Gotta Love Bocconi

Oh, today was something else. I knew it wasn't going to be a good day, when I woke up at 9:32am, and about two full minutes rolled by before it occurred to me - our meeting was at 10am! Nice. So I jumped out of bed, brushed my teeth, jumped in the shower, lotioned up...all that good stuff. Somehow I managed to be fully dressed by 9:55. I had knocked on Rita's door when I got out of the shower and she said she was awake, but she must have just woke up too. I was applying basic makeup when she told me that she just wasn't going to be able to rush. She said she had a headache that was making her dizzy and she needed to just take her time to get ready. I said ok, and that I would let the team know. I figured even being late, I'd still get there before at least half of them anyway. So I headed out, hopped on the 29/30 tram and managed to get to Bocconi by 10:20am. I walked into the study area where we're supposed to meet, and.....there's no one there. I'm thinking, ok, I'm a full 20 minutes late - usually at least one person is there within 20 minutes. So I pulled up the email Ashley sent last night on my Blackberry, and guess what? The meeting wasn't starting until 10:30. Ha! So somehow after all that I ended up being 10 minutes early. I think that was God showing His sense of humor.
Ok, fine, so I plug up in the corner near the outlet and get to work. By 11, there were about five of us there. By noon, I think we were all accounted for except two - Rita and Sabrina. Rita emailed me and said she was just working from the apartment since we still didn't have a meeting time from Stefania. Sabrina rolled in sometime after 2 or so.
Around 1pm, we decided to take lunch in shifts. I went to the Bocconi cafeteria (my first time) with Carmen, Ashley, and Sook. The cafeteria was decent - they had pizza options, pasta options, and salad options...what a surprise? I'm in Italy. I got "pasta alla norma" - not sure what it means but it was a rotini type pasta with a red tomato based sauce, and it was good. Most of the other students in the cafeteria were undergrads. According to Ashley, the average grad student age is 23, which sounded about right to me, since most (w/ the exception of MBAs) go directly from undergrad but for some reason she seemed surprised. When we got back to the study lounge, there was an email from Paola saying that we were meeting at 5pm at Stefania's office, which was right down the hall from the study lounge. Great. We have to wait until the end of the day. So, we stuck around, each of us working on our own, with Shruti and Carmen piecing together the draft presentation to send to Paola and Stefania (it was originally supposed to be sent Friday - I'm not sure what the hold up was).
5pm finally came around, and we ended up meeting with Paola and Stefania in the study lounge where we had been all day b/c there were no other rooms available (these are the times I'm reminded that I'm no longer at Wharton - a group our size would have kicked some poor undergrads out if need be). What should have been a relatively simple hourlong meeting with us getting high level feedback from our tutors, turned into two hours of rambling, on, and on, and on. Don't get me wrong: some of the feedback was very valuable. Stefania, in particular, had some really great feedback (some of which I'm glad she emphasized - such as the need to have a concise presentation....one member of our team who shall go unnamed, had 40 slides on her own....seriously???...the entire presentation is supposed to be less than 30 slides). Paola, and Stefania, however, seemed to disagree quite frequently (what a surprise) on what questions we should be asking, with Paola getting more into details, and Stefania wanting to keep it high level since this is a preliminary presentation. I think the two of them need to meet alone right before each meeting with us, so they can get on the same page. At one point, I started doodling on my notebook (Crystal, where are you when I need you???). I started drawing a sun, with a smily face, to help me think positive thoughts...and y'all know I can't draw...that gift was passed on to my brother and my uncle, it skipped me....so just imagine what my smiling sun looked like...it had a big head...and rosy cheeks...and eyelashes, lol...suffice it to say, it didn't work in cheering me up, although it was quite hilarious to look at. Then I came back to reality and realized...Paola was still talking! And they were still disagreeing! Goodness gracious.
Two hours later, we finally ended the torture. We did have some good feedback, but seriously, most of it came in the first hour. The last hour was quite unnecessary. At this point, I'm starving since all I've eaten all day was that pasta. I'm cranky b/c I had to sit through the rambling for two hours. And I'm starting to get annoyed, b/c I know how our team works. A two hour task will take four days, ten hours, and 35 minutes. Since we have barely a day to finalize this presentation and incorporate the feedback (the presentation is Wednesday at 11am), I was not trying to waste any time. As soon as the tutors left, I suggested that we divide up the new slides we were told to add, and work on them tonight (glad I did b/c Shruti was trying to suggest that we stay there and work on it...nope, that would have been another four hours!). In addition, I suggested that we each consolidate the slides we did previously so that we are starting from a much more condensed version tomorrow, and we have less slides to go through. The team agreed, but then when it came down to assigning tasks, I started to have a spazzing out moment. As always, Ashley and Ale volunteered immediately to take on additional slides. I volunteered myself to take on another. There was one slide left. And it was simple - we had already hashed out the content, it was a matter of putting it on a slide. I could've done it in 5 minutes. But we are on a team of 9. So there is no reason anyone should be doubling up when there are others who are doing nothing. So I asked the rest of the group for volunteers to take the last slide. Silence. Hello???? Still silence. Ok, this pissed me off. We can spend all day talking about Victoria Beckham, and Tom Ford, and the new Gucci bag, or sunglasses, or whatever...but when it comes down to doing work, the cats got everyone's tongue. Ashley volunteered to take another slide. I cut her off and told her no. I told her she already had a slide to work on, and someone else needed to do it. Ale volunteered, saying it would only take her 5 minutes. I cut her off too and said no. Ashley had a look on her face that said "I'm glad that its not me for once" since she's the one usually getting annoyed with the lack of effort on the team. I looked at the rest of the team and said "are you serious? There are nine people on this team, why are the same people volunteering every time? This will seriously take you 5 minutes to do." They were all sitting there looking at the wall, trying to avoid eye contact. Finally, Carmen volunteered to do it. I gave them all my very annoyed and disgusted look. I wanted to click my heels three times and say "there's no place like Wharton, there's no place like Wharton, there's no place like Wharton"....please get me out of here! Aaaghhhhh! It's like the twilight zone. Remind me, we are all adults here, right?
The last task was getting somebody to volunteer to consolidate all the new slides tonight. I asked once and only once. Shruti volunteered immediately. Thank goodness, b/c I thought I might have to go postal. We set a deadline for midnight to have all slides to Shruti so we could start fresh in the morning. Our meeting time tomorrow is 10am, although I'm still disturbed that it was followed with the comment "but that means everyone has to be here by 10:30 at the latest." Umm, where I'm from, 10am means 10am. Not 10:30. Not 10:45. Not 10:15. 10am. Rita voiced my thoughts, and Ashley quickly responded "I know! But we're not in the states!" Ok, it's annoying, but I'll chalk that one up as a culture difference. But laziness? That's not culture - that's all about the individual.
Once we had our workplan hashed out, Rita and I hightailed it out of there. They had the nerve to still be sitting there having a conversation about Victoria Beckham when we left. I won't even begin to talk about the irony in that. When I got back to the apartment, I cooked immediately since my stomach had been grumbling the last hour of the meeting, telling me I needed to feed it quickly. The food was ok - I heated up some chicken and made some parmesan rice, and corn. Then I got to work on my slides and sent them to Shruti. I was planning to watch a movie but since I know tomorrow will be a very long day, I'm about to take it down. In addition to meeting all day to work on the presentation, Rita and I have Italian class at 2:30. I'm counting down until Thursday at 4pm - that's my last commitment of the week (Italian class). Pray for me y'all, that I don't go postal before then :-)