An American Tale

We have a mouse in my apartment-- his name is Fivel. He is not a pet, he just lives with us. He is ridiculously cute but also a ridiculous pain.

I've never lived with a mouse before so you can imagine my reaction when I first met him. He ran into my room at 1:00 in the morning. At first I thought it was the dog. But Fivel is much smaller than our dog. Some high-pitched squeals sent him running right back out again.

I've had a few other funny encounters with him. Like the time I had to wake up at 5:30 in the morning and found him hanging out in the bathroom. Needless to say, I stood on top of the toilet while I brushed my teeth.

He is becoming more and more bold as time goes on. We are seeing more of him running across the floor, skittering into the next room, even escaping behind the oven after helping himself to whatever food was on the counter. We are becoming good friends :)

So we bought a humane trap to catch him because he's just too cute to kill. The trap is really awesome-- it's a little mouse house. You are supposed to put a cracker with peanut butter in the one end of it, and the other end has a door that will trap him when he enters. Then when you release him, you pull plastic from the end with the cracker and he has to eat his way through the cracker to freedom. It gives him a full belly before you send him out into the wilderness.

But Fivel is too smart for this mouse trap. He has chewed on the edges of it and even eaten all the food we have placed around it. But he refuses to go into it! I was talking to the former executive chef of the Blair House (he's part of my extended family) and he told me that mice do not eat any white or processed flour because they know it is poisonous. But they will eat whole wheat or natural flours and foods. He also joked that they are smarter than us humans. But apparently mice like chocolate, fat and raw meat.

So I'm going to have to try chocolate next. I mean, if Fivel doesn't like chocolate I don't think I can be friends with him anymore. Who doesn't like chocolate? I'll blog later to conclude this classic American Tale.

Adventures on the T

As a commuter student, I ride the train into Boston everyday from Brookline. On a good day it takes me 30-35 minutes to get from my house to Park Street. On a bad day it can take over an hour. The Sawyer Building, where all my classes are, is about a three to five minute walk from Park Street.

The great thing about riding the train is that there is always a story you have to tell from it. Stories about interesting characters, about eccentric T drivers, or even about delays can provide much entertainment.

Mondays and Wednesday are not so bad travelling to and from Suffolk because my schedule is on the off-hours of the regular 9-5 workday. But on Tuesdays and Thursdays I have to be on campus from 9:00am to 5:30 pm. This is literally the worst time to be on the train. Obviously, because it's rush hour. Commonly people think of rush hour as honking horns, irritated drivers and bumper-to-bumper traffic. Rush hour on the T includes people yelling, irritated passengers and squished-like-sardines travel. (That sentence did not achieve quite the level of parallel strucutre I wanted it to.) Anyway, passengers are pushed into every crevice of the train car as people try to squeeze in as many bodies that will fit. It sounds awful, and it can be, but I've gotten used to it so it does not even bother me anymore.

About once a week the disgruntled passengers on the platform will yell into the opening doors of an already packed train "Move into the train," or "Ah, come on look at all that room in there," or "This is rididculous!" These comments always make me smile. What would you like for us to do? Where would you like us to go? The best time was when this poor college student was standing with people surrounding her on all sides and this older woman screamed at her, "I'm trying to move into the train, but you are standing there like a brick wall!" I had to actively restrain myself from laughing.

Yesterday this cute little boy who was probably four years old, exclaimed to his sister, "Stop squishing me! I got squished against the door and now you're squishing me into mom. I don't want to be squished!"

My favorite is people with backpacks. Their bag is on their back, so they therefore have no idea how much room it takes up. People with briefcases, purses or side bags are fine because at least they can see how much critical room their stuff is occupying. But people with backpacks either do not realize that they are taking up the whole train and crushing other people, or they pretend not to notice. This guy last week was holding onto the overhead rails, leaning his weight back onto his heels and pushing his backpack up against my back in a packed train. Um Hello? Do you not see that you are taking up a ridiculous amount of room stretching out over there? And Hello again! Did you not notice that you are crushing the short Suffolk student behind you?

