily routine of being too busy.

A couple weeks ago, my Strategy professor from Darden, Prof. Greg Fairchild, was in San Francisco to discuss a case born out of his research into social enterprise. We discussed a venture capital firm that believed in investing in companies that brought in a double bottom line – social good as well as the profits. I remember sitting in a class during the first couple of weeks at Darden – don’t remember which – where we repeated in unison to the question, why do you do business – “to make money.” Graduation and plus-one later, Darden has been great about drilling into my head that a business is about more than just the money. I cannot tell you how many times in the last year I have reminded myself of that lesson.

I took a friend with me to Greg’s case discussion. My friends and family being in India, and my own lack of words to describe my experience at Darden, I have never been able to fully share what it feels like to be sitting in a Darden class. So when the opportunity presented itself, I took one of my closest friends to the Marriot for this discussion. Driving back home and ruminating on the experience and the discussion, she told me that that evening was the happiest she had seen me in a long time. At the time I assumed I was just happy to meet a professor whose class was one of my favorite ones at Darden. My friend argued that there was a certain energy in the “class” – and in me – that evening that she had not seen before (and she has known me for over six years now).

This weekend is my first year reunion at Darden and I will not make it there. As I read blogs of current students at Darden, I almost wish I was back there. I’ve realized what my friend was talking about. I miss Darden, so very much. I miss being there, being challenged every day, being forced to think about big pictures and social good and learning life’s lessons. I have realized that my ability to throw myself completely into something I am doing has resulted in me filling up my calendar with “work” things and forgetting about big picture living. And when I am with my Darden crowd – at a brunch, at a case discussion or a happy hour – I come alive, because here are the people that prove to me every day that it was not a dream. That it happened and that I will always have those two years at school.

I stand by my decision of not attending reunion due to various constraints, but come Saturday I will be wishing I was sipping wine at Flagler Courtyard and catching up with friends and professors and the staff at Darden, telling them of all my adventures since I graduated last year.

(End of a) Beginning of the End*

For the past week or so I have been living the retired life right here in Charlottesville. Well retired might be inappropriate, more like the job-seeker’s life. Every day I drink my morning tea in front of my laptop as I catch up with email, make my incredibly long to do list and post something from my apartment for sale on craigslist.

I experiment with my breakfast – because it’s my favorite meal of the day – and a good breakfast of pancakes and fruit puts me in just the right mood to tackle the day. And then I come to my “office”. There is a bunch of us that comes to school every day religiously to hole up in an LT room and work on looking for work. It’s like going to the office – it builds the discipline of sitting in one place for hours to get the job done, and on coffee breaks I control the calories by walking past the classrooms and the tables laden with delicious food for the MBA for Execs people and hanging out with the other office-goers.

Allow me to whine a little please. I hate packing. Phew, there it’s off my chest. I love travelling don’t get me wrong, and I would happily brag that I can pack real quick when I have to do a trip. But packing for moving is absolutely a nightmare, no matter how many times you’ve done it before (and I have unfortunately done it too many times). I also have started to believe that perhaps my suitcases shrank while they were in the closet these past two years!

I leave C’ville at the end of this month because my lease ends and it doesn’t make sense to hold on to this place any longer. Everyone’s leaving and it makes me sad to watch them go… with some people I feel like I may never see them again and it’s scary and sad all at the same time. I am heading to SoCal first to spend some time with my sister and hope the family-treatment will help settle the chaos that my mind has been these past few weeks. I always have fun when I hang out with my sister and this time we’re planning a west coast road trip which will be great. I’ll move to the bay area next month and just take it from there.

But before all that is the mammoth weekend of packing that’s coming up tomorrow. Wish me luck.

*inspired by this Bon Jovi song called Welcome To Wherever You Are.

My own C'ville Goodbye Tour

In my last post I wrote about wanting to show my parents around C’ville and all the places I hung out at during my two years here. Last week, we did just that and then some more. I took my parents to eat at some of my favorite joints here, showed them the sights and sounds of some places that were almost second home to me and then also took them to a few places I hadn’t been to for lack of time. From favorite restaurants to hole-in-the-wall crepe joints to the vineyards and the caverns... it's been a week full of picture taking and playing the tour guide!

