Now We Are Free

It all ended so quickly, and really without much fanfare. Sure, there was the big graduation ceremony at the University campus on the brilliant spring day. There was also the marching band, the commencement speakers, the caps & gowns, and the friends and family all gathered to wish us well and tell us how proud they all were of our accomplishments. Because it WAS such a major accomplishment, after all.

All day, I couldn't get the thought out of my head: I'll see that person next week in class. I don't need to say goodbye to them now, because we're sure to have another farewell get-together soon. What didn't really sink in until after everyone had left was: this was the last official time we'd all be together. These 60 or so people who all made the same decision I made more than two years ago, who worked at it every week right there with me, and who I got to know much better than I expected to. Now all of these people were dispersing on the lawn with their families, taking pictures and heading off to celebratory lunches and parties all over the city.

And just like that, I had a masters degree. Or at least a piece of paper inside a very nice-looking degree holder telling me I would receive my degree by mail in 6-8 weeks assuming I met all the requirements of the program. (Does anyone not get the diploma? I wondered)

I have been lax in updating this blog during April and May. So much happened right up to the end, and I plan to write about it in the weeks and months ahead-- not as an account (in real time) but as a reflection. I still think there's value to that, and if I'm lucky, this MBA-esque education won't end when they finally (hopefully) send me that diploma in the mail in 6-8 weeks.

The real question now is: what are you going to do with your shiny new $84,000 degree, mister? That could fill another blog in itself....

The Last Day

Class is over. No more homework. No more panic that I've missed an assignment or fear that God invented accounting simply to torment me. Just like that: we're done, baby.

Of course it didn't all end without some really good theater. Today was the second day of our international team business plan presentations, and it was my team's turn to present for 25 minutes in the mid-morning. The audience today was a bit smaller than yesterday, apparently because all the Poles who presented yesterday started drinking last night and told everyone they had no plans of stopping just to come to class. (you've got to admire that boldness) And it was great watching the Europeans in the class as they ignored the faculty's instructions to pay attention to the presentations-- there were laptops up, Blackberries in use, and even newspapers unfurled in class throughout the morning. It was also amazing to see the sheer megapixels on display as just about every Chinese student had a cellphone camera, SLR, or camcorder running at all times. People up on stage felt like they were being stalked by paparazzi. And the visiting professors from Europe delighted in droning on with 5- and 10- part questions that weren't really questions at all, but rather more a chance for them to speak and be heard. It made me really happy I wasn't part of European Academia.

And then it was our team's turn to present. As I've written elsewhere in this blog, our team was, shall we say, unique, and to see us all up there on stage presenting was a little surreal. After so many months of working alone when we should have been collaborating, after so many 5am Skype calls to accommodate the schedules of the Chinese who never showed up to the calls anyway, after coming together this past Monday with no slides prepared, there we were, all ready to present and be done with this thing.

I do presentations for a living, so I've been in worse situations. I knew my material well enough to know that I could talk for 25 minutes off the cuff if needed, and I knew from experience that people probably wouldn't be able to tell if I did. So I kicked off the presentation, delivered my slides, and handed it over to my teammates for their parts. I also tried to keep things moving so we wouldn't run out of time for our last slides like several other teams had done.

Everything went pretty well-- no disasters, and I really had to give it to my international colleagues for standing up in front of 75 people to speak their second language under the pressure of the clock while also being recorded on video.

Then came the part I'd been waiting for: our Chinese team member, Mr. Delegater, the one who considered himself a Chinese Jerry Seinfeld and who had delivered a 10-minute unsolicited speech to the class on the downfall of capitalism earlier in the week. His assignment was simple: walk through the financials, and close with a story. I knew he wouldn't be able to stick to any of that, so I was excited to see how it all played out.

I wasn't disappointed. He began with a rousing speech on how he was asked to be "the closer," but in reality he was more like "the TERMINATOR." It was brilliant theater, and it was actually cathartic to have my classmates see firsthand what I'd been complaining about since our project began last fall.

For the next 10 minutes, he told stories of rabbits, hotel guests as caged animals, caves, and he even managed to work in a joke about polygamy (that one prompted one of my American classmates to stand up and walk out of the room). I was laughing behind him, because it really couldn't have ended in any more of a surreal fashion. He barely mentioned financials at all, and the feedback from the class was that they would have invested in our venture if only Mr. Delegater hadn't been part of our team.

