Back at it

Finals have been finished, vacation has been taken, and now I'm back in this game of grad school.  Though Brandeis classes don't officially start until next week, I decided to pick up a tax accounting class this summer at Bentley.  That started last week, and it's going to be a six-week learning whirlwind.  I find it to be a very interesting and useful subject, though the fact that the professor thinks that we'll be competent enough to prepare individual and business tax returns (and that we'll know 95% of the CPA exam material) by the end of it all baffles me.  It seems impossible now, but I bet he's right.  He's probably done this a few times before. 

The semester ended well.  I finished two big projects: a strategic position for Citizen Schools (which I still need to pass along to my contact there ... eek!) and a financial plan/budget for a youth organic farming program that I hypothetically started up.  Though those projects were a TON of work, they both turned out to be pretty interesting.  I wish I'd had more time to spend on them and really dig a lot deeper than I did.  It was a taste of what doing something like that for a job might be like, and in retrospect, it was pretty fun.  

I'm looking forward to our summer semester.  We're doing our Team Consulting Project, and my team is working with ACCION USA to expand an internet loan program.  It's a super interesting organization, and I'm looking forward to producing something that will hopefully be valuable to them as well as learning a few things along the way!  

Finals are upon me!

My apologies for being MIA in the blogosphere ... the insanity of finals has firmly taken its hold on my life from now until May 10th at midnight when my final take-home final shall be submitted. Or else.

I have TONS of ideas of fun things I'd like to write about and share with you. I even made a list! That's what I do when the workload is overwhelming ... make lists of all of the things I have to do and all of the things I want to do. A little forward-thinking motivation never hurts, in my opinion.

So, upon completion of said finals, you will be graced with the presence of multiple blog entries from me. Perhaps even multiple blog entries in one day! Until then, here's a little sampling of what's left until I am the proud owner of 1/2 of an MBA:

• Finish creating budget package for hypothetical organic youth farming program
• Study (ALOT!) for Cost Accounting Final
• Finish group presentation for Operations Management and present to classmates
• Study for & complete take-home final for Operations Management
• Complete final case analysis/assignment for Corporate Fraud

Whoa! Better get to work ...

Three Cups of Tea

I just finished reading "Three Cups of Tea" written by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, and it was truly one of the best books I've read in a while. The book basically details Mortenson's quest to build schools to educate girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He is a mountaineer who nearly dies on an attempt to summit K2 and subsequently has a change of heart about what he wants to make important in his life from then on. He becomes what I consider to be one of our greatest social entrepreneurs as he works to fulfill his mission to bring peace through education.

Some of the pieces of his story that I found most remarkable were:

• the determination he showed to complete his goals and keep his promises despite MANY obstacles
• the relationships he formed with his "second family" of Pakistanis thousands of miles from his home
• the way that he integrated himself into a completely foreign culture and came to love it
• his efforts to share his personal story and knowledge of Muslim people post-9/11 in an attempt to diffuse the hatred that was seeping into Americans' culture for this "enemy"

We discussed the book in a book club gathering last night (accompanied by a delicious Pakistani meal!), and one of the questions/comments that arose was a general admiration for Mortenson's complete faith in his mission and his choice to give up most material possessions in order to achieve this mission. I think it's a very real tension that is becoming more apparent as we face the deterioration of our economy and a serious reduction in opportunities for people to "get rich" in the ways that have worked for the past 15 years or so. What is the price of doing humanitarian work? Does the benefit outweigh the cost? Is there a happy medium? Where does idealism meet reality in our financially-based society?

I have some thoughts on this trade-off, which I'll share in a subsequent post because it's a topic that I'm pretty interested in and passionate about ... and I could ramble on, making this the longest post ever! But, for now, read the book! I hope you will love it and be inspired.

School/Work/Fun BaLanCE

I had the opportunity to attend a lunch for accepted students last week at the Heller School, and one of the most commonly asked questions in my group was whether it was possible to keep a part-time job while going to school full-time and vice versa. There are people of all work/school balance levels in my program, and they all manage to do it somehow.

My opinion on the matter is that it is possible, but it's certainly a situation that forces you to prioritize and often times make trade-offs. I had two small part-time jobs during the fall semester - tutoring and coordinating community service spring break trips - and found it to be manageable most of the time. I've now pretty much completed my community service trip work and am on the verge of having no part-time jobs! This is probably a good thing, given the amount of work I expect the summer semester to hold.

