Green Impact Campaign and Bay Area Trek
Hello Again Everyone! It has been a while since my last post, so let me catch you up to speed on what I have been working on.
Over the last month, Drew Beal and myself have been working extremely hard on getting the Green Impact Campaign at UCSD and Rady up and going. We have already reached out to a company and they are very interested in allowing us to do a free energy audit. This is going to be a great opportunity for us to start helping local companies become more energy intelligent and efficient. Our next step is to introduce the idea to the rest of UCSD in the hopes that they will be as interested as we are. After we do our first GIC Energy Audit, I will be posting the details as to how we helped out this local company.
Now to the truly fun part. Rady is heading up to San Francisco in January for company treks. Hopefully we will get to visit all the companies we are so excited about. Personally I want to visit Apple, Google, and Facebook. This will be our first big trip together and I know it will be a blast. Not to mention we are having a “Meet Rady Grads” night while we are up there.
As you can tell, the events at Rady are always very exciting and the culture is wonderful. I am so happy I came here and cannot wait for the next adventure!
I’ll be back soon, Happy Thanksgiving if you don’t hear from me!
Branching Out
One of the perks of being a Full-time MBA student is being invited to an endless array of networking opportunities. Whether the event is put on by a student group, career services, or a private organization in SoCal, my inbox is constantly filled with announcements about amazing happenings in the San Diego area. The downside? It’s rather easy to fall into a routine. Sure, routines can be a good thing. But I’m much more likely to attend an event if it’s being held at Rady, as opposed to the Price Center. And I know I’m going to attend every event put on by the Entrepreneur Club, but may feel uncomfortable attending a networking mixer sponsored by the Biotech Club. And those are just two examples of competing mindsets within the same graduate program.
Every now and then, it’s important to break your routine and branch out into the unkno
wn. This past Friday, I received a reminder for an event I had RSVP’d to four weeks prior. It was a Sustainability Summit (cool, I’m interested). Hosted by Net Impact (sweet, I’m a member). At the University of San Diego (wait, I can’t walk there?). I could have easily skipped the event and suffered zero repercussion. But I had been falling into a routine, and hadn’t met anyone outside of my usual social circles for a couple of weeks. So I called up a buddy, and we showed up as representatives of Rady’s Net Impact chapter. It ended up being the best decision I’ve made in, well, I guess I’m always making pretty sweet decisions. But that’s beside the point. By attending the event, I was able to make connections with USD’s Net Impact chapter, get introduced to a member of USD’s Entrepreneur Club, and meet some awesome members of the IR/PS Net Impact chapter, Rady’s neighbors to the south on the UCSD campus. Not to mention the impressive spread of hors d’oeuvres, an extensive open bar (yeah buddy), and a fashion show of the Future:Standard clothing line (ethical, eco-friendly clothing and accessories).
I had attended the event with zero expectations. But often times, it’s the occasions such as these, when your expectations are low, that you wind up being blown away. It’s only been 72 hours since the Sustainability Summit, and I’ve already begun work on two new projects involving my new contacts. So go ahead, break the mold and branch out into unfamiliar territory. I can tell you from personal experience that it can become addicting. Later that Friday night, I stopped by Sidebar for a Graduate Business School Mixer hosted by San Diego Young Professionals. It was my first experience downtown (that didn’t include a Padres game), and I bounced around Gaslamp with my new friends from earlier into the wee hours of the morning. This weekend? I think I might just hit up that Happy Hour with the Biotech Club! I’m not expecting much, but that’s the best part.
Green Tip: Pumpkin Compost
Halloween is over! If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably plowed through any leftover candy that you didn’t give away last weekend. And,also like me, your jack-o-lantern is most likely still sitting on a windowsill or your front porch. So what does that leave you with? Some extra weight in your midsection and a useless pumpkin carcass. I can’t give you any quick-hit advice for eliminating the love handles, but I can shed some light on how to extract some additional value from that pumpkin of yours.