Oh well, you can't win them all, and this was a pass/fail class anyway so I doubt we'll fail. If anything, I think the faculty may have felt a little sorry for us up there on stage with The Terminator.

What I do know is this: it feels absolutely amazing to be done with school. Bittersweet, to be sure, but only after walking out of that classroom for the final time did I begin to feel the weight fall off my shoulders. As I drove home along the Mississippi River in the brilliant spring afternoon, I let myself dream about untold luxuries like free time, pleasure reading, and reasonable bedtimes.

Paid in Full

Now that I've survived the China trip, and now that graduation is just days away, I thought it was a good idea to actually make my final payment to the University. With a single click of a mouse just minutes ago (made from a coffee shop, no less), I moved tens of thousands of dollars and made my final tuition payment. I am now officially paid in full for my masters degree. Hard to believe. In college, I remember ominous trips to the bursar and/or financial aid office to sign ominous documents pledging my life away (hey, what's the rest of your life when you're 19?), but today it's all so much more disconnected. When you're sitting in oak-paneled offices or facing crabby accountants who take every opportunity to remind you of the gravity of the entanglement you're about to enter into, it's a lot easier to feel like you're parting with something of value. On the Internet, paying electronically, it all seems like a video game. One hella expensive video game, but a game nonetheless.

So here's where we stand a mere 34 days before graduation:

• Tuition paid: CHECK
• China trip: CHECK
• Managed not to go insane while working with crazy virtual teammates in China: CHECK
• Lectures complete: CHECK
• Graduation cap and gown in closet at home: CHECK
• Subtle melancholy of leaving academia beginning to set in: CHECK
• Feeling a bit like I'm about to get released from a prison where I'm sentenced to do three hours' hard labor every night: CHECK

Now, just one paper and two group presentations left to go. Bring it on, baby!

Our Last Lecture

It's a beautiful Spring day here in Minneapolis, and it's also our last official lecture of this program. I thought this day would never come, and now that it has, it's amazing how light we all seem to feel in class today. We're still several months away from graduation, and we still have a lot of classwork in front of us (don't forget next week's trip to China as a class), but it's clear we have rounded the bend and are now winding down. We delivered our team presentation this morning for Business Law, we just had a lecture on immigration law, and now we're on a break before heading into the second half of our last International Environment lecture.

More reflections to come on this momentous day, no doubt, but just wanted to check in and communicate how great it feels.

Crossing Over

Something happened today. It was really strange. Don't get me wrong, the pressure is still very intense to complete our work prior to leaving for China in a couple of weeks, but today it felt like we crossed some great divide and were now heading down a steady path to graduation. Before today, it seemed we were always climbing up the hill; today we crested and it now seems we are headed down the other side. It's a small thing, really-- mostly mental, I'm sure-- but today I could breathe easier.

Maybe it was the graduation toast we had at lunch. The first-year students and our professors toasted us at lunch with moving and funny speeches, and as I looked around the room at my classmates, for the first time I saw them as fellow alumni, almost as if we'd already begun morphing from students into graduates. Again, it's a small change, but it's made all the difference for me emotionally. Today was one of the first times I've had a glimpse backward at all we've gone through and learned together, and it was great to finally be able to have that. We can see the end in sight, though there's still boatloads of work to be completed before we step on that plane to China together in a couple of weeks. And it's immensely satisfying to look back on where we've come from and how we've all grown together.

Don't Look Down

Last year I developed the ability to calm myself when faced with a new topic or some subject that I had historically convinced myself I sucked at. Statistics, for instance. When I'd be in class (completely lost) or at home in the quiet, terrifying dark of night struggling through the homework problems, the only way I was able to get anything done was by taking deep breaths and by convincing myself that "you can do this, buddy." It worked-- I learned more last year than I ever thought I would, and in the end subjects I thought would destroy me (again, Stats comes to mind) were in fact some of my favorite classes.

Due to the sheer volume of work on the schedule for March 2009, however, I'm finding I need to tap those First Year anti-panic skills again. Each night I literally have to open my master schedule for the semester and look at the specifics of what I have to do between now and March 27 (when classes end and we all get on a plane to China). It's a crapload of work, let me tell you. At times the panic of "omigodomigodomigod" becomes almost more than I can handle, and it runs the risk of crippling me in my ability to be productive in my job, and it also threatens my peaceful state of mind for evenings with my family.