In addition to showing them around, I have also been doing a few goodbye lunches/dinners/coffees/breakfasts when I can, which has been difficult with them around but I still try. I think the one ritual I will really absolutely miss in “the real world” would be my Sunday brunch/breakfasts (not so much Sunday after school, since everyday has been Sunday!). Just like this morning, I had a wonderful brunch with Oren and some of my other favorite Darden ppl and I tried to stay in denial that I won’t get that again – unless we all turned up reunion (in which case, Oren, can we go to Blue Glass Grill please?) which is a year from now.

I always knew I was lucky to be here in this beautiful town but more importantly among these wonderful people… in fact, I have never found myself among so many like-minded, likable people and as Prof. John Colley told us on our last day of GMTA class, it doesn’t get any better than this. And as I show my parents around and try to relive my out-of-class experiences from the two years, I feel like this is my own personal goodbye tour of C’ville.

My parents leave for California in a week’s time after which I begin my own process of moving there, selling my stuff and emptying out my apartment into my two suitcases and a backpack. I want to keep everything, yet I know I can’t. I am yet to de-Dardenize my laptop – archive emails and documents – and honestly, I’m just procrastinating.

Here’s a picture of breakfast this morning before the Roots left C’ville – that's right, Mimosas with breakfast, because we can!

Graduation

The view from the day after

600 cases, 8 quarters, countless cold calls, late nights and TNDCs later I am finally an MBA.

Yesterday the Full Time MBA Class of 2010 at Darden graduated, under the encouraging gaze of Thomas Jefferson’s statue at Flagler Courtyard and under a blue-gray sky that threatened to spill over any moment.

First we had the main graduation ceremony at The Lawn in Central Grounds (UVA) where the whole university’s graduating class (ie from all departments) gathered to take their degrees. After a lot of balloon-flying, clapping and hooting, we were finally allowed to shift our tassels from the right side (no degree) to the left (degree bestowed). It was a great feeling to be sitting in that historic place and to know that I will forever be an alumnus of this beautiful and historically and intellectually rich university. From there on, it was on to Darden for our ceremony and to receive the diploma. As I sat there and clapped for all my classmates getting their degrees and later walked up to take my own, it dawned on me that the umbilical cord was finally being cut, and we were free to go out into the world to do everything we dreamt of when we came here.

We went to the grand staircase outside Saunders Hall right after the ceremony to take our picture and then it was pictures time with the family, friends and whoever we could find. One last grand Darden bagged lunch later, I was home.

After a lot of confusion on rain or not, I was so happy that the rain decided to wait until after the ceremony. In fact, as we finished our pictures at the grand staircase, the first big drops of rain started to fall and by the time my family and I made it back to Ivy, it was pouring in earnest, as it can do only in Charlottesville.

I’ve had a night to sleep over this new status as an MBA and Darden alumnus. Somehow it refuses to sink in. I woke up this morning expecting to feel different, but I was disappointed. I was the same person, still unable to function without my morning tea, still basking in the wonder of having a United States driver’s license and still very much in love with Arch’s FroYo! Somewhere inside me I know I’m now different, much better than the person I came here as, two years ago. On the outside I am still me, cringing that yet another goodbye is here, wondering when the stability I have craved for but always avoided will come to my life.

This morning I earnestly missed my Darden friends, wished I had another day of trudging through the school for a class, yearned to call some folks for coffee at our favorite coffee shop at Barracks Road and as I type this out, I’d rather be hanging out at Italian Villa cracking jokes with the gang than in my room going to bed before midnight. Real life calls, but I will always treasure the friendships and adventures this place has allowed me to have.

This morning, as I drove my parents around my favorite places in C’ville, I couldn’t help but think about all the people in my life that made this incredible journey possible. From support, to essay reviews, to just their time on the phone/messenger/person when I needed it. The list is too long, but this roll of paper that is my diploma would not have been possible without their support.

Dear Darden, you will be missed, but I will cherish the title of being a Darden alumnus for as long as I live.

Red to Green

The importance of being idle.
It's been nearly a fortnight since I’ve been done with school. Last Monday I turned in all my papers and projects and finals. Last Monday, for the first time in two years, I turned my GTalk chat status to green. And that’s significant. You see, after being busy for two years, with always something or the other to look forward to, it is really weird to see nothing on my outlook calendar now (except golf lessons and social engagements).

