Immersion

My fun class this semester is Spanish (for managers)! I haven't ever taken Spanish, although I pride myself as being good with languages. I picked up some basic Spanish fairly quickly in Colombia when I was there for ten days and spoke it well enough that the waiter assumed I was a native and spilled out the entire menu at break-neck speed before I could stop him. The professor for this semester long 8:30 am class (what was I thinking?!), who is also Colombian, talks in Spanish the entire time and her theory is immersion.

I couldn't help but relate that theory to running - I was talking about running and how I hate it for a long time, mostly because I never did run. Now, I think about running, write about it, and actually am running - very little, but I still am running regularly and I am learning new things every day (like don't run on an almost empty stomach after a late Friday night!). I am also realizing that a half marathon in May (thats the goal of this running experiment of mine) may not happen will be very VERY challenging since I can run only 0.4 miles without having to switch to walking - 13 is a looooong way away! I was running today and so many other runners passed by me (some cute guys too - running has its perks) and I just felt like I was at the bottom of the totem pole. Then again, this reminds me of last year this time when classes hit me head-on, like a truck carrying loads of bricks speeding at 100 mph (hello Probability & Statistics - its no joke at Tepper). I was pretty sure I would fail all my classes, would not quite be able to keep up with my brilliant classmates, and be kicked out at the end of the first mini (well this is an exaggeration, but I did think it at some point before I drove those thoughts away with tea, alcohol, and food!). I survived (thanks to all my wonderful classmates that helped me out) and I think I'll survive this one too!

Speaking of surviving, National Black MBA Conference is coming up next week and its time to turn the recruiting face on, and get through this crazy busy career fair. I went to the conference last year as well, and this brings back the fact that immersion is the best way to learn - when you are on the floor with thousands of other MBA candidates, spilling out your pitch to hundreds of recruiters. you learn to make your pitch your own and original, and you learn to be aggressive (well in my case, semi-aggressive, apparently I need to turn it up a notch - not fun when humility has been drilled into you forever).

Bottom Line: Just do it (courtesy Nike) - you never know if you can (or cannot) until you try.