Today, there was hand sanitizer in my mailbox promoting this Saturday's Healthcare conference. I don't think I have to say much about why this is a hoot, although many of you may not know that business school is one big germ incubator. (Read: group meetings in 4 x 10 foot study rooms for long periods of time.)
Since I don't often have time to post, I thought I would at least share one part of my experience as a 1st year business school student: recruiting swag.
Companies have been putting random products and objects in our mailboxes to attract us to recruiting events and information sessions. This one arrived the other day, and is one of my favorites to date:
More to come!
I am in a section called the "Cash Cows" here at business school. In a funny coincidence, this will be the second educational institution that I attend with a cow mascot.
Isn't she a beauty? Ilya bought her for $40. Any suggestions for names?
I have for many years been very meticulous about keeping my email inbox tidy: making sure there are never unread messages, deleting unnecessary junk immediately, and keeping the message count below 15, usually. Today, I realized that I've had one message (aka: Drafts (1)) for a long time now. I went back to look at it, and it was an email to myself entitled "pitch ideas," dated March 21st, 2006.
The idea in the email -- addressed to myself -- is entitled "Nice To Meet You: Let Me Put You in My Phone, My PDA, My Blackberry, My iPod, My..." I believe the pitch idea [as it was originally conceived] was to write about how indispendable our portable technology has become to us. How we've lost the ability [or maybe the desire] to remember people's phone numbers. I have a good chunk of nine-digit phone numbers firmly embedded in my memory, and they are the home phone numbers of my middle- and high-school friends' parents. I will never forget these numbers -- a far cry from the one-time programming of digits these days.
The same inability-to-remember goes for birthdays, and addresses, too. Dates have always eluded me, but now Facebook encourages me to give an animated cupcake to my friends on their special days. Great! And why remember addresses when there's GPS?
In my opinion, this has affected dating and social life. We've lost the excuse that, "we called, but you must not have been home," because cell phones show missed calls, and exactly when and from who they came. Hell, we've even lost the ability to say to a person who we were trying to avoid, "Oh, I wrote your number down on that cocktail napkin, but I totally lost it. Give it to me again?" and then proceed to "lose" the napkin again. Awkward date moments, have been replaced by a retreat to our PDAs, until a waiter approaches the table and you are saved from more excruciating conversation with said date.
This is all just to say that I am fascinated by mobile technology, and also sort of repulsed by it. I have yet to get email on my phone. It seems too much to pay for Internet at home, and on your phone, AND have it at school. (I will probably re-evaluate this during the colder months of winter quarter.) I also feel I would not be able to exercise self-restraint about checking my email/texts/messages all the time. I mean, this is girl who joined Facebook, quit, and then rejoined under intense peer pressure.
I now reside in Evanston, Illinois, and begin business school in three weeks.
Having just arrived, I still find things kind of novel: the smell of a skunk wafting through my bedroom window at night, the extreme courtesy and graciousness shown to me by residents of the town and salespeople, and signs like this one, that we encountered along the 16-hour drive:
I realized, that if I was missing EZ-Pass, the northeastern version of i-zoom!, then I must really be a little homesick.
Still, I am happy to be here! More exploring to do.
As I embark on my road trip to Chicago (in a U-Haul, a decidedly eco-UNfriendly vehicle), here's another in the series of National Geographic Green Guide quizzes that I've written. Click here to test your knowledge!