I spent the first few days of freedom not knowing what to do and just really getting annoying with the slow pace of the clock ticking! A group of us have begun golf lessons but the rains have been ruining our plans for the last three days now. Several brunches, dinners, coffees later, I see my cash reserves depleting faster than I can control. I have also been trying to make sense of all the stuff I have collected over my two years here, all the way from the four foot stack of cases and course packs, to tee shirts to magazines and a bunch of other odds and ends. It’s unbelievable how much stuff I’ve accumulated. I discovered things in my closet that I had forgotten I had. Darden’s last Outreach program of the year was the clothes and food drive and I managed to give away a bunch of gently used shirts and sweaters away – I figured if I had not worn them in the last year, I probably was not going to miss them either!

This week a classmate organized what he called the Charlottesville Goodbye Tour – a week of dining at restaurants in the town that we have not been to in the last two years (mostly out of budget constraints). And although I couldn’t make it all the evenings, I had the opportunity to dine (maybe for the last time) at one of my favorite places at the downtown mall.

Ivy Gardens already seems quieter and lonelier, with the number of UHauls pulling up as people move. Facebook is full of people finding apartments and basically setting themselves up for the transition to the adult world. While I am looking forward to it myself – it would be great to have a paycheck – the weight of the job search and the uncertainty has been causing a good deal of stress.

The family arrives in town for graduation next week. I’m looking forward to spending some quality time with them this time around, showing them places of significance from my two glorious years here at the Ville.

The Veggie Tower dish at Bizou, Downtown Mall

Last Day of Class

Today was my last day of classes at Darden. My brain refuses to process that the madness is over – no more three cases a night, excel models, hanging out in the LT rooms trying to hammer out a model worthy of a cold call. The ride’s been hard but boy has it been good! This experience comes highly recommended for anyone looking for a complete outside-the-comfort-zone experience in business school.

There will be room for reflections and wrap-ups later. I am on my way to the last Cold Call (social) of the year to be followed by the final deliverable of the Leadership and Ethics Through Theater class, which is a play they are staging this evening at Abbott Auditorium.

I couldn’t bring myself not to have this video from the Follies last week (by my classmate Shepro) on my blog. It was a great way to wrap up Follies and had many students in tears. Since then we’ve all watched that video on YouTube multiple times; today, as farewell to students in my General Managers Taking Action class, our professors played this video for us (and then took the whole class out to lunch at The Tavern!).

Home Stretch - Last Week.5 of Class!

We’re on the last week and a half of classes here at Darden. And things have never been crazier! Trying to find time on people’s calendars for an hour long meeting to discuss our project has been impossible! We’ve come to the stage where we are – counter-productively perhaps – splitting up and meeting in batches to get our work done. It’s that insane out here!

Meanwhile Q4 – about which I haven’t written much lately – has been awesome fun from the academic standpoint. Yeah you’re thinking, who even goes to classes anymore in Q4. But trust me, all of us do, and all of us are engaged and MOST of us are reading our cases! I’m doing four classes – Data Analysis and Optimization (awesome!)with Casey,one of my favorite Darden professors, Marketing Analytics (love it!), General Managers Taking Action (carried forward from last quarter) and Hot Topics in Ops & Technology, which is another speaker class and is my third class with Prof Tim Laseter. I absolutely love my courses this quarter and I feel like I’m getting so much out of my ‘technical’ (ie spreadsheet) courses that I get a real kick out of ensuring I'm fully prepared for these classes! This quarter I have also officially relinquished all my club responsibilities at DSAS and the Blog Club making it hard to remain in denial about leaving this place.

Of course, since this is Darden, if you’re working your brain off at school, you’re also socializing like crazy and Q4 is the pinnacle of it all. Dinners and I-got-a-job celebrations are spilling over into the weekday evenings and the result of it is that every day I push the limit on just how late I can wake up in the mornings and STILL make it to my classes! And I haven’t been late to a single one of my 8AMs (although I did ‘forget’ to wake up for one).

The weather has been kind of erratic, oscillating between cold, rainy and sunny and the pollen count super high so Halls and tissues and sniffles are commonplace these days. I think we’ve all just decided we’re going to carry a jacket to school anyway, just in case! We have concluded our headshots for the Yearbook, pledges for the class gift (100% of our class pledged!) and ordered for our diploma frames – so yeah I guess we’re definitely getting out of here soon!

