One-fourth.

Last Saturday, I hit send on the team Economics paper that was due at midnight.  With the click of a button, just like that, (ha!) my first semester as a business school student came to a close.

Here, in no particular order, are a few things I have discovered about myself since this adventure began in July:

- You don't know busy:
All of my life I've had a jam-packed schedule.  It started during my childhood years when I told my mother I wanted to take ballet AND jazz AND piano lessons AND ride horses AND be in various school clubs, etc.  So I thought I knew busy.  I thought I had pretty good time management skills.  I even naively thought that I would be able to balance my demanding job, school, and maintaining some semblance of social life when I said yes to this program last spring.  Then shit got real.  This semester I learned how to squeeze more out of a minute than I ever thought possible.  I recall being on a flight earlier this semester when my seatmate tried to make conversation with me as he eyed the business case I was reading.  He was nice enough and I wasn't rude to him, but all the while as I nodded politely while he spoke, and shuffled my papers, highlighter in hand, trying to subtly wrap our conversation, I saw the minute hand of a clock spinning around and around in my minds eye.  This random stranger on a plane was taking away valuable reading time that I'd allotted for my Managing and Leading Organizations course!  How dare he! That's when I realized I had jumped into a whole new stratosphere of busy; where every minute counts.

- Team work makes the dream work:
Early Monday morning, on our first official day of school in July, our assigned teams were announced.  We shook hands over our breakfast tables, then boarded buses together, sitting and making small talk, while on our way to the Cornell Outdoor Education center for a day of team building/challenge course exercises before the classroom work began.  All semester, regardless of the course,  I have been working with these five other people.  Through the good, the bad, and the ugly.  It has not always been easy, but we have always managed to make it work.  Even when things got very stressful and very challenging and all I wanted was to get away from my team for a few minutes we made it work.  By the end of the semester, I felt like this team had become my family (heck, I was spending more time with them than with my own family).  And like family, we were suddenly comfortable enough with one another to call bullshit when necessary and to divide and conquer as appropriate.  We even managed A's on our last two assignments.  We had figured out the secret sauce.

But now, we have been disbanded, shuffled back in among our other classmates, as brand new team assignments await in the second semester.  The feeling of wrapping up six months of work with my team is bittersweet.  After all, you never forget your first team.

- Patience is a virtue:
I like to think I've always been a relatively patient person.  However, there are some things that drive me (admittedly irrationally) insane - things like inefficient check-out lines or poorly executed events that would run so much more smoothly with just a few tweaks.  While I still don't exactly seek out situations like this, I have actually noticed that I suddenly have more patience for things that would have previously forced me to scream and toss my hands up in the air.  Maybe I wasn't ever as patient as I thought because I have caught myself in several moments, shocked that I'm not freaking out.  The other night I was trying to get my Christmas tree into the tree stand on my own.  If you have ever done this, you know it's more of a two person job.  You need someone to hold it straight and steady while another person screws in the bolts below.  Yes, it can be done by one person but it takes twice as long.  So there I am, alone.  My tree fell over twice in the process.  My hands got covered with sap.  Twice more, I stood back to admire it, thinking it was good and steady, only to realize it was extremely crooked and I would have to start all over again.  Sure I would have rather set the thing up once and be done, but I didn't once freak out or stomp away, cursing my tree, as I think (know) I would have last year.  Maybe I was just too tired to fight that pine.  Maybe I'm gaining perspective on what's really worth exerting energy over.  Or maybe I had to go back over and re-do Stats problems...and later Accounting problems over and over and over again until I got the right answer so often this semester that I re-learned the importance of patience.  Because you have to take it bird by bird. It's the only way.

- You just say hello:
As you may recall, I was equal parts elated and petrified when I started this program.  The very first night of our program, Cornell held a mixer for all incoming MBA students.  As I dressed and readied myself in my hotel room, I looked at myself in the mirror, reminding myself I could do this, that I deserved to be there as much as anyone else in that room.  Then, right before I walked into the ballroom where 67 of my other classmates mingled, I paused.  One.  Two.  Shoulders back.  And Go.  I walked in with a grin, started shaking hands, and saying hello. Every single one of us was just as nervous as the other.  But we met.  We are classmates and now, we're friends.  (Well, most of us. There are a few outliers anywhere you go, right?)

