My ol’ nemesis

It is summer time once again, time for the rains to pass and of course volunteering with the Red Cross at community events. Well this weekend was an event at Stanford University called Challenge 4 Charity. It is a collection of sporting events surrounded by copious amounts of drinking by 8 leading university’s MBA programs including UCLA, UCI, USC, Berkley, Washington and others. (Editor’s note: These are the same schools that denied me admission a scant few months ago). Each of these schools sent a fair majority of their students in each of their respective MBA programs up for the weekending, up to 200+ from each school. The interesting thing came up when watching these students who are advertised to be the leaders of the future. Many of the team events required team work and planning, not such an easy thing for these chiefs, especially without any Indians to direct. Drama was not unusual in this friendly set of games in fact the pre-eminent thought that went through all of our heads on the volunteer side was the likeness to MTV Real World. Here is a set of students, many of whom have not worked a real job getting ready to hit the job market, well if the right job comes along. Trust me I make this up not, this is from the direct word of mouth of many of our patients. Although I call them kids, many of whom are older than I, but asked about their history a preponderance of them identified world travel between undergraduate and graduate schooling, some even graduating this month and not really having a desire to work.

I look at this attitude and compare it to my company’s very different attitude. At my job it is not unusual to work 12-15 hour days 6 days a week. I would love to say we work hard play hard, but I think it is closer to simply working hard, on the other hand it is the constant pressure that I think gives me the greatest adrenalin rush. I am not sure going back to the relative slow pace of academia would keep me awake. But more of that another time.

This morning I landed in a city that is all too familiar to me. A city where vice wins out over virtue, sins wins out over sincerity, and money wins out over emotion 7 days a week. Yes I speak of my well known city of Las Vegas. Although many identify it as man’s playground maybe due to the amount of time I have spent here I find it to be more of an annoyance than a pleasure. It is ironic that in my last 5 years living in CA, I have spent 4 of my birthdays in this city of sin. While some might find this to be the perfect situation, Vegas becomes much less fun when spent by yourself at a work function. But no matter, my friends have already helped me celebrate last week (see previous entries) and for that was indeed a hoot and a half.

So a quick trip to Vegas until Wednesday when I fly clear across the country to Florida for another quick event I am speaking at. Home by Friday in time to maybe spend some time in my favorite city, well at least the city I call home. More on this city and the trip later. My apologies for the sporadic nature of some of these entries, life at work has been just a bit challenging or at least hectic.