So what's business school been like so far?

 

We're now about halfway through the fall semesters -- the shorter Fall A term ended the first days of this month, and Zach is now about 2 weeks into Fall B.  The early stages of recruiting are well underway, where companies and organizations from all over the country come to campus to hold info sessions and informal meetings with students.  Zach has found a few organizations that he's really interested in, and decided several others are just not for him, and is narrowing down his focus for where he will apply for his summer internship (a process that I think begins in a couple months).

If there was one thing we were repeatedly warned about at Tuck, it was how hectic and busy the Fall A and B semesters would be.  And yeah, it's basically been true.  The coursework is decent on its own, but then when you combine that with recruiting, school social activities, networking, etc, it gets kinda ridiculous. Each weekday we drop Zach off at school at 8am on our way to D's school. He makes a point to try to be home at 5:30-6pm when he can, but on average he'll have about 2-3 nights a week when he'll stay on campus through the evening because of events or projects going on, so I'll be on my own for dinner & kiddo bedtime.  Which is challenging, but manageable.  What's been a little harder to get used to is that even when he's home after school we don't get much time together- he'll have a few hours of homework still to do in the evening and so usually ends up staying up way past when I've gone to bed, then in the morning I'm up with the boys while he tries to get a bit of extra rest.  It sounds like a silly thing but I do miss us going to sleep at the same time. He no longer has class on Fridays, but so far has still had plenty to do so it's basically just another class day from my perspective. Weekends are better, though between homework, chores, errands, and trying to squeeze in a bit of "family time" they get filled up quick.  One of the first lessons in business school was on time management and how you simply can't do everything because it's impossible, so he's been pretty choosy about what he will or won't attend or participate in (eg- no hockey this season, and about 1/10th the trips to Murphy's of his child-free classmates...) but even then it's a pretty jam-packed schedule.

All in all, it's pretty much what I expected. I sometimes find myself getting frustrated at Zach for not being around more, but then again we're paying a crapload of money to be here and I want him to get as much out of school as he can. It is what it is, and by spring the load should ease up a bit (or so I am told). In the meantime, the boys and I are keeping busy playing with new friends and enjoying the awesome weather when we get it (we've had alternating days/weeks of rain and glorious sunshine, and everyone keeps bringing up how it snowed on Halloween last year so I'm trying to take advantage of every warm, sunny day we get as much as possible... it kinda borders on desperation, if I'm honest). We did have a really great weekend yesterday and today, Zach didn't have much school work to do so we got to hang out all together lots. That was really nice. If we get a weekend like this one every few weeks I think we'll be good.