A New System

It's always interesting to me how things roll around in cycles. But speaking of rolling... one funny line to relate. I'm off with DE, and we're about to change location. I make the comment, "It's about time to roll out of here." Naturally, we look over to the left, and sure enough there's a dude on a wheelchair right next to us, who proceeds to roll out before we do. Whoops. I felt like C-Lauff putting my foot in my mouth. But it happens.

I'm currently taking care of final grades for our large, introductory, marketing course. The way we've set it up, the class average is a high B. 1/3 of the students got an A. Another 53% got B's. Only about 13% C's, and a couple D/F's. So naturally, no curve, right? If you were to curve, you'd actually curve people down a few points. But sure enough, we have a ton of bitching and moaning about grades. And all of it at the last second. So many things could have been done throughout the semester. But everything needs to be done now. Oh well. I wonder if any of the students will try to bribe me. I hope so.

Anyway, the last few weeks have been interesting. A lot more fun than that last year or so. It's nice to have a little crew to hang out and go out with. It's different than back in the day, but I think that we're putting all of our experience to good use. It's been such a relaxing, freeing feeling. Instead of worrying about saying the right things to the right people and being all worked up about the inconsequential, we're turning life into our own cocktail party.

Here's the thing. If you can just go out and talk to anyone about anything, you'll just have a much larger social network to draw from. And the process of networking is something that you can train yourself to do. It's all about just being willing to take a step out of the box and talk to people. And it's being willing to do it anywhere. It's being willing to take a rejection and not lose a step. It's being willing to not be satisfied with getting a positive response.

It's strange. Once you put yourself outside of your normal comfort zone, things just seem to happen. Case in point: Normally, at the gym, I'll just keep to myself. Maybe I say hi to a guy that I know. But that's about it. So the other day, I'm off at the gym, I run into this dude that I met through a friend a while back. I catch up, and meet the guys that he's working out with. We have a nice chat and after the guys leave to finish their work out, this cute gal on the stair climber starts up a conversation because she heard that I was a doctoral student. Turns out that she's a post-doc in kines. Score. We have a nice conversation about the stuff that we research. We get her info, and we'll drop her a line at some point this week. No idea where this goes, and no worries about that . We've got a professional link for sure. Maybe we had a connection elsewhere. Who knows? Regardless, it was the cocktail party attitude that made it happen. I was proactive in chatting with my acquaintaince's friends. I was rewarded with a nice conversation on the side.

We've had quite a few other instances over the past couple weeks, as well. Chatting people up has been a fun way to go. We've met some interesting people. We've renewed some ties that were thought to be lost. And we've strengthened some existing ties. Some people I know have always been masters at this. OD comes to mind. Maybe one of my friends Dan. The ability to just talk to anyone, and then to make it a point to talk to them again in the future is something that isn't easy to most people. I think that ultimately, many people don't take that path because of a fear of rejection. They're afraid that they won't be cool, funny, witty, smart, etc. enough to impress someone. I think that where that can be overcome is the realization that rejection isn't anything that will crush you. Making the leap is all upside.

I still am not 100% in running the system. But I'm trying to get there. We'll see how it goes.

-Chairman