That said, I believe that it would be possible to hold a more substantial part-time job and still get a good educational experience. Though, if I had a significant part-time commitment, I can see where some trade-offs would need to be made. I'd definitely be spending less time with Net Impact and networking activities and perhaps not doing these things at all. And though my blogging on here is slightly infrequent now, I imagine I might not find the time to do it at all with more outside work commitments. I know that I'd have to cut down on social time as well. I usually spend one day each weekend doing something fun and not school-related. These activities would most likely be supplanted with some of the homework that I didn't have time to do during the week because I was working.

I find that I need this balance of fun and meeting inspirational people alongside my coursework to give me energy and to find meaning in my school work. Nothing's impossible when it comes to balancing school with work and fun, but each person's formula for achieving this balance is probably different. Seek your balance!

Freya's right on the money:

I got this quote in my weekly dose of inspiration via the Ripples email yesterday:

"There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do."
-Freya Madeleine Stark

And I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Stark gets right to the heart of the matter, right to the heart of why we do the things we do, of why people choose to pursue careers that impact the greater good, perhaps of why some people spend entire lifetimes unhappily whittling away at jobs that are unfulfilling and meaningless. If your daily life is not in line with your values, can you ever truly be happy? Goodness - it seems so simple, right? To live out our values in our everyday lives. To believe wholeheartedly in what we are doing each day.

In view of my career as a business student right now, I find this philosophy to be very relevant. As business leaders of the future, we'll need to make sure that our values are injected into everything that we do. When values are not present, it makes it so easy to be part of the business ideas of the past where profits reign supreme and people & the environment finish last. We'll need to operate our personal lives and our companies on the same plane. I see responsible business practices being all about values, all about producing products and services that can have positive and meaningful impacts on stakeholders' lives.

Sometimes I get these quotes in my email and research the quoted person, only to find out that they weren't really all that inspirational in their actual lives and this supposedly wonderful quotation on the meaning of life was really just a snippet taken out of context. Freya came through for me on this one, though. She genuinely and profoundly pursued meaning in her life. She picked up in her early thirties to travel the world, to write, to live out her dreams - she did this in the 1930's, a time when it was unheard of for a woman to be traveling alone around the world. Her biography is entitled "Passionate Nomad". Google her.

Reusable bags are in style ...

But it seems that those who dictate the style world, namely the fashion industry, aren't nearly concerned as the grocery store business is about the environmental effects of hundreds of thousands of plastic shopping bags leaving the malls in the hands of patrons each day. As I was walking around Boston last weekend in a pretty serious shopping district, I noticed the distinct lack of reusable shopping bags and the distinct abundance of multiple bags from multiple stores in the hands of nearly each passerby.

Though it's nearly the norm to bring your own bags to the grocery store these days, the shopping mall seems to be a completely different story. People just aren't doing it yet. I suspect that one of the reasons that it hasn't caught on is that people like to carry around lots of bags from lots of stores - it's a sign of the treasure amassed that day. It was a good shopping day, the plentiful handles wrapped around their hands are reminding. Even the legendary San Francisco plastic bag ban seems to focus only on grocery store bags.

This seems to be the next logical step in the world of reusable bags. The fashion industry is masterful at getting people to want to buy the things that they make. I'm amazed that no one has yet created the perfect reusable, yet fashionable, shopping bag. The possibilities are endless - receipt pouches so you don't lose one, bags made just for carrying shoe boxes, etc...

VISTA Impact & Beyond!

I'm incredibly excited about the possibility that all of the new service legislation moving through right now holds both nationally and globally. You may be wondering about the impact of some of the existing programs and why upgrading and expanding them can create great social change. I'd like to share with you the AmeriCorps*VISTA annual report, which highlights projects from each of the 52 United States: Overcoming Poverty, Building Capacity.

(If this link takes you to the Vista Campus website, simply login as a guest to see the report.)

I'm particularly proud to share this report, as the project that I was a VISTA member and leader in for the last two years, the Children & Youth Project of NW PA, is the featured project in Pennsylvania.

Read it over, and I hope you'll be inspired to raise your voice in favor of the Serve America Act and the GIVE Act. It's the right time to expand national service in our country - I get chills imagining the potential that will be unleashed with the support of this legislation!

My AmeriCorps experience is such a large part of the reason that I'm studying what I am right now and aspire to work for social change in the future. Not only will this legislation impact those being served by the expansion of programs and those who commit to service during their terms of service, but I venture to predict a large increase in the number of people entering social impact fields as a result of their term of service. It's life-changing to be a part of a national service movement, and as service opportunities expand, the potential for creating a critical mass of people concerned with the future of our world also expands.