It's like I'm on a tightrope miles above the earth, making good progress but still with no idea how or if I'm going to make it to that other side. And I keep looking down. I really need to stop looking down. And breathing.

The Stealth Semester

Last year was brutal-- we knew it would be. Endless hours of pain and suffering when you really didn't understand what was going on in some classes at all, excellent professors that pushed you really hard, and at some point, the dawning realization that you were not, in fact, going to die, that you really might survive first year and someday have that coveted MBA degree hanging on your wall.

Then we had the summer off, which seemed more like four straight months of parole. We were giddy with all the free time we suddenly found ourselves experiencing. Of course there was the dirty little secret that we probably didn't make as good use of that time as we swore we would that sunny day in May at the Corner Bar (I know I sure didn't get much done over the summer), and as the retreat weekend in September approached and we picked up our first half ton of books for second year, we assumed the insanity would resume forthwith.

And then, nothing. It was really easy. Our third semester was much less taxing than either of our first two, and looking back I should have known something was up, that at some point the whole thing would come crashing down just when I was at my most vulnerable. BAM!

This last semester has been much harder than expected, but the strange thing is that it really didn't look all that hard on paper. Nor did the professors seem as masochistic as some of the ones from last year. Hey, this is the semester we all get to go to China together! How bad could it really be?

Well it's turned out to be the most nail-biting of all the semesters. Again, not because the work is particularly difficult, just because we have so much of the work crammed into such a small space of time; we don't graduate until May 18 but three full classes are sandwiched between January 16 and March 27. That's insane. Today is March 1. In 28 short days I will step onto a plane to Tokyo (and on to China), at which point I will essentially be finished with my MBA work. Looking on the calendar that all seems so close, but in terms of work yet to be completed, it seems a million miles away.

Killer of Evenings

I'm trying to keep a positive attitude when I hear well-intentioned people around me say, "You're almost done!" From where I'm sitting right now, it sure doesn't seem that way. Something's different about second year-- last year the prospect of homework was somehow thrilling, or should I say less revolting than it seems to be this year. Last year I was actually able to commit the three hours nightly to doing the work; this year it's been so much harder to get focused. So what happens most nights is that a dull dread sets in sometime midday (about all the work I have to do in the coming night) and then when I set in to do the work, I can't be productive for very long. My mind wanders. The kids intrude. I find I really want to spend time with my wife instead. I fall asleep and don't wake up until 1am. Little things like that. I've come to really view homework as the Killer of Evenings, because even when I choose to skip it or when I work at it poorly, it's always a dull thudding that rains on all the things I might do in a given night. Oh, where art thou, graduation!?

What Makes a Student?

I've been thinking about what makes a student, or what makes an educational experience. Going into this program, I thought graduate school would be different from college in terms of how I felt about the experience or how I saw myself day-to-day. Lately, though, I find myself (and many of my classmates) reacting, acting, and behaving in much the same way I remember from college. This has come as a surprise to me, so I'm thinking about some of the circumstances that might have come together to create this situation.

Here's some of what I've come up with thus far:

1. School (in terms of a long-term program in which you're enrolled) is really a solitary endeavor, whether it be grad school or college, because at the end of the day it's really you vs. the learning objective. Friends and family can support you (indeed, you couldn't "do" school without their support) but it all comes down to YOU: your performance on exams, your reading and retention, your commitment and participation.
2. Whether grad school or college, it's still "you vs. the professor" and "you wrestling with the big ideas." It's been funny how my classmates in this program (in our 30s and 40s) still take on much of the same mannerisms and behavior as college students. We complain about workload, we commiserate about assignments, we debate the gritty details of each professor's approach to teaching, we complain about grades, we meet at the Corner Bar after class, and we're always really tired. Our clothes may be fancier than those we wore in college, and many of us may have since gotten married and have families of our own, but deep down we're still students.
3. The material is challenging. Learning should push us beyond our comfort zones, and anyone who attended a decent college (or who's attending a decent grad program such as ours) will find their horizons expanded. I've found that this is much more difficult to achieve in "everyday life" when working in the corporate environment.
4. The "cohort" structure of this program breeds much the same closeness and shared triumph over adversity as college did. Only recently have I realized that my MBA experience would be completely different (and much less memorable or cohesive) if I wasn't experiencing it in a cohort format. I fully expect to walk out of this program, as I walked out of college, with lifelong friends. I don't know if that would have happened in the full-time or part-time MBA program, and it has made this experience much more worthwhile.
5. The diversity of our class forces each of to see things from the perspective of another. This just doesn't happen much in the business world-- too often we end up surrounded by people who are too much like us. In college, as in this MBA program, that hasn't been a problem. Who knew I'd end up debating (and loving the dialogue) with a stock trader who refused to wear shoes to MBA class? I never would have met that person in my "normal" life, and looking back, I've learned a lot from many of my classmates (beyond what's in the syllabus).