This weekend is the Alumni Reunion weekend and there’s a festive spirit going on in Flagler, with the tent put up and the banners up. Again, it reminds me of last summer when I watched the Class of 2009 gear up for graduation. And it signals to me that the end is near. In fact, same day next month I will be wearing the cap and gown and getting my diploma. And I still remember sitting on the other side of this great two year experience wondering if I would make it out of here in one piece.

I’m putting up these pictures I took on my phone a few weekends ago when the weather was awesome and I was sitting by TJ’s fountain and contemplating life, the universe and everything in between. That’s correct, I still don’t have an offer and I’ve hit the panic button.

Raindrops on green

I guess it’s safe to say that spring has finally arrived in Virginia. There’s so much of the green that’s suddenly visible and it’s as though the leaves and flowers are poking their heads out in cautious optimism.

At Darden, I’ve completed my third quarter and I’m on the home stretch now, the last quarter before I graduate. I took a one-week course at spring break – no GBE for me this year! I decided to take this course on marketing called Integrated Marketing Communications – a grueling one week later, I have credits for one entire quarter-long course in my kitty, thus allowing me to free up some time next quarter where I just have to take four courses to fulfill my credit requirements to graduate. I’m suddenly struck by how the word graduate/graduation has already appeared in this post more than once! It’s funny how quickly time flies.

My IMC course was a week well spent and helped me cement some of the things I learnt during my internship last summer. Our final deliverable for the course was an integrated marketing campaign for one of two brands: Levi’s jeans and Silk soya milk. I was wonderstruck by how creative my classmates are and the quality of work I saw in the final presentations was just phenomenal! The course itself was really comprehensive and we had some fantastic guest speakers from the ad-world; the course itself was co-taught by ex-CMOs of big name CPG firms. We did an interesting case on a vodka company and also had a vodka tasting session for that, in addition to plenty of tins of peanuts and oreos being passed around!

I am trying to pick my courses for the next quarter and like a hoarder, I want to take everything! Unfortunately, I can do no more than four. I could overload if I wanted to, but I need to up the game on recruiting because being without an offer feels like a ticking time bomb because of visa stipulations. At this time I have three courses set and locked in, and I am trying to pick between three courses for the fourth one.

We’ve seen so much sun this week (and some rain too) and much as I love it, I can’t help but think about how the end is near. The sun and the warmth remind me of the end as much as they do of the beginning: when you come to C’ville in the fall as a first year student, you see the same brilliant blue sky as you do in the summer on the day you graduate.

The sound of the Stradivarius – Joshua Bell Live

A few years ago I posted this link on this blog. It was an article in the Washington Post by Gene Weingarten, columnist, who wrote a regular feature titled Pearls Before Breakfast. In the article he conducted a social experiment of sorts – if a world famous musician played in a public place – the L’Enfant Plaza at DC – dressed like any other mendicant, what would you do? Would you stop to listen? Would you leave some money? Would you notice at all? I loved the premise of the article and even more than that, I loved how the author used language to describe Joshua Bell and his performance. Since then I’ve wanted to watch the performance myself.

Joshua Bell performed at the Paramount Theater in Charlottesville yesterday. And I found out just by accident. But I went all the same, with SZ who’s a musician herself. Joshua Bell was accompanied on the piano by Jeremy Denk, who I’d never heard of before and was really really good! There was a lot of chemistry between the two men and their instruments conversed with each other, sometimes leading and sometimes following. Joshua Bell was every bit the way he was described in that article – he was spirited and animated in the way he played his violin, he rocked from side to side, stood on his tip toes, stamped his feet, plucked the strings of his violin… I don’t know a ton about classical music, but I loved how he kept the audience engaged by the theatrics. His pianist was much the same and they took cues from each other’s body language. And I learnt something new about performance etiquette – no one coughed/sneezed/sniffled while he played, saving it for the silence between sequences. The encore was a beautiful little piece by Fritz Kreisler based on a composition by Dvorak.

SZ and I grabbed some dinner at the downtown mall before heading in for the concert. All in all, a wonderful evening, with great company, and the excitement that comes with seeing the flesh and blood version of something I read about three years ago.

Update: Here's a review of the concert from a local newspaper, The Hook. I think the writer does more justice than I did with this post! Hat tip to SZ.

