Sometimes one must break down to break through.

Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 | General

The dreaded weekend is now a nice distant memory and finally I can bring some focus back to my job situation. But first a run through of the dreaded day…

Saturday. At least it started off with a most amazing cappuccino from Extracto. One of the best coffee houses this side of Portland. Forget those coffee houses with the crunched couches and nooks, Extracto is square and simple, filled with all kinds of tables and chairs that were most likely picked off of some side walk sale. But they are great. Also, they hang some great local art.

Walked to class with the final case buzzing in my head. Got there at 7:15 am. Just so I could prep and get in the zone. Well, the zone didn’t quite happen for me. There is nothing like being handed 4 questions on a case about Dell Computers and having to write some epiphanic answers in 2.5 hours. Pairing with Santo was the best thing I could do for me, however I believe he got the short end of the stick. He was a trooper though and just kept saying, “don’t worry”… this helped tremendously.

Sitting in the room just Santo and I. I answered two questions and he answered the other two. Paper ended up being like 18 pages. But oh well. I just did the best I could and with the history of my graded papers I couldn’t help but feel we were doomed.

11:30 turned paper in. Then we had to go to this formal MBA lunch for all of the MBA students where an oil guy came and talked to us about his Billion dollar conglomerate and the only way to success is, “globalization, globalization, globalizatin” Okay, well, I had to get up and walk around the back of the room , I was getting so steamed up. Tell me about globalization, what about the people, the family members and providers that need to live in our own country and make a living. What is wrong with being small. Contributing to communities where people should thrive in the talents of their neighbors and buy adornments made from the hands of those that live here. This is what getting my MBA is not about! I want to hear about the small business owners. Support them, keep our dollars going into our education in our community in our own self worth.

Okay, enough with that you get the picture. Then after being preached at, back into the classroom to do the presentations. Poor L. my team member had our presentation oh but then discovered it missing. She saved it somewhere on her laptop but couldn’t find it. So while others were presenting she had to re-write ours, of course that consisted of our team huddling in the back trying to help it get re-written. But we did, just in time our presentation was together and we presented, Phew.

Following this was the re-hashing of all of the papers and cases we went through in the class. Talk about an excercise in futility, the papers are done, the grades are made, why do we have to go over these again so this professor can just remind us all of what we did wrong, or if there was something missing from our paper then it was wrong. What does this actually accomplish for us? I say NOTHING!

At least I had St. Patty’s to look forward to. Almost all of us in the class were moaning and groaning at the 5:30 hour to just make it end. Nope we were held to 6pm, even over. Just keeping me from my beer is all this was.

At last, walked home, decompressed a bit with a kitty in my arms to assure me that all is good and fine now that this painful experience is Over.

It was so wonderful to walk into Rose & Thistle and see friends who can comfort me and a black and tan that can warm and sooth my belly.

It was at around the 1am hour where after a few too many beers and the realization we missed the bus and walking home sounded wonderful to me, something switched in my brain. It was just a wave of an emotional breakdown and poor Ryan probably didn’t know what the heck was happening to me. I knew this moment was coming , I didn’t know when, but one can only be strong for so long until their weakness shows through and flood gates open.

Thanks to Ryan for his tremendous support and his understanding and willingness to support me taking time off for awhile. I think I just might need it. Thanks to Travis and Nicki for coming to our rescue that night. While I continued to want to walk home, at least Ryan and I walked together.