Seize the day

What would happen if a mathematician (Fitra) meet a statistician (Cicik). You may bet that they'll get along pretty well and communicate mostly in numbers and formulas. They don't even need English. That's cool, isn't it?

I felt like it had been yesterday when the time to leave Boulder came last Saturday. I didn’t know what to expect when I first arrived there. Boulder kept surprising me while I was there: great scenery, great classes, great teachers, great outings, great walks down the streets, great music, great friends, great shows and movies, great shopping, and great cooking. The beautiful small city has offered so much more than I ever thought of. I couldn’t sleep at that last night. I watched Before Sunset for the hundredth times.  My heart was pumping and jumping every time I looked at my watch. It was all too fast, I was not ready. I thought that I never would.
 

All my bags were packed and by 4 am that Saturday, Ika and I walked out our apartment to move on with our choices. I couldn’t hold my tears from falling, mostly because I didn’t know what kind of world I would come to. Nevertheless, at the same time I felt exciting: this is it. There wouldn’t be another perfect time to do it, I said to myself.

I remember what Vincent “the Beast” said when he encouraged people to change: “there’s always time for you to come out from your safe circle and walk among your enemies”. Maybe that’s how people should conquer their lives: by being brave.

Well, I wasn’t. I was so scared that I couldn’t speak much to say goodbye to all my friends (even in the emails).  When finally we sat in the Frontier Flight #616 then flew across states, we just closed our eyes, trying to wrap up all wonderful things we had in our heads and make them the dreams for tomorrow.

I never thought that I would cry when the time came. But I did. And I did it non-stop. I know that being together with nice and good people was too great that I never wanted it to change even a bit. But life offers many things that require changes. 

Some friends leave you to change themselves, to give them chance to move forward. Some leave to let you grow up, be stronger, and be able fly with your own wings. Some leave just because they love and care about you that much. Some leave you without words for their own reasons you might never understand even if they say it. Some leave and say they are only one click away. Some never really go. They stay in your heart and always be there for you with their smiles and spirits.  To which group my friends belong? All.

This is the last day of our prep classes. I don't know why but I got a feeling that I would miss all experiences I had at Kemang classes. Even I kinda worry that I will miss Kada once in a while, maybe during the slumps in my future Economics classes at Kelley. Emily is absolutely the best. I enjoyed all her classes. So sorry to know that profs in grad schools wouldn't be that generous and so understanding.

Yesterday we had a big lunch at Tamnak Thai restaurant. There were 4 of us got the promotion as Assistant Managers (Azil, Nera, Timmy, and Soelis). I sat next to Emily and she told me that her 5-year-old English-speaking students in her French class are the best students in the world. They absorb everything without any false. I also got some insights from Kada about meal in US. He said that I need to read the Economics material during summer to ensure that I will not get the same difficulties I have now in my grad school course. Maybe after reading one chapter three to four times, I would get clearer pictures of Micro and Macro. But Kada's classes ran like snow balls. I always two steps behind. It's unlikely to me to understand the material in a certain chapter in less than two days after Kada introduced it.

Here is the pattern. Day 1: Kada started talking about aggregat demand curve; I didn't get it the first time. In the same day, Kada gave homework; I tried to solve them by reading the chapter and I couldn't answer them right away. Day 2: Kada reviewed our homework on aggregat demand, I got the answers wrong and he explained again in his first hour. During the second hour, Kada described something new and gave another part of his "Economics Problems Book" as homework. At night of Day 2 I made myself trying to read the 20-page chapter again, usually guided by the homework issue that I made wrong. But there is the new homework so that I still couldn't catch both. Day 3: I finally got the message about the aggregat demand but Kada would be talking about the new homework and even another new concept in his second hour. It went on and on this way. I am not counting the moments I was away due to immunization, tardiness, and boredom.  

So, Kada was probably right. Even Kelley suggests us to take action on Core Courses before showing our noses there. That's why I really consider Jump Start important to get my brain on the track.  