Snow'd in C'ville - Darden postcards

Top to bottom: Courtyard outside Cafe '67, A wooden bench on Flagler stands as a reminder of the fall afternoons I have spent on it reading my cases, Flagler courtyard and the classrooms building

In this second instalment of pictures, we spent a day at Darden taking pictures. Darden on any given day is beautiful, but with snow, Darden transforms into a picture-taker's paradise. Winter break has ensured that the snow in most parts of the grounds in untouched and pristine. Superimposed with memories from last winter break spent at C'ville is the twinge of sadness that I won't be here next winter.

Snow'd in Charlottesville

With over twenty-five inches of snow in C'ville and the sister being here from sunny California, I had a great two days being snowed in at home in C'ville. We braved the snow to go on a walk around Ivy Gardens for a photo-shoot and came out with some good shots!

Wine and women

Over last week - exam week - there were a few social events thrown into the evenings marking friends going to India on vacation or going away on exchange next quarter. one of them was a ladies night, another was a surprise party for a dear friend going on exchange and was held at the Root residence (THANK YOU JD and Roots!). And at both of these events that I attended, there was a cross-section of Darden women (and men - but they were playing a comic game of Guitar Hero).

And much later, after these enjoyable evenings, one of our exchange students from Italy pointed how she was inspired by the women she had met on those evenings and at Darden. At no other place had she met such independent minded women who knew what they wanted out of their lives... or at least knew how to figure out what they wanted out of their lives... they shared similar attitudes and thoughts towards life, relationships, career, food and wellness among a host of other things. And they inspired her to be like them - to stand up as women who had the courage to follow their dreams and desires. We are a minority, she said later, and we must stand together, for each other.

I thought about what she had said, and couldn't agree more. We are a minority and we are precious. The support we are capable of giving each other is phenomenal, and we give it so freely only to receive it in plenty. I will miss these women when we graduate, but I know that my life is richer just by knowing them.

A little bit of Virginia

It was with some vengeance that I was completely unproductive this weekend. I went down to Maryland/DC for a day. It was a beautiful day, just a touch windy and was perfect to walk along the Potomac as we stopped by the Indian embassy for a friend to get her visa to India. I had never been to Georgetown before and so the rest of us spent some time exploring the area on foot – while the aforementioned friend stood in queue at the embassy and concluded that the process could do with some Kaizen.

I love the DC area and every time I visit, I am struck by just how pretty it is and that I’d be more than happy to be able to live there after school (sigh). We spent the rest of the day helping N shop for her wedding, which pretty much killed my feet! I also indulged in my favorite shopping activity of getting perfume samples – I know what my next perfume purchase is going to be! If I had to pick the best part of the whole trip it has got to be the dinner at Amma’s Kitchen in Vienna VA! It is an all veggie south Indian restaurant and the tam-brahm in me was delirious in the aroma of sambar and dosa!

I was exhausted by the time I returned to C’ville and promptly crashed! The next morning it was time for a drive/hike at the Shenandoah National Park. I had never been to the Skyline Drive before and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to check out some fall colors. I don’t remember fall from last year - probably because it was in the midst of Black November - so it seemed like a great excuse to further the cause of the unproductive weekend. After a scenic drive up to the national park, we found a trail we wanted to hike along and set out with good spirits and cameras for company. The colors were beautiful and the ground just a bit damp from the rains. Our hike was followed by a late lunch at the Downtown Mall and then back home.

When you think about it, there is a lot to do at Charlottesville. The first year of school doesn’t leave you with too much time to indulge in day long activities around town. I’ve figured out how this works though: The first year is meant for you to explore everything around the Corner and the Downtown Mall; and the second year is for rest of the countryside!

I expected to feel guilt ridden about taking the weekend off like this, but surprisingly, I don’t. I managed just enough will power to prepare for my classes today, but that’s about it. This break was long overdue.

View from the top
The lady bug that got pally with Sania

Under a red umbrella

Yesterday was one very wet and grey day at Charlottesville. It was dull all day, not to mention a little cold too. By evening it started to rain in earnest. But that didn’t deter a bunch of us from driving down to the Paramount Theater at the downtown mall to watch Bryan Adams in an acoustic performance – think of MTV Unplugged.

I loved the unplugged performance more than I did his regular concert that I went to in Bangalore a few years ago. This was more intimate and really brought out his vocal talent, not to mention, his personality. He interspersed the songs with little tidbits of what inspired that particular song or some other memory revolving around the song. In some he improvised, in others he let the audience fill in for him. It seemed less like a performance and more like a conversation. And I was struck once again by how soulful some of his lyrics were, and was taken back to days of my “youth” when I would OD on his music.