My ballet teacher used to tell us, when we would confide in her that we were nervous about something like starting high school or going to the prom, that "everyone puts their pants on one leg at a time...even the president."  During the most nerve-racking times of my life, remembering this has always brought a much needed calming perspective.

- Say No:
Saying no is a challenge for me, as many of you well know.  It's hard to say no to invitations or plans or meet-ups not because I feel obligated but because I genuinely want to say yes to things. (See above for the busy bit...)  I like meeting up with people or going out or making plans.  While I always need down time to recharge my mental "battery" I genuinely enjoy being on the go and busy.  Saying no - even when I'm too crunched for time - has always been difficult because I just try to squeeze in more versus eliminating something else.  Schoolwork, class schedules, and being virtually up to my nose in both work work and school work finally forced me to say no.  Often.  Make no mistake.  It was hard, every time.  But I said it and I meant it.  And guess what?  My friends and family understood. They still love me.  They still invite me to do things with them. (Even if they know I'll have to say no.)

-All School/All the Time:
In August, when we were a handful of weeks into the program, I found myself in minor panic mode. How in the world was I going to stay on top of all of this work? These readings? Assignments?  And handle my job and the travel that came with it? And actually get to talk to my Mom and my Dad? See my friends?  Get to yoga? Volunteer? Write on my blog?  Attend book club?  My writing group?  It was going to be impossible.  So I cut it all out - all of it except for school and work.  This plan of attack worked for approximately two days.  I realized pretty quickly that while I certainly couldn't keep up with all of my hobbies and the activities I had participated in before school started, I also couldn't go cold turkey and not have any fun, ever.  It's not good for one's mental or physical state.  So I learned to compromise - yoga two times a week, calls with my parents on the drive to or from school on weekends, and pleasure reading during my AM and PM commutes into work. My fun reading time might only about 20 minutes a day, and it now takes me eons to get through one book because of it, but I'm still getting the chance to (briefly) read for fun.  My yoga practice might not be as intense as my former four to five days a week practice but I'm still getting to some classes, I'm still stretching and using my body in a physical way that brings me sanity.  I write here when I have a spare random minute.  And I get to talk with my parents, maybe not as often as I used to, but talking to my Mom and Dad, even if it's just in the car on my way home from school versus never, makes all the difference in the world.

- Brain Stretches
Before I sat down in the classroom on July 20th this year, it had been more more than ten years since I was a student.  After a decade, you can forget how much work goes into preparing for classes and exams.  You forget how there is always something more to read, how there are always lecture notes to review.  It's exhausting.  But, it's also exhilarating.  I forgot how fun it was to learn new things and how energizing it can be to actually feel your mind stretching in new directions and thinking about ideas you have previously never had. Before school started I felt a little bit trance-like at times; going through the motions at work and at home.  Now I can feel myself thinking about things in a new manner, applying what I recently learned in my Economics class to an article I read in the paper, for instance.  Of thinking, "huh. We just discussed that in class." when I hear a clip of news from the radio.  Of course, I still think Stats is a nightmare.  But at least I wrapped my brain around it for a brief moment in time in this life. (That's a part of the semester I'm quite happy to not revisit, just so we're clear.)

- Say Yes:
During our first week of school, our team met with an assigned coach.  She ran through suggested best practices and guidelines for working in a group.  She also had us fill out and submit individual forms for our file, stating why we were here and what we hoped to get out of the program.  Along with the usual ideas and thoughts about pursuing an MBA, I closed my form by telling her that among other goals, I wanted to look back on my experience in business school and think that I couldn't imagine NOT making the decision to attend Cornell, that it had changed my life in ways unimaginable - both big and small. I wanted to know unequivocally, when I received my diploma in May of 2017 (God willing) that saying yes to Cornell was one of the best decisions I had ever made.

One semester down and I haven't had a single moment of regret.

- Welcome Breaks:
Our final grades had not even officially been posted before we were receiving updates and syllabuses for the next semester.  I have readings to do before our residency week in Ithaca, our second semester teams were announced at the end of last week.  There is not much time to stop and rest.

However.
We are currently in a brief and glorious break. I am so ready for the long winter's rest that awaits before the crazy MBA train starts up again in January.  I've got three more wonderful but exhausting and wild semesters ahead of me.  I'm going to need a lot of sleep, support, and energy to get through them. 

But just imagine the things I am going to learn!