The cool chick

One signal I'm getting old is that strings of words come out of my mouth such as: "On Monday I had lunch with a college friend I hadn't seen in over 10 years."

Stephanie (aka Stuffs) and I lived in the same dorm freshman year at Duke and were BFF, then got an apartment together sophomore year, which, in the predictable tradition of naive teenagers who do such things, was a debacle. But we got back in touch a few years ago, and yesterday she was in Connecticut for work and swung by New Haven to take me out to lunch. She looked fantastic; she has two daughters and is married to the same man she was dating back in college. And she's still just about the funniest person alive.

One of the particularly great things about getting together is that she recently earned an MBA at MIT, and that gave us new things in common. She's doing a Leadership Development Program with Stop & Shop (a superior grocery store, from what I've seen around here). An LDP entails rotating through different departments and positions with the intention of going into some kind of management track. She says she loves it.

In other news, I realized I never really posted an "after" photo of my apartment, so enclosed is one here. Susan and I were concerned about space before we moved in, but it looks like we came out just fine, even with using only one of the two "horse stalls" in the basement. I'd thank God for the hall closet, but I think it was probably the architect who is responsible.

I recently learned that several second-year students had summer internships at news and media companies. One student seems to have done precisely what I think I want to do: she interned at Newsweek (whose CEO is an SOM grad) and helped develop their digital/print strategies, and helped conduct an operational review of the editorial production process. Another student did strategic planning and consulting for the Associated Press; other internship destinations included Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, the Educational Broadcasting Corp. and the Corp. for Public Broadcasting. Point being: It's a great comfort to me to see that people in the second-year class are indeed doing the kind of work I've said I wanted to do if indeed such work existed.