First Week Summary

Short version: My liver is threatening to strike.

Long version: It has been a great first week, though it started a little rough. GSB Day 1 was long (as previously recapped by PowerYogi), especially with the post-birthday hangover. There was a lot of information to be communicated to all of us, I just wish it didn't come in the form of 550+ people in one room for 3.5 hrs after lunch with no breaks and not enough AC. I definitely have some ideas for how they might do this better next year and shared them with the GSB staff via the survey they sent out.

As for my fellow classmates...top notch folks. Fun to meet so many new people, although having the same conversation five hundred times gets tiresome. (Where are you from? What were you doing before GSB? What are you planning to do?)

The rest of the week was quite an improvement over the first day. Wednesday was an early wake up call to make the trip up to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, for Leadership Outdoor Experience. I'll admit I had some reservations about the 3 day trip. I was worried it was going to be very rah-rah-cheesy, and there were elements of that, but I honestly had a great time. We did all of the daytime activities in our cohorts, and the smaller groups made it easier to get to know people. There was your usual high & low ropes courses, team building puzzle type activities, but also an afternoon of free time to play softball, volleyball, soccer, cards, hang by the pool, take a nap, etc. Lake Geneva is really pretty and we were staying at a lodge type place. The whole time I was there, I kept thinking that I was at Kellerman's (the Catskills resort in the movie Dirty Dancing).

In the evenings, there were games, dancing, karoke, etc. And lots of beer (plus whatever booze people were smart enough to pack in their overnight bags). The socializing kicked into high gear around 9 pm each night and continued into the wee hours of the morning (I went to bed at 3:30 am on Wednesday night/Thurs morn, 4:30 am on Thursday/Friday).

Needless to say, a week of averaging 4.5 hrs of sleep a night sucked the life out of me. I bonked on Friday when I got home. I don't normally nap, and I slept like the dead between 3 pm and 7 pm Friday afternoon/evening. I was supposed to meet up with the WSU alumni group to watch the WSU-Nevada game that night, but I just didn't have it in me.

The week wasn't over though. My housemates and I hosted a party last night. I'm the only GSBer in the house, so between the four of us, we had a wide variety and constant flow of people. I had a great time and I think everybody else did too. We had a ton beer & booze, and while there is still a bunch left, we drank A LOT last night.

So today I'm cleaning and trying to recover. It has been a long week. I think I need to take a week off from the sauce or my organs are likely to go on strike. GSB orientation (aka CORE) continues tomorrow with a curriculum overview and an introduction to the class bidding system. I've got some ideas for what I'd like my schedule to look like and I'm hoping tomorrow will help firm those up. I'm also hoping I'll be able to figure out the whole bidding strategy.