Hopefully I'll have more to add to this list as time goes on, but there you have it for now.

Back At It

Wow, has it really been over a month since I last posted on this blog? A lot has happened since then (the end of first semester, four blissful (though cold) weeks of vacation, the holidays, a roadtrip with my family to Chicago, and the resumption of classes) but blogging is such a habit-- you either do it regularly or you stop doing it completely. For me, there's never been a middle ground. Same thing with journaling (which I've been doing since 1990) and exercising (which I'm sorry to say has all bit stopped since starting this program): either I do it regularly, or I miss a day or two and the whole thing grinds to a halt.

We're back at it now, having begun the last of our four semesters of b-school, so I figure I need to just sit down and resume typing. Strange to say, but I also think the fact that my classmates started following the blog just this year put extra pressure on me-- last year I could operate in relative anonymity whereas now I write always wondering what people will read into what I write (and, of course, what I leave out). But I feel the need to resume, if for no other reason than the whole experience will be over before I know it, and without some sort of log like this to remember the details, it will all just seem like so much reading and so many assignments.

So, I'm back at it. Let's see what happens in our "Senior Year".

An Early Holiday

I'm not quite sure, exactly, what happened, but school seems to have ground to a halt. Or rather I should say that homework has ground to a halt. I always wondered if second year would be easier than first year, but I never thought I'd get such a definitive answer. YES.

Now, of course whenever I'm feeling like "hey, I've got this MBA program thing licked," along comes some totally sobering realization that is actually more along the lines of, "oh no, you moron, you just failed to look at the other half of the syllabus" as I draw perilously close to missing some major deadline, but unless I'm really missing something this time (not beyond the realm of possibility), the work has slowed to a crawl. First year, I really did do three hours of homework, on average, every day (seven days a week) but I'm a bit embarrassed to say I haven't so much as cracked a book in almost two weeks. Part of that is due to the Thanksgiving holiday, of course, but still....

So I'm left to wonder: is this some mysterious break in the action, and will things get really lousy again in January when our fourth and final semester heats up? And let's not forget the virtual Hell that was September and October of this year-- our group had most of its work upfront (owing to our group number: 2), so I'm sure many of my classmates are agonizing over their remaining work even as I type this. But I am getting to the point where I'm almost kind of thinking about declaring the second half of this semester the easiest yet. And it feels really great-- like I've earned it. So I'm just going to let myself sit in this blissful state for a few more days-- class resumes this coming Friday, so we'll see if I'm clairvoyant or just plain oblivious.

Time is Passing

For only the second time in two years, I met my classmates after class at the Corner Bar near campus. There is a die hard core group that meets every week in this hallowed venue, but my family commitments typically prevent me from meeting up for a drink or two (Stella Artois with olives is my new favorite).

One of my classmates said it well tonight: "I came [to the bar] tonight because time is passing quickly." He's right-- before we know it, January will be here, and soon after that, our trip to China in March, and then it will be graduation in May.

I have a lot yet to learn before I leave, I have a lot more to write on this blog, and most importantly, I have a lot left to experience. Hence the value of taking the time to meet up at the Corner Bar. There's a lot more to this program than the 18 hours we spend in a classroom every other week. Soon enough, we'll find ourselves missing days like today (when we all played hooky from work, we all had lunch catered, we all got to sit and pontificate instead of wrestle in the "real world", and I got to have a beer with friends at 4:30).