And therefore when, after the performance, RJ and I decided we wanted to try to head backstage to get his autograph, the guys in our group didn’t protest too much. However, what we didn’t expect was to be standing outside, in the rain and cold for more than an hour, just waiting for BA to show up. We thought we wouldn’t miss him because we were standing right by his bus. It was us and maybe four or five others, crazy enough to brave the weather. I wish I could ask you to scroll down for a picture of BA’s autograph on the reverse side of my ticket, because I never did get that autograph. BA came out through a different door, got in a car and was driven off while we still waited there.

There’s a lesson in that. Everything’s an act. Here I was naïve enough to think he’d come out and sign my ticket. And why would he? We’re just a bunch of fans, he wouldn’t know us from the others he’s met or tickets he’s signed before. It doesn’t pay to glorify anyone, and I’m surprised I, of all the people, forgot that.

And then there are those that refuse to leave you standing in the rain, and insist on standing with you – even if they would never wait that long for anyone. Thanks to the ones that waited and special thanks to fellow blogger Sameer who waited patiently despite having an interview today.

Vertigo!

What could get Emmett Street jam packed with cars, bumper-to-bumper? What could get a sea of people – more than that for a Cavs game- all walking towards Scott Stadium, dressed warmly for the chilly night ahead? What could get bschool nearly-30 somethings all aflutter and coming to class with rock-band tees? Bono and his roomies of course!!

U2 came to Charlottesville on Oct 1, Thursday as a stop on their 360 Degree Tour. I’ll get straight down to it – it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life! I grew up listening to these guys; all the way from their Joshua Tree and Zooropa days (remember Lemon?), my sister and I loaded up our iPods with all their albums and listened to them obsessively as went through our U2-crazy phases a few years ago. So this concert was special… each song in the set had a special memory attached and as Bono, charismatic as ever, went through the phenomenal sound and light show that this concert was, it felt like an emotional rollercoaster ride for me.

The show itself was a fantastic visual treat with the expanding-contracting 360 degree screen, light shows, dancing beams and video streams on the screen. Sunday Bloody Sunday opened with a moving tribute to the conflict in Iran. U2 came back for 2 encores, where Bono and The Edge played a semi-acoustic version of One in one and a power-packed rendition of Vertigo in another. Here’s U2’s set that from that night:

1. Breathe 2. Get On Your Boots 3. Mysterious Ways 4. Beautiful Day / The Hands That Built America (snippet) 5. No Line On The Horizon 6. Magnificent 7. Elevation 8. Your Blue Room 9. New Year's Day 10. I Still Havent Found What I'm Looking For 11. Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of12. The Unforgettable Fire13. City Of Blinding Lights14. Vertigo15. I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight16. Sunday Bloody Sunday17. MLK18. Walk Onencore(s):19. One / Amazing Grace (snippet)20. Where The Streets Have No Name21. Ultra Violet (Light My Way)22. With Or Without You23. Moment of Surrender
(HT- LT39 Mr and Mrs Younus)

SY Weekend Escapades

There’s a lot going on in the ville these past few weekends. And because I (and nearly all of my classmates) realize that our time in the ville is now limited (Q1 is nearly over, can you believe that?!), we’ve been trying to make the most of it.

Last weekend the UVA Symphony Orchestra from the McIntire School of Music at UVA performed at the amphitheater for the public – for free. Called the Symphony under the Stars, it began a little past 7pm and had an amazing line up of music. Highlights included selections from the West Side Story, Carmen, ET theme music etc. A bunch of us went that evening and sat on the grass for a sky deck view of the stage. The weather has been cool in the evenings these days and the setting was perfect. We walked past the Lawn apartments on our way, built by TommyJ to promote more interaction between students and their teachers at UVA, now home to selected students.

The day after, on Sunday, Nobel Prize Winner Professor Mohammed Yunus of Grameen Bank spoke at U-Hall, on the topic Solutions To Poverty. A bunch of us attended this one and it was well worth the time! Professor Yunus is an inspiring orator and his story of how he founded the Grameen Bank and his motivations were very interesting to hear. I made up for not taking my camera to the Symphony and took a bunch of fuzzy pictures.