So if you knew me, you would realize that I am not passive agressive by any means and I do whatever it takes to avoid conflict. But these backpack people on the T are getting on my last nerve. So I pushed right back. Everytime this guy's backpack shoved into the small of my back, I would shove it right back to him with force. He got the point fairly quickly.

I also love the person who talks loudly on their cell phone while they are surrounded by people. We do not want to hear what you are having for dinner tonight nor do we want to know what your plans for the weekend are.

Even though riding the train has given me many strange and irritating stories to share, it also does have rewarding moments. Like watching the two year old stare into the window underground realizing that she can see everyone's reflection. Or like the guy who gives you his seat not because you are pregnant or elderly, but just because he is a gentleman. Or like listening to the hilarious T driver repeat, "Sardines, please. Sardines, please." into the microphone to signal people to move into the train.

I'm sure there will be more adventures to come...

As Good as it Gets

I am taking an honors section of Organizational Behavior this semester with Laurie Levesque. It is an experienced-based (XB) teaching and learning style and is far from your conventional class. In order to learn how individuals behave in an organization and to develop management skills, the class is being run as an organization. This may be confusing, I know. Our entire class is still trying to figure it out. Our textbook isn't really a textbook, but a manual and it even states that we will be very confused.

So basically, the class (organization) is divided up into four different departments: Doing, Observing, Responsibility and Understanding. And then within the departments, there are various teams with specific jobs and job responsibilities. I work in the Understanding Department for the Formal Organization team. My job, along with my teammate, is to make sure the organization understands the formal structure and power of organizations as well as the theories and concepts we are learning in the class.

One interesting component of XB (what we call the class) is that the professor takes a very minimal role. This forces us to run the organization on our own an to learn and apply the concepts and theories in the text to our experiences in the classroom. We aren't even allowed to refer to her as "Professor" or "Doctor." Her official title is "Senior Manager."

I could go on to explain more, but I think it would just confuse you. Anyway, in order to learn how to distinguish good work from not so good work, to learn objectivity and to learn the ability to justify a decision, we have to write a weekly memo to the organization. Then it is the job of four members of the class each week (one from each department) to rank the memos from best to worst. This forces us to analyze the quality of a piece of work and justify why we ranked it where we did. Although the Senior Manager reads all the memos each week, it is essentially up to the students to rank and grade the memos. And those grades actually count.

What is kind of exciting is that I ranked as the number one memo for the first week! Not only did my classmates like my writing, but even the Senior Manager told me after class that my memo was impressive. It feels like a real accomplishment to not only have ranked as number one in an honors class, but to have been ranked by my peers. Maybe that means I'll make a good manager one day :)

I ran into one of my classmates in Barnes & Noble and we were discussing various things about XB. She said that she was reading my work and listening to me in class and that she hopes to learn how to better observe team members in XB from my example. I was so honored and yet taken aback by her comment. But it really is kind of cool that I am learning life skills and management skills in one of my classes through experience, and not just theories and concepts. And that someone is able to learn something from me, and I in turn will be able to learn from others is an incredible thing!

So then yesterday I had a presentation in my Management Information Systems class. It's not really the most exciting class ever. I'm not into technology and computers and such, so learning all about Information Technology is not my cup of tea. But the professor does try to make it interactive. Anyway, our presentation rocked. Afterwards the professor told us that we had "great slides", "great confidence" and we got a 10 out of 10. He also said, "You were as good as it gets!"

Now how about that for a good Wednesday :)

My first blog

So as a new Trustee Ambassador at Suffolk University this semester, I was given the option to start a blog. At first I thought, hmm I'm not really a blogger. I have more of an email and Facebook personality. But then I decided to give it a try.

So since I love to share my stories through photos, what better way is there than to begin my first post and my introduction to blogging with some pictures. These are from my fabulous first trip to London and Paris in May 2008.

We sung "London Bridge is Falling Down..." when we were there


Standing in the middle of the road on Les Champs Elysees


J'Adore Paris!


The Classic Shot

Big Ben

Paris, Je t'aime!