It was a complete hell of all definitions. Harvard implemented study cases. Chicago pressed on textbook readings and lectures. Stanford demanded both in 5 core courses through the first semester.

Decision Making Under Uncertainty course was captained by a young professor [if you regard twenties as young], Omar Kemal of MIT. It commenced with a decision tree. More trees with nodes and squares actually hunted Peter’s life in his 10 sessions of Kemal’s class. The professor kept delivering more and more handouts to read and do. When he asked something and the class turned very quiet, he said something like this “Come on, you guys. You gotta help me with this”. He didn’t care that it was Peter who needed help the most.

Computer Modelling course was not appealing from the start; however Prof. Jin Park promised that his class would not let any failure. Peter hoped that meant everybody would pass.  Jin assignments was opened by a complex case required a solution with computer modeling. Peter was in a group with other 2 students on whom he depended to resolve this terrible problem.

Microeconomics was fine; it was the professor who was tough, he’d been called hard-ass for years. Prof. Yeager experienced 30 years of teaching thousands of students. He was as hard as rock. No smile. Simple and straight forward. He wanted to make himself clearly understood: when he said the time break was 8 minutes, then his wekker would ring exactly in 8 minutes. Any lateness meant terrors and tears.

There was another under-age professor in Financial Accounting class. Peter busied himself calculating the money he gave up for attending Stanford and hanging his life in front of those youngsters. Prof. Walt got his PhD a year before and clearly it was his first strike. In that term, Peter suspected that they shared the same tone of feeling. Yet the young professor was always able to be back on track much quicker. [Hhhhh….]

Organizational Behavior offered a wide range of discussion in which everyone talked. Prof. Hammond was not very patient to accommodate all responds; he kept the schedule very tight by restating again and again “How can we implement the Nadler-Lawler model into our case here?”.     

[The life inside the classrooms was intense. While it’s better to prepare for the unexpected things, you’ll be surprise that there’s so much uncovered and unpredicted.]

Here’s one tips  from Peter:

Pick the right seat so you wouldn’t be noticed immediately by the profs. Front rowers meant teacher’s pets or class clowns (neither is better). Back seaters were those who took all risks and returns (either they found the material was too easy or too thorny); at last: the mid-landers, people who intended to gain as much as they wished without too much attention from the profs. The last type of seating arrangement was extremely favorable for most students that you would find they are always taken first.

It's twenty five over midnight. It's already Sunday. I just through with Ben & Jerry, still wondering are they serving halal things because all products are real appetites to me [Ika said there's one shop in Plaza Indonesia; I might check it up tomorrow to see what it looks like]. I found myself surving there more than 30 minutes and didn't even care to take any notes. Things I envy Ben & Jerry, they did something they love, they earn huge money by doing that, they share it back to the world and remain wealthy enough to give more and more.

Kada's homework, on the other side, is as uninteresting as it seems. Gotta do it now, otherwise I'll forget it on Sunday. Good news is : I finished the material Kada handed us last week. No notes, just read through. I'll post them here whenever I am done with the homework. Hope I can write down brief summary of the nature of Microeconomics, and Supply-Demand Relationship. Kind of hate being the one who didn't catch things during his lectures and quizzes (I did very bad last Thursday about outward shift against movement along the curves of beans and peas). I even got a deduction when I foolishly volunteered to answer his question, which he offered to Fitra (I thought he'd already thrown the second question to the floor after Fitra answered his first).

Last Friday, I got Hepatitis B vaccine. After long process of emailing Ms. Longlais and calling Fed Ex customer services, finally I got my admission document. I came by to HRD and talked to my HR consultants about my final permition. They said my department should proposed a note to our Deputy Governor then they will be able to proceed further. Again, I had to back to 11th floor to ask Yeni to help me out. It's been three weeks since the admission email and I had nothing new. Such a waste in time. I didn't want to hurry people who might have other things to do, but I find that they easily forget my stuff.

From 2 to 5 pm, Ika and I searched apartments around campus. From about twelve to thirteen choices, we could only narrow them to five feasible alternatives with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms floor plan. The Dunnhill, Rollingridge, Woodridge, Heritage, and The Fields.