Whatever you do, DO NOT toss that used pumpkin in the trash! Pumpkins are heavy (requiring additional fuel to travel to the landfill) and large (taking up a lot of space once they get there). As the pumpkins decompose, they produce a dangerous greenhouse gas – a not-so-cute byproduct of a festive Halloween season.
Instead, allow the pumpkin (100% natural) to break down as compost in your yard or garden. Or a neighbor’s lawn. Or your friend’s garden. Take it to a community park – whatever it is, make an effort to return the pumpkin’s nutrients to the soil. In order to get the best results, smash the pumpkin up so you can spread it out over a large surface area, mixing it with other compost materials (i.e. leaves, grass clippings).
Create a yearly rotation with a group of friends or neighbors so that you only have to smash up the pumpkins once every few years. Or use a pumpking-smashing event as a morale-builder at your office, and use the compost for a company garden. (As I’m writing this, I’m developing an idea for a Rady Pumpkin Smash-Off in 2012.) Whether you’re doing this at home or as part of 
a larger team, the benefits are the same. You have fun smashing up some pumpkins, you get nice nutrients for your garden, and you’ve helped do a little bit to preserve the planet. That’s a good day in my book.
*In the future, I’ll post seasonal green-tips BEFORE the actual holiday!
Old Habits
(Your thoughts in italics)
In returning to life as a full-time student, it’s funny to see some of the habits from my undergraduate days re-establishing themselves. (Can habits re-establish “themselves”? Is that even grammatically correct? Who is this guy?) All of a sudden, I enjoy sleeping in again. During my last few years as a nine-to-fiver in the “real world,” I developed an early morning routine that I was rarely able to break. Even on weekends or vacation, I’d find myself waking up before 7AM. Rolling out of bed at 9AM felt like “sleeping in” and would leave me feeling guilty.
Nowadays? I’ve reacquainted myself with the snooze button. (Can you have social interaction with a clock function? Who taught this guy how to write? I hope they’re not paying him.) Less than two months into school, with just one class per week that starts before 11AM, my wake-up time has become pretty relaxed. The same holds true for most club meetings and review sessions: not much gets scheduled too early in the morning. So sure, the later start to the day is great – who doesn’t love sleep? The only problem is, those early morning hours tended to be rather productive. How does one make up for that lost time?
Which leads to another throwback: Procrastination. (This guy waits ‘til the last minute in B-school? He’ll never be successful. Why am I still reading this?) But not in the same sense as my reckless days as a teenager with poor time management skills. If something is due on Friday, I won’t wait until late Thursday night to get it done – I prefer to have it done earlier in the week, say Tuesday. So when I wake up a few hours after the sun on Tuesday, free of any alarm clock, I’m at ease knowing I have the entire day to complete a simple task, say a writing assignment. So I casually start my day and head up to Rady.
But once I’m on campus, I start seeing familiar faces at every corner, and all I want to do is strike up a conversation. (Those poor people. I bet they go out of their way to avoid eye contact with this guy. Are his classmates aware that he socially interacts with his snooze button?) And then I’ll have a club meeting. Followed by class, then perhaps a study group get together. There’s also a 50/50 chance that I stop by Home Plate and flex my muscles on the shuffleboard table – Paul Bania & I are accepting all challengers.
By the time I get home, I’m exhausted. I lay down for what is intended to be a 30-minute nap. But the n
ext thing I know, it’s 12:30AM. (Where was your alarm clock this time, wise guy?) And I’m not tired because I just slept four hours. But I still haven’t completed that writing assignment from before. And it ends up being that during these late night/early morning hours, I get a lot done. Maybe it’s because no one else is awake, and I can focus on school work. Or maybe I’m just weird. (The second one.) Either way, I’ll get into a groove and go back to sleep a few hours later. And I’ve gotten everything done, so I’ll let myself sleep in. When I wake up late the next day, it all begins again.
(Yea, that’s healthy.)