First year frenzy

First, I must offer my most sincere apology to the gods of the blogosphere for not making a post in about two weeks.

Second, whew! This quarter (the second of the core) is tough! Finance is the hardest, most time-consuming, most frenzy-producing class I've ever taken. Strange thing is, I kinda like it. Strategy and statistics are demanding, too. Put together, along with the quickly escalating responsiblities of clubs and other activities, time is really of the essence.

So, here's my quick attempt at discussing balance. I've got a beautiful wife in Ithaca, who has been more supportive than I could ever have imagined. But even my queen of patience gets tired of seeing me get out of bed before the sun comes up every morning and zombie my way back home every night, drained and hungry. So, here I get to my point about balance: forget about it! The kind of balance achievable with weekends off in a regular job is just not possible in the first half of the first year of business school at Cornell. That's why it's the little things that start to matter most. This morning, for instance, I'm restraining my urge to get to Sage before the sun peaks over the trees, in favor of breakfast with my lady. It won't be long or ceremonious, but it's my understandably feeble attempt to keep my priorities in line.

I'll do my best to keep the finance case write-up and statistics deliverable, and the Net Impact conference in Nashville -- all of which will merge tomorrow -- out of my head. And I'll try to stop thinking about my complete change in career focus, from clean tech to media and organizational development. And the fact that I've decided to run the Cornell Business Journal... And I'll probably fail.

But it's a temporary failure. And that's, I guess, the point of this post. Though the frenzy of the first-year is tangibly real, it's not the way I'm choosing to live my life forever. And when it gets tough, or starts to seem that way, I remind myself of my personal values, which I spent this past weekend defining at an all-day Park Fellows Personal Mastery workshop. My #1 is my wife, who's also a talented singer/songwriter, a social worker, and the wisest person I've ever met. Shout out to Shannon!