Always On

It has been fascinating for me to watch the "always on" state of my colleagues in class. When I was in college, technically there was no public Internet (the HTTP protocol that gave birth to the public Internet wasn't invented until a year after I graduated) and there definitely wasn't anything like wireless access. When you were in class, you were in effect a hostage. No laptops (we took notes on paper), no e-mail, no instant messaging, no web browsers. Now it is a totally different game. None of our professors have even attempted to prohibit us from using laptops-- the closest any has come was our Ethics professor today, and all he could muster was a vague threat to call on us randomly if we appeared to be too heads-down with our PCs during class (hardly a threat).

I sit toward the back of the room this year (last year I was up front), so it's fascinating to glance at the laptop screens of others to see all the various things they are doing with their class time. Some aren't even taking notes, others are typing furiously. Some are on e-mail or instant messaging (myself occasionally included, in truth), but everyone has the ability to look up a new term on Wikipedia or via search in real time. Triple Bottom Line? One second while I become conversant on the topic. It's a bit like The Matrix where become a karate expert was a matter of popping in a disc and inserting a probe into your head.

A bit scary, maybe, a bit distracting, yes, but ultimately powerful and completely unstoppable.

Think in WORDS, Not Numbers

After so many semesters of having to draw upon the slim pickings related to the part of my brain that works with numbers (there's just not much there) struggling through Finance (two semesters in a row!), Accounting, and the like, I found myself wrestling with the syllabi for my next round of classes (which begin Friday). The reading wasn't making much sense, nor were the assignments, until I realized "OH! I get it, these classes expect me to make arguments, draw conclusions, and do other non-mathlike things." After that, it was a lot easier to do the preparation. Now I think I understand why my science and econ friends in college had such a hard time in liberal arts classes (or when I did extracurricular activities like the campus newspaper)-- they never got a chance to switch their own gears out of mathlike certainty into the nebulous world of the unknown. Time for me to make the switch, and time to dive back out of the frying pan and back into the fire that is the second half of the semester.

Level of Effort

Now that we're deep into Second Year, the topic is coming up more and more frequently of: just how much effort do we need to put into "X" anyway? ("X" here could be a group paper, final, or PowerPoint presentation). Not that we're thinking about skipping the work entirely, just that we're questioning how much we really need to put into every little thing that comes up. Honestly, it seems we were all a lot more eager last year to go above and beyond; now it seems like we just want to keep our heads down in the foxhole and not get our heads blown off.

In an instant messaging conversation with one of my teammates tonight, we were discussing the group presentation we have coming up on Friday for IT class. We've had a couple of weeks to size up the professor and feel we have a fairly good idea of how he grades assignments. Plus many of us have memories of busting the midnight oil last year (remember those teams who met two or more times each week for Markstrat?) only to receive.....pretty much the same grade we would have received if we didn't have the 3D animations in our PowerPoints (or the plumber's outfits, the dancing elves, or video montage).

Truth be told, it's a good thing this program is only two years long-- any more and we'd really be phoning it in!

Hitting the Wall

OK, somewhere in the last two weeks, this stopped being fun. When I saw the Year 2 schedule in the summer before things got rolling again, intuitively I knew October would be a hellish month-- class on three out of four weekends, many overlapping due dates, and general fatigue. But being in it all-- actually down in the middle of it now-- really sucks much more than I expected. Can someone just hand me my shiny MBA diploma and give me an early get-out-of-jail-free card so I can be done with it all?

I was on the road two weeks ago traveling in Las Vegas for a team meeting, and this was where I hit the wall. I've had many work trips over the MBA program period, and all of them involve schlepping extra-heavy books hundreds of miles, reading materials on airplanes, and attending team conference calls in highly suboptimal locations. I've reached my limit. As I sat there in my beautiful Vegas hotel, having once again told my colleagues as they invited me out for the night "no thanks, I need to go back to my room and do homework," I realized I had crossed a point where the returns were lower than the effort I was putting in.

This semester is passing just as quickly as I'd suspected, but the work is taking more of a toll on me than I expected. I'm oh so focused on graduation in May!

Second Years

Halfway into my third semester (of four) in this program, I'm amazed at how the politics of experience works. We are second years, and we are so much more laid back than we were last year. We feel we have conquered some challenge, we feel we have survived, and we have much of the confidence that goes with that.

At this time last year, we were scared new students to whom the second years probably seemed arrogant and disconnected. I know I thought they seemed like upperclassmen-- and I mean that with all its intrinsic envy and resentment. Who did they think they were, anyway? Well, if they were anything like we are, they were probably just happy to be finished with their first year. And also like us, they probably looked on the first years with sympathy.

