When Your Departure Is Delayed….

As if mod 2 wasn’t challenging enough, the snow on the east coast, and specifically in Philadelphia, made it much more difficult to get out of Nashville.  After two cancelled flights and one evening flight delayed for over 3 hours that I switched off of, I departed from Nashville on Tuesday at 6:35am.  My originally scheduled departure?  2pm on Saturday.  Not exactly the relaxing start or family time I had envisioned for my break.

When put through this exercise of patience due to matters out of your control, you try to rationalize through a reason that’s not entirely rational: divine intervention.  Of course the most morbid of thoughts is the easiest for your mind to develop: there’s a plane I’m not supposed be on.  Thankfully, that’s not a reality in this situation.  The higher purpose for my delayed departure was to experience two events. 

The first was to attend the Titans home game on Sunday.  Occasionally, Associate Dean Lehman will fire off an email to the whole student body offering Titans tickets on the day of the home game.  To score these tickets you’ll need to be quick on the trigger and respond within a minute.  That’s not figurative either, that’s literal as it’s not just NFL football but also great seats.  Since I knew that morning my afternoon flight had been cancelled, I responded right away and was able to see just how great these seats were.  How close is 15 rows from the field?  Close enough to actually hear the players hitting each other.

The second occurred while I was in my layover at Reagan National Airport in DC.  I set up base camp at a table in the food court area of terminal B.  As I was working through some emails on my blackberry, I glanced up for a moment to see two men with earpieces that caught my attention.  They were followed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who strolled through the terminal and right down the gate to the LaGuardia bound plane.  I had only been seated for about ten minutes at that point when I decided that I would take advantage of the Dunkin’ Donuts right next to me for a donut and coffee.  After grabbing my donut, I moved towards the self-serve coffee and saw Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts walking right past me to the gate of his Boston bound plane.  His security escort was a little lighter, just himself.

Looking back on mod 2, I have some other memories to share:
    - The increase in the workload including career oriented requirements
    - Networking trips to NYC
    - The Phillies attempt at back-to-back World Series wins and some later nights at school that required me to utilize the fast forward function to quickly view the DVR recorded games
    - The consequence of a ringing cell phone during our core Operations class was to supply the class with champagne during the next period.  I enjoyed others’ mistakes twice, once during the mod and once right after the Ops final
    - Discussing with classmates and completing Economics problem sets on Sunday morning and the constant flow of students descending on the drop box prior to the noon deadline
    - The marathon Corporate Valuation group case sessions.  I believe our record was seven hours for one session.  I can confirm the 10-15 hours a week outside of class the course requires that past bloggers have noted
    - The experience
    - Attending Discover Weekend as a current student when just one year ago I attended the November Discover Weekend as a prospective student

Happy Holidays to all and enjoy whatever time off you may have.