I promise to stop at one and it is 1 in the morning. Catch you up later.

Peter came early to Stanford simply because the school wanted him to. He lacked of Math and spreadsheets knowledge so he joined 49 other aliens who knew almost perfectly nothing about Algebra, Calculus, Probability, and spreadsheets usage in a two-week Math Camp. He was a math-phobia but his Math professor gave him series of therapy: homework, discussion, reading material, and an inspiring story about a former student who got psychiatric treatment due to his resistance to Math and numbers. The student somehow survived and turned to be a successful business man [I bet he never used numbers again since]. Everybody was relieved except one. Peter imagined himself in an asylum, walking freakily like a Chinese ghost, paid off his insanity of turning himself into a pool of numbers, of troubles.

He didn’t give up easily. He approached a bunch of athletic macho guys who happened to be volley-ballers. They were bound to feel less comfortable with these Math things, he thought.  But when he was about to be talking about Math, they just starred at him, saying nothing. It wasn’t a right time, obviously, to talk about it.

His heart popped up when finally he met Connor, a young Irish man with a Philosophy degree, a husband of working wife, and a father to a young baby. He was just as miserable as Peter was. No, wait…. in fact, Peter had enough proofs to believe Connor was worse: no fond of Math and baby sitting in night shift.  That was the real good news.

You couldn’t imagine how happy you would be to find your own peer in MBA classes whom you just leveled off. Every time he felt stuck with limits, differentials, derivatives, probabilities, or polynomial equations [very late at night], he rang Connor simply to check him out. His counterpart hadn’t touched his material at all. As soon as the baby fell asleep, Connor successfully followed. Peter couldn’t believe that he was so spiteful to be little happy on someone else’s desolation. Strange, but true. Connor kept him alive through the horrible two weeks [I wonder will Dave’s classes of Calculus and Statistics save us, too, in time? Compare to his prof, Dave was a saint].

The three-day spreadsheet session was OK. They surprised that they, a Poet and a Philosopher, had fun. Peter regularly made telephone calls to Edita, his girlfriend who also voluntarily sacrificed herself into an MBA program somewhere else, only to find more each day that MBA (matriculation) classes turned off their romance. The real classes were to come, though.

Farewell with the Chief : “did I consciously choose my own destiny?”

Peter Robinson graduated from public high school at Vestal, a small town in State of New York . He went to Dartmouth for an undergraduate in Poetry or English [not quite sure, though]. Oxford, England was his next educational experience. In 1982, at the age of 25, he entered the White House as the Vice President’s speech writer. Almost two years later, he fulfilled the same position of President Reagan until in winter 1987 he decided something surprising his colleagues and even himself: pursuing an MBA. [in 1988? It was nearly two decades ago; things will be more advanced these days, don’t you think?]

Why would he go back to school while having a respectable life as a government officer? Respectable, yes. Rich, absolutely no. He learned fast during his speech writing work that free market had provided much gains to American players. Private sectors occupied places in which things actually happen. They offered much higher salaries, too, if you concern that much about money. Yup, you’re right. Peter was also a normal human being who envied his investment banker friend who earned 5 times higher than him. So, MBA would likely to help him generate that honey money and free him from government checks. [Simple decision, complex consequences]

Other things worth thought of : Reagan was about to finish his administration, Bush Senior was on his way to the House; so there was certainly nothing thrilling and challenging. Pretty much the same stuff. Then why wouldn’t he swing to be a lawyer? They made huge money. But Peter thought they were dull and bored; they richly lived unhappy live, and they would be buried by their 45th birthday. How about journalist? He was so good in writing and journalism that people said he would regret that it only served him a plain amount.

After saying good bye to the President, Peter made several more farewells. As he walked out the White House, he was glued to a sentimental feeling. He was frightened that he made a wrong step. Later he found that he actually made a perfectly erroneous decision he couldn’t fix: submitting his precious life to a two-year hell.