I am a Plumber

I just returned from my first day of classes. For those of you who think the past month has been nothing but a drinkfest, you'll understand that now the real work begins.

I had three classes today, here's my quick rundown:

Statistics- I and my friend Shirin are in love with our stat professor Big Ed. He is sweet. He is funny. He is self-effacing. He says things like, "Pause..... new topic" in a singsongy yet not at all annoying way to transition between concepts. He is the faculty sponsor of the Scotch club. He used to live in Austin so is willing to discuss topics such as queso and Mexican martinis. He performs stand up comedy. He has been our stat professor since pre-term (many of our classmates met him for the first time today) and we went out of our way to go to class early to chat with him. And I think that it may have paid off because today when we arrived and got our 'random' seating assignments, she and I were seated together (the only two women seated together in our male-heavy class) and front and center. Statistically, I find it hard to believe this is random chance.

Accounting- As promised, accounting is beginning with an exact review of what we did during pre-term. Only this time, we are moving much more quickly. This is a new prof for us, he seems good. However, allegations that he used to be a staffer at Saturday Night Live (a pre-term rumor) seem less credible now that I've heard his first day of class biography.

Marketing- Ah, marketing, the class in which everyone expects me to help them and in which I may be the most lost. I was able to help a classmate out last night; she didn't know what B2B or B2C meant (business to business and business to consumer, the two great churches of marketing). I can only say leave it to the marketing book to leave in industry-specific jargon which confuses the laypeople. I also found it amusing that the marketing textbook seems to exclusively use 'it's' where 'its' would do-- perhaps I can start a deal of trading typo tips for extra credit points in classes (my $160 econ textbook-- written by our econ profs and in its sixth edition-- talks about how companies like Staples compete not just with Office Depot, but with stationary (sic) stores. Now call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure they don't mean stores which aren't moving.). The prof is highly entertaining, but spent much of class explaining that marketing is both an art and a science, there are seldom right answers, and that this, more than anything, is our lone vocational training class at Wharton. And then he told us this was the equivalent teaching us to be plumbers.

Time to set up my newly arrived repaired Tivo!