Yesterday the Marketing Forum at Darden and I had a great afternoon listening to the big names of CPG talk about successful marketing campaigns. On grounds were DuPont, General Mills, J&J (and their fantastic Olympic campaign called “Thank you Mom”), Frito Lay and Heinz. And today is the India vs Pakistan cricket match and Darden’s South Asian Community is all ready for the madness. We’re screening the match live in one of the classrooms. For those who can’t bear to walk to school on this rainy morning, we’re watching the match on the projector in the home of a second year with parathas and beer. I’m wearing my Team India tee and blogging live from the venue. Cheers!

U-Hall; seen here is Prof. Yunus.

Q4 Exam Week

It’s exam week at school. Apparently for elective subjects, we get a week to take our exams – we just have to make sure we turn in our responses by 5pm on Friday. We can take the exams whenever we want, wherever we want. Of course the rules of five/four/four and half contiguous hours apply, but it’s total freedom! And while I personally like the structured exam taking approach where you turn up at an assigned hour every day and do it, I think this freedom is totally cool.

For all practical purposes, I am done with first year – just one paper and the ELA stand between me and the gaping void of nothingness that is going to be my summer. I have realized that while I crave the freedom of doing nothing, I also get very restless when I actually get to the doing-nothing phase. Which is why I don’t want school to end. Don’t get me wrong, I am more than ready for a vacation. But I don’t know what I will do with my time and without my friends. Unlike many of my classmates, I am not going to India for a vacation.

There was some buzz on Facebook today with news of Darden’s partnership with Amazon coming out. Read about it at Oren’s blog. I think this is a big step for Darden as it moves towards its sustainability goals. It was great having Q3 finance online and I’d love to see more of our course materials go online. Well Oren does a great job talking about this, so just read his post and I’ll say no more.

Last weekend was Darden Days, where admitted students are hosted on grounds to come check out their home for the next two years (or to check out if they want it to be their home). I missed my own Darden Days, so I was quite impressed by the arrangements they had made for the CO 2011.

I think the highlight of the event was the dinner the school hosted at King’s Valley Vineyard – which I missed! Pt Ravi Shankar and his daughter Anoushka were performing at the Paramount that night and after a lot of debating, I decided to skip King’s Valley in favor of the concert – best decision I ever made!

A is for Awesome Weather

The weather in the Ville has been nothing short of brilliantly awesome this past weekend and spilling on to this week. While I chose not to go to the Foxfield Races, you can read all about the eagerly awaited annual rituals that took place this past weekend right here. Since I’m a spoilt bschool brat who can’t handle regular 2 days weekends anymore, I decided I needed to spend the weekend on my own terms (as opposed to the terms dictated by my calendar). So I chose to spend most of it at school, getting some work out of the way! This was also reunion weekend, so Darden alums and families were out and about the grounds. Whenever I would walk around the hallways to get my coffee, I would wonder if I’ll be back in school in five years’ time for my own reunion, what my life would look like, professionally and personally…

But I digress! This afternoon, Sania (who, by the way, does not think I'm crazy anymore), JD and I decided to catch some salad lunch together and sit outdoors to enjoy the weather. After we topped our lunch boxes from Abbott Dining, we headed out to Flagler Courtyard to sit on the grass under the tree. Great lunch and conversation later, Sania was sprawled out on the grass, just about ready to take a nap, her 2:45 class all but forgotten, JD had missed her ELA meeting and I had convinced myself that I did not care about the Marketing assignment that was screaming for my immediate attention! It was great to see students out and about, and to catch up with the girls.

But soon enough we had to move our lazy behinds off the grass and back into the student building to catch up with our schedules. Sigh, good weather or not, inside the student building, it’s life as usual! One week to go before finals and summer and I still don’t have an internship. Well, at least the weather’s in a good mood!

The Ghost of TommyJ

One of the best things about being in a university as old and as rich in heritage as UVA is all the folklore that goes with the history. I am almost embarrassed to admit that I have never been to the more famous landmarks of UVA like the Lawn or the Rotunda, but this morning in the UVA magazine email there was an interesting article about the residences in the Lawn area that are reserved for the exceptional members of the student body at UVA. There were some students that occupied the rooms that someone from their family had occupied years ago, others talked about opening their doors to curious tourists to talk about the history of the Lawn residences. Read that piece here.