It's interesting to see how much of this type of behavior relates to experience rather than age. In college, everyone's pretty much the same age, so it's easy to attribute the upperclassman syndrome to age, but in our little experiment now, I'd have to say it has more to do with experience. We've been through things (like Markstrat, like Charlie's accounting class) that the first years can't even dream about. And we've survived, realizing (maybe a little too late) that in the end we're all going to be just fine.

I see it on the faces and in the attitudes of my classmates now: we all come a little later to class, some of us are even (gasp!) missing a class or two, fewer of us are asking questions or keeping up with the reading. Call it our own version of the senior slump.

What's most interesting is that this has nothing to do with age-- some of the first years are older than some of us (just as some of us were older than the second years last year). Being a second year is more a state of mind than anything else: a little less panicky, a little wiser, a little more anxious for the whole thing to be done already, and also a little sad that it's all passing so quickly.

Such is probably the case for any challenging time in our lives. The actual experience of it all is way too complex to fully describe in words. In order to experience it, you have to sit in that chair every other weekend for a full year, vacillating between terror and insight.

Two Weeks Isn't

Inevitably, right after class when I rush home to be with my family (lest they forget who I am), I am overwhelmed by a deep sense of peace. "I made it through another class weekend!" I shout inside my head, quite proud of my endurance.

Then, suddenly, it's Saturday night, my family's in bed, and I'm faced with a daunting choice:

1. Get a leg up on reading for the next class weekend
2. Go to sleep to catch up on my rest
3. Completely veg out, either a) browsing the Internet (usually getting sucked in to some random YouTube video thread) or b) watch Tivo until my eyes dry out and/or the sun peeks over the horizon

Do you want to take a guess as to which choice I usually make? Let's just say it's >2. This happens on a regular enough basis that I know there must be some reason (it can't be me, after all, can it?).

I think it has a lot to do with exhaustion combined with the false belief that "two weeks is plenty of time to get my reading done for the next class." As I've seen time and time again, two weeks will pass in a flash, so I'd better get off this chair right now and crack a book if I know what's good for me.

The jury's still out on which decision I'll actually make. And hey, is that ice cream I spy in the fridge?

Baking

So I think I really picked the wrong place to sit in class. They spent the summer remodeling the rooms and we walked in on Tuesday to sparkly, high-tech classrooms with sleek new chairs and fancy new tables. Only they forgot to install blinds to keep out the sun, and apparently the air conditioning isn't working, so today was yet another coma-inducing day of baking in the sun in my seat next to the window. They brought in fans, but we couldn't hear the professor over the fans, so we're back to baking.

You can see how it's going.

One funny thing I did want to share was a Yogi Berra quote from yesterday (related to us by our Finance professor):

The story goes: One day, Berra ordered a pizza. When asked whether he would like his large pizza cut into four slices or eight, Yogi replied: "Four, because I don't think I have enough appetite to eat all eight."

Stamina

As I sit here in my hotel room on our 5-day domestic residency retreat after a full day of class and after completing the first of our group assignments for Finance, I'm reminded of something a classmate said earlier today, something that sums up the force that drove us last year and which for many of us atrophied over the summer.

Stamina.

Simply stated, it takes pure stamina to power through a day of work at our regular jobs, followed by evening personal lives that include families and small children for many of us, and then to pick up a book or do homework for three hours each night (7 days a week) while class is in session.

I thought I was tough. I thought I'd retained much of my edge from first year. What I'm learning this week while on retreat (where the work just doesn't stop, even at night or at 6 in th morning) is that I am sorely lacking in stamina. Somewhere between the early bedtimes and homework-free days of summer, I lost it. Time to build it back up!

Right after first year began, I remember going to the zoo one Sunday morning after class with my family. I'd been up the night before until 2:30am and was up again at 7 with the kids-- all in all, a respectable 4 1/2 hours of sleep, but some additional factor (the accumulated fatigue of a weekend of class) made me literally fall asleep standing up at the zoo. I feel like I'm right back there tonight! That's what the Pepsi and Red Bull was supposed to counteract an hour ago down in the hotel bar. Now I'm facing a mountain of reading for tomorow morning ("tommorow" being the class period that begins in 9 1/2 short hours). Time to push the limits and rebuild that intellectual stamina.