First two weeks of classes are complete.
In the first week alone, several classes declared plans for keeping material related to current news. We talked about Cash for Clunkers in Econ. In Accounting, we talked about how accounting choices can impact a business, as was seen by Dreamworks with their Shrek 2 DVD sales. My Drug Development class has a structured plan for organizing who opens each class with talks of recent news, including a blog to discuss. I’m excited to actively relate what we’re doing to current events.
This summer we LGOs talked about how we don’t do a good job of keeping up with news…its easy to get engrossed in the bubble of school. I had no idea what Cash for Clunkers was when it came out, and there were several major news things that I asked Chris to explain to me. Some of my classmates said they would go home and watch some Headline News to catch up while they eat dinner.
The biggest occurance of this was one day when I walked out of my apartment and looked over at the neighboring Cambridge Police Station and the front was swarmed by media. There were more satellite trucks, cameras, equipment, people than I could count. I quickly found out this was the beginning of a little story involving Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates and Sargent James Crowley, and later, our president Obama and a little thing called a Beer Summit. (and the media wer outside the station every day for about a week, but the crowds were not as big as that first day.)
It is also hard to keep balance on the big picture and other things in your life. I’ve heard to “put the big rocks in first then the other things can fit in between”, like how big rocks can be put in a jar until it is full, but then small rocks can fit between the big rocks, then the same thing with sand, then even water. For me, this flat-out didn’t work when I thought about it because the rocks could change sizes. It is important to spend time with my family, but how do I try to quantify how much is ‘enough’?? For me, I just try to have time blocked off in the evening and weekends for family time. This is just practice for having a balance when we’re in the working world.
