Category: Personal

Yom Kippur. Catch you on the flip side.

The autumn equinox is today, marking the official end of summer. Not that we here in San Francisco notice it, because the weather is at its best right about now. Sometime in November it will get a little cooler and rain a lot until March or so. Then it warms up a bit and the rain goes away, and we’re back to normal again.

To someone who grew up with Northeast winters, it feels like there are no seasonal differences out here. I don’t really miss those days when the wind-chill factor approached zero, but like the old song says, autumn in New York was a beautiful thing. I miss the days when Central Park looked like a big patchwork blanket of fall colors and there was a crisp freshness to the wind that you never had in summer. I hated how early the sun went down, but there were the holiday lights to cheer you up – walking through New York in December was always a joy. The real slog was January through April, when all you had to look forward to was spring and spring always seemed too far off.

Of course, there’s a lot to be said for never needing a down jacket and being able to wear flip-flops and a t-shirt in March. And Lake Tahoe is only 4 hours away if I want cold and snow. Perhaps this year I’ll be able to scrape the bucks together for a ski weekend, I haven’t seen snow in two years. A girl can dream.

I haven’t posted in a couple of days… the holiday, a general feeling of malaise, and bad news from a friend have all got me off my game. But mostly, it’s a feeling of impotence. I confess to the creeping feeling Kerry is not running a good campaign and that Bush is going to win in November. So why does it matter that I record what’s going on?

I’ve been thinking more and more lately that if you aspire to have a blog which does something beyond recording the antics of your kids or how you repainted your living room, you ultimately need the belief that what you say matters. And right now I don’t feel like anything I can say or do will actually have an impact on the world at large. The Bushies are going to do whatever the hell they want to do and I can’t stop them. I can’t persuade the Kerry campaign to get off its ass and start being more aggressive. The people who find their way to this blog are already likely Kerry voters. And I’m not timely, eloquent or well-connected enough to offer any unique insights into the world at large.

I’m not stopping blogging, but I think I’ll be dialing it down for a bit until I find a way to believe that what I say is actually going to make any kind of difference. Call it ego, but I don’t want to have just another mundane personal blog that nobody reads except my husband and my sister. I would like to think that I have something to say that at least a few people who don’t actually know me are going to enjoy hearing. But maybe I don’t.

May this new year be a sweet one for us all.

Classes start tonight for my b-school prerequisite courses. First up, Accounting. My initial feeling is that this will be the easiest of the classes I have to take because it’s the least hard-math of the three, but we shall see.

I still need to go buy some graph paper and possibly a calculator for Statistics. I’m debating whether I should find a software version to install on my Tungsten C or just buy a standalone. Also still trying to find out exactly what the calculator needs to do so I get the right one.

My GMAT prep is coming along reasonably well. The Kaplan CD and the ETS dowloadable prep package are both very helpful. As expected I need to brush up on my math, but the score for my initial practice test was not as horrible as I feared it would be. Since I’m not gunning for the top-tier schools, I’ll be thrilled if I pull a 650 on the actual GMAT, and a 600 would be acceptable. If by some weird miracle I do better than 650 I may revise my plan and try for UC Berkeley or even – gasp – Columbia, but that’s pretty unlikely.

One thing I’ve noticed is that the actual math per se is not always my problem. I’ve gotten questions wrong several times because I’m not parsing the question correctly. The more I practice, and focus, the better I should get at that.

Well, after dithering for almost but not quite too long, I took the plunge and did several things to get myself on-track for getting my MBA today. I sent in my transcript request to Vassar, got signed up at UC Berkeley for the remedial math, statistics, and accounting classes I need to take, got one of my two letters of recommendation lined up, and started my GMAT prep work. Tomorrow I go over to Berkeley campus to spend an insane amount of $ on the textbooks I need.

I’ve been stressing out quite a lot about this course of action, but it’s a relief to actually make the commitment and be doing something again instead of wallowing in uncertainty. Now I just need to figure out how to get some math to actually stick in my brain. It’s never been my strong suit. And then of course I have to persuade some fine institution to accept my application…..