Trusting Strangers and Weird Wedgies

6:00am came early, thanks to the dark shades at The Paramount. Teambuilding Day, the most anticipated day of orientation, was finally here. I peeled the roaches off my face, threw on my TJ Maxx found Paper Denim jeans and American Apparel t-shirt, and me and the new roommates were off to Hough Hall to meet up with the cohort. Of course, we had to stop at IHOP to fill up on cardboard waffles before the day’s adventure.

We arrived at the campus, now regretful of having UPS boxes sitting in our stomachs, and our group of 70 students piled into a few old yellow school buses. All of a sudden, our pants turned into skinny jeans and we all just started talking about Bieber’s Christmas album and how our parents never let us do anything fun. 

We arrived at a beautiful, ancient oak spotted estate that had a pool, ping pong tables, conference rooms, and of course, rope obstacles that look random when dormant. We went into a big field and collectively played shoot-the-volleyball-80-feet-in-the-air-and-watch-it-knock-someone-out-when-it-returns-to-earth with our group leader and life philosopher Simon, who told us ten times that the secret to life is to remember people’s names (in this case, I can’t recall if his name really is Simon. I’m so screwed).

Trusting Matt, Austin and Michael with your life.

To manage the day’s activities, the cohort was broken up into small groups of about ten students. My group wrote chants, balanced hula hoops with our pointer fingers, wore climbing gear that perfectly and inelegantly amplified our private parts, climbed 30 foot poles and jumped off the top of them (of course), and snacked on Frito products that are made with cheap corn filler and artificial (but delightful) flavoring. Aside from weird wedgies and having nasty, awkward cheese breath from eating too many crunchy Cheetos, the day was a ton of fun. 

After trusting strangers with my life and eating barbeque hosted by some locals that looked less interested in life than my IHOP waitress that morning, we were herded into a conference room to create our teams for the program. And this is what goes down: you’re given a dull pencil and a piece of paper that has space to write down your background, professional experience, and awesomeness, and you tape that paper onto a wall. I’ll repeat that – you put your life on a piece of paper and tape it to a wall. 

Then 70 strangers browse over your life and either think it worthy, or think it miserable, unemployable and just plain sad. You had students like Brad write, “I DON'T WANT TO BE CAPTAIN” in giant letters as life’s sole describer. You had guys like me who pretended to have an amazing leadership background, but who’s handwriting was so bad, passer-buyers probably wondered how an invalid child had accidently been admitted into the program. Then you had papers like Daniel’s - “CEO of 30 companies.” “Manager of a billion people.” “Everything I touch turns to Gucci shoes.” People like this became captains through silent vote, and after the peasants went outside to sow seeds on the farm, this bourgeoise browsed through the papers on the wall again and picked their teams. I remember playing Omar in ping pong for a long while during the team picking, and he killed me every match. My pride was getting eaten alive, and I just wanted to go in a corner, drink something corn syrupy or hoppy and watch Liz Lemon scarf down a sandwich. 

Angie, Director of Student Services, called the 60 or so students back into the conference room, and we listened intently to the captains announce the new teams. It kind of makes you sick. You scan the room saying to yourself, “please God, don’t put that person on my team,” and He puts them on your team, and you throw up in your mouth (later to find out that the person you didn’t want will carry your team, become the best man at your wedding and literally save you from drowning in a river. That's right - don't judge). The teams are picked, and you write your team charter (goals, mission, etc.) at a banana-spider infested picnic table, each person subtly sliding in comments that make themselves sound interested, smart and capable (this kind of talk dissipates after Term 1). 

Ahh - the day was finished. I walked back onto the yellow school bus, said hi to the Gainesville Sun reading bus driver, turned on Bieber's latest, and I sat down. I slouched, put my knees up against the seat in front of me and texted my wife, “Dang, I’m tired!” She responded a few minutes later, “You're just getting started.”

Orientation On the Floor

The night before leaving for Gainesville for orientation, I was getting a bit discouraged. I researched the heck out of Gainesville area State Parks, and I couldn't find any good prospects to pitch my green, two-man, REI tent for orientation week. Despite my hesitations, I stuffed my tent and sleeping bag into the trunk of my little Honda Civic, and I was on my way. 