One of the traditions that we were informed about in our first week at Darden was the “ghost” of Thomas Jefferson, the founding father of UVA and affectionately referred to as TommyJ or TJ, that roamed the grounds of the University. Apparently he had been spotted at Darden many times. In the last nine months, I’ve spent way more hours lounging in the Piano Room or Café 67 or the learning team rooms than I care to admit, but never had I spotted TommyJ until a couple of Thursdays ago. The ghost is not really a specter. He is a man (sorry to disappoint) who dresses up as TommyJ (and does a really good job of it if all the portraits of TommyJ do him any justice) and walks around the grounds. He seems to like visiting Darden on Thursdays when the lights dim down earlier in the evening as the school empties out after a Cold Call with people heading out to TNDC to begin their weekend.

The first time I spotted TommyJ, I was sitting in one of those oversized armchairs in the Piano Room and someone was tinkering with the grand piano, playing a tune I didn’t recognize but sounding good nevertheless. TommyJ walked down from the mailbox area, across PepsiCo, towards Saunders Hall and the entrance.

Jefferson lives among us and in every corner of this beautiful town. All the buildings here are designed in the same theme as Jefferson designed it so many years ago. Monticello, his home, is a huge tourist attraction. At Darden, we even have his statue over by the fountain on Flagler Courtyard, from where he observes the hustle and bustle in the student and faculty buildings.

I spotted TommyJ again last Thursday as a few of us were hanging out at the Piano Room after the Easter Cold Call. Secretly I was glad to discover he wasn’t a figment of my overworked imagination! I think it’s kind of comforting to know he walks around, watching over his University.

Building (more than just) Goodness in April

So it’s a Saturday and at 7:30AM when I should be fast asleep in bed, I was dressed in jeans, a bright blue BGiA tee and boots and was trudging up Massie Road towards JulyDream’s apartment. Not a dream this! I and 25 other Darden students were headed out to the house of Sally Burton for the annual BGiA or Building Goodness in April build day.

The BGIA is a voluntary foundation that partners with local contractors and students from Darden to help in community construction and restructuring projects. This year there were eleven projects in all – 2 parks and 9 houses. A few months earlier, house captains scoured the C’ville countryside to identify projects. A number of inspections later, they determined the scope of the operations for build day and identified the number of hands they would need, in addition to arranging for local contractors. The fund raising for this event took place a few months ago, with students auctioning anything from a self-affirming keg party to a homecooked Indian meal for four to a month of free coffee at Hot Cakes. Pre-build day evening, all volunteers met their teams to get on the same page for logistics and what exactly was expected of them the next day. We also got our BGiA tees and posed for pictures!

That evening, after the pre-build meeting, a few friends and I headed out for our backwards dinner – coffee and cake followed by dinner and then more coffee – and I turned in by midnight (my definition of an early night) in preparation for the work that awaited the next day.

On Build Day, we drove down to our site and began work at 8:30A. I started with helping rake the yard and collecting all the junk into the two large dumpsters we had – those were empty that morning but piled high by evening. Then we emptied the house of all furniture and artifacts, cleaned the outside and inside, installed windows, plumbing, bathroom fixtures, a porch, a deck and peeled off the paint on all surfaces. Then we proceeded to apply fresh paint and give the house some new fixtures. We also gave Ms. Burton a new bed! I also managed to paint over one of her chickens!

This was a humbling experience. Ms. Burton had been an analyst at Merrill back in her hey days and as we cleaned through the layers of grime and dust on what were once very expensive and tasteful furniture, we couldn’t help but wonder how she descended to the state of neglect that she was in currently. It depressed us even more to know that she had no family save for her chickens, dogs and horses. The irony of her previous occupation – something that at least 40% of my incoming class had aspired to do last summer when Wall Street still “existed” – was not lost on any of us.

We wrapped up operations by 8P and headed home for a much needed shower. Right after that we all converged at the Wild Wings Café for the after-party where we shared pictures and experiences over some Bud and Tostitos and brownies. It was definitely a day spent well…
Three cheers to PR, TW and MV, the house captains for our project, for the food, drinks, fun and for letting us help!

Here's a video: http://www.charlottesvillenewsplex.tv/home/headlines/42476527.html


The team and Sally on the newly built porch in front of her renovated house.

The BGiA team on pre-build day.

More pictures at JulyDream.