MBA Orientation Day 1

Breakfast- I'm super excited to meet all of you, let's see how much "appreciative inquiry" I can come up with to keep you from enjoying your bagel and cream cheese.

Birkman- I'm a Green, through and through. Okay, I get it, I talk too much, have crappy ideas and slack off a lot...how again am I going to effectively contribute to my class of super-over-achievers and Blackberry-toters? By the way, I love Anne. Who wouldn't love a closet Blue who gives storytelling lessons and moonlights as an image consultant and singer, and not the least of which is a certified Birkman interpreter. God, I feel so exposed. :)

Team Forming- So, I'm assuming getting us to act like animals in order to locate the other members of our phylum will once again rip down our comfort zones and render us more approachable and personable. But come on, everybody's gotta do it! That's the name of the game, Goizuetties! I like my new group. We have an engineer, a web designer, a salesman, a CPA, and eventually an advertising guy. I'm calling we all get together and start a sweet new company.

Case Study Discussion: Faced with the dilemma of sending the qualifying paperwork to the customer for their test, about 80% of the class chose to send it. I was part of latter 1/5th of the class who chose not to send the go-ahead to test. I didn't interject my opinion into the class discussion, partly because I was in the minority, partly because I was so intimidated by my new environment. I was immediately rocked by the revelation that the case study was secretly disguised to represent the space shuttle Challenger tragedy of 1986. Why didn't I speak up before as the lone aerospace engineer in the cohort? If it were a real-life situation, my silence could've resulted in the death of seven astronauts. Ooh, it cuts straight to the core; my mother reports that I fell into a catatonic state upon watching the space shuttle disintegrate before my very eyes in Mrs. Remnick's second-grade class at Concord Road Elementary School in Dobbs Ferry, NY. Until that time I was an aspiring astronaut with dreams of exploring the vast unknown of space. Afterward, a shocked little kid who has his first dealings with the reality of death in the backdrop of his ultimate fantasy. Lesson learned, Professor Noonan. Lesson learned.

Adjournment-missed the first couple of minutes due to discussions with Prof. Noonan. See you tomorrow at Camp Winshape!