Floating Canoes

When I first arrived at the bright, open and obviously LEED certified Hough Hall (pronounced Huff Hall), I finally figured out where that $36,000 tuition price tag was going. There is a giant news-ticker screen in the lobby, a room filled with a dozen Bloomberg super computers worth like $800,000 a piece, and there are printers and nice couches and nice everything. There are also glass canoes floating in the air with colored glass balls stuffed in them. My favorite find, though, the one that put me at ease for the rest of the day, was the shower on the 3rd floor. I wasn't going to smell like hippie for the week when everyone else was taking baths in Acqua Di Gio. 

I texted my wife in excitement, "They have showers!" "Awesome" she replied. Then I discovered break out rooms on the 2nd and 3rd floors. "They have rooms I could sleep in," I texted again. "Schweet!" 

For the record, my wife is amazing - I know I'm a tad strange and she appears to be calmingly cool with that. Like good ol' Dr Seuss said, "We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.” 
   
Anyway, after the Hough Hall tour and sitting in room 240, I pretended to be glued to my iPhone, tending to all of those important messages important people get when they're in uncomfortable social conditions:
   
A friend from highschool (that I don't really know) posted up a picture on Facebook of her friend (that I didn't care about).
  
A tweet from Cabot came through my Twitter feed on how to make apple cheddar pie. Re-Tweet.

The first day of orientation was kind of fun. You begin by collecting branded laptop bags and nice Nike UF MBA polos that you'll be paying back for the next 30 years (with interest), and then you meet the UF MBA staff. The admissions team, or as the Director of the MBA program calls them, the SNL crew, gives a presentation on the demographics of your class. It sounds boring - they make it fun.
  
You meet Jim, the maintenance guy that pretty much runs the program. You meet Angie, who has the dismal task of following up to Sean Connery telling Trebek about the noises his mother made last night. Then you meet Alex, the skinny, well-spoken and witty Director of MBA. Alex told us that we are all now part of the UF MBA brand. In other words, "If you get drunk and sloppy and act dumb over at the Swamp, please don't wear the new Nike shirts we gave you." 
  
For the rest of the afternoon, you drink enough little bottles of Pepsi and Mountain Dew that the garbage you produce negates any of the carbon footprint that Hough Hall tries to reduce. After thinking about potentially a dozen simple ways to reduce this massive waste (bigger bottles? - now that's a smart MBA student thinking outside the box) and thinking about the gallons of corn syrup that were in the bellies of that room, I thumbed through a binder of colored papers.

As I was reading a pink paper that had a space for me sign my life away at the next day's team building ropes course, I couldn't help but think about my lack of sleeping arrangements. And then I met Josh. 

Josh manages some of West Palm's massive wealth, and I bet he's dang good at it. I would imagine that rich men appreciate Josh's conservative (but assured) investment suggestions, and that rich men's wives appreciate Josh's perfect jaw structure and youthful smile. Josh is also from a tiny little mountain town called Felton, CA, where my older brother lives - we instantly connected. We talked about Santa Cruz's waves and how his mom works in the same hospital as my sister-in-law. 
  
After lunch and eating some amazing peanut butter filled chocolate chip cookies (Fact: These peanut-butter filled cookies are the best part of the University of Florida MBA program. I take that back - these cookies are the best part of life.), we walked upstairs and Josh discovered I was a homeless transient who just put four peanut butter filled chocolate chip cookies in his pocket and didn't have a place to sleep that night.
  
Being the nice and open guy that he was and being scared that I was going to invite myself over anyway, he mistakingly asked me, "Hey man - you can stay with us tonight if you want." I jumped on this lead like a hungry salesperson who's got nothing in Stage 3 - Proposal Development, "That would be amazing." 

My spot at the Paramount

Josh hadn't thought this invitation through, or maybe he didn't expect to see homeless people in the MBA program. Either way, his hotel room at the elevator's-always-broken Paramount was already over-booked with three tenants, and I can only imagine what his conversation was with his two gracious roommates, Michael and Jason - "Umm - hey guys that I don't know yet. Mind if we have a questionable transient I found on the street sleep on our floor?" 
  
Needless to say, that night, me and a dozen cock roaches that were on growth hormones slept on an I-don't-want-to-know-what-those-stains-are-from rug between two beds. I slept like a log, but I'm pretty sure Jason slept with a knife clenched in his hand, just in case this homeless guy was going to pull a fast one.