This weekend was fantastic

“Wow!”…that’s all I can say about this weekend. For the past few weeks, I’ve felt pretty run down by the internship search and the academic rigor of this quarter and, to be honest, I’d started to wonder if I was really on point enough to hack it here and survive the GSB. The past few days have re-energized me and have me ready to fight through the rest of this school year and take over the world over the summer 🙂

On Saturday, we had our annual Black Business Student Association conference at the Stanford Faculty Club, which went off without a hitch. It was the most successful BBSA conferemce ever and it set the bar pretty high for my class to make some big things happen next year. The event featured a morning panel about entrepreneurship that was set up by my girl Lynn, an afternon panel set up by my boys LaShawn and Corey on Career Development, an afternoon talk by the founder of Urban Golf Gear, and a keynote speech by the CEO of Symantec, John Thompson. I can’t front…I was thinking that the conference might be bootleg because there were only two panels, but, on the big day, everything fell into place perfectly. The panels were the perfect length, were moderated well, and covered a wide range of ideas on their topics. The founder of Urban Golf Gear made a presentation that was casual enough to keep people entertained, but informative enough to keep them interested. And, John Thompson’s speech was fantastic…he’s truly a dynamic speaker and i was even able to speak to him for a few minutes after he came off stage. There aren’t too many Black folks at the top of tech companies and he’s the only one at the top of a company as large as Symantec. Overall, the event was off the chain and I can’t wait to help put things together for next year’s conference.

The second big event of the weekend was the GSB’s first round Admit Weekend. I’m a member of the Admit Weekend Committee and was in charge of coordinating two of the panels, so I had a vested interest in seeing things go off well. The Admit weekend started with a Welcome LPF for the admits in Schwab followed by small group dinners ( I attended the one sponsored by the BBSA for the Black admits). After the dinners, we had another welcome get-together at a bar in Palo Alto called Blue Chalk. I’m usually not into Blue Chalk becuase it is tiny and crowded in the upstairs area, but the place had a DJ that night and the downstairs area was jumpin’ so I was in my element. I was sweatin’, grindin’, and wyldin’ out…I probably should have conducted myself differently around the admits, but, if they’re going to be here with me, they need to see how I do for real, for real. The night ended with most of the current students and admits heading over to a groupof second year MBAs’ house for a party sponsored by the International Club. I didn’t have the greatest time there because I wasn’t into the music, but everyone else was dancing around, talking, and vibin’ with each other so well that I couldn’t help but be pleased. Sunday and today were filled with panels, info sessions, a mock class session, and other team building exercises intended to help the admits get to know us and each other. It still remains to be seen how many of them we were able to secure, but, from what I heard from the guy I was hosting for the weekend (shout out to my man Julio V.), a lot of these kids will be back here in the Fall. These folks were so excited to be here that I couldn’t help but be excited for them and even more excited for myself and my classmates for making it thorugh almost 2 full quarters here.

I can’t end this without sending a shout out to the admits that I met this weekend. They were truly a great group of people and I hope they all choose to come to school here in the Fall. Seeing their excitement and energy made me recognize once again how fortunate I am to be here and now I’m ready to take on these winter quarter Finals next week and get this internship stuff taken care of.