¿Cómo se dice "narcolepsy"?

Meet ‘Stilts’. She is from Chicago. We are going to hide her identity from the Google search engines so that when she runs for President of the United States it will not be THAT easy to find out about her debaucheries while at ESADE. Anyway….more on that another day.

Stilts and I have found ourselves explaining an etiquette guideline more and more frequently these days. In fact, just yesterday I heard her explain to three gentlemen this concept. You see….it’s a pretty good idea to never tell a woman that she looks tired. It generally equates to something along the lines of “Wow…you look terrible.” Generally, we are very aware of the fact that we look tired. There is a multi-billion dollar industry centered on concealing fatigue with makeup and/or fancy creams.

But this is Business School – everyone is a little tired - men and women alike. Makeup and creams have been rendered useless by text books, exams and Barcelona. Let’s be honest….there is a lot of studying done, but there is also a lot of ground to cover and sights to see. Due to obligations of class time, all the sightseeing is done from the hours of 11pm until 6am – there may or may not be a beer or two involved. Since arriving last month, in the 11-6 time frame I have explored Born, gotten lost in Barri Gotic and even made it down to the beach a time or two. I bet this city sure is neat during daylight.

This type of schedule does not bode well for attention spans during the 9-12am hours, otherwise known as class time. It seems that over the years, my doctors failed to diagnose my narcolepsy. It also seems that I share this problem with a number of my classmates. My latest trick for staying awake is to document the arduous attempts undertaken by classmates in an effort to not ‘nod off’.

My absolute favorite is the raised eyebrow approach – raise the eyebrows so that the eyelids follow suit. One guy gets his eyebrows almost up to his hairline. It’s so impressive I find myself trying it out from time to time – consistently astonished by the amount of concentration it takes.

The eye cavity massage seems to be popular in our class as well as the other sections. A constant methodical motion circling the orbital bone can have positive and negative effects. For some it rejuvenates the eyes and buys you an extra 15 minutes of attention span; however it can smudge your ‘I’m not tired’ makeup, lull you to sleep and/or spread bacteria into your eyes. Newsflash – everyone is sick so don’t think you are above this one.

Then there is the chair dependency – an effort to have the chair back hold your head up since you clearly cannot. Overconsumption of liquids – nothing requires your attention more than bladder control. Social media distractions, BBMing the person next to you, incessant trips to the bathroom, crossing the legs, crossing them the other way, subtle stretching, not-so-subtle yawning – all viable alternatives to achieve one common goal.

I didn’t mention caffeine…that’s a given. I developed a serious dependency on the coffee vending machine until it exponentially increased my dependency on ‘chicle’. Stilts and I have flirted with the idea of becoming addicted to Burn – an energy drink readily available on the 2^nd floor, but have yet to find a sugar free version. She has returned loyally to coffee and I recently rekindled my relationship with Sugar Free Red Bull.

Just the other day I went to bed at 2am after finishing up accounting work. I decided to treat myself the next morning to breakfast in bed…Red Bull….at 6am…

So the ‘You look tired’ line, can probably go without saying….

Kickoff with a ‘Dance-off’

180 people strong. It’s the ESADE Full Time MBA Class of 2012. We are professionals from 48 countries with varying intellectual capacities and working backgrounds that run the gamut. We all pride ourselves on our ambition and maturity and consistently find ourselves excelling at things our peers fail to comprehend. We are MBA students….here our roar……and before we know it we are queuing like five year olds on the first day of school sans the pink elephant backpack but clinging to our blackberries instead for security. That backpack was AWESOME by the way-it had ears and a trunk. Anyway, we  board a bus to La Mola for social experiment #1.

You can see fast friends visibly shaken as they are separated alphabetically on the bus rosters and will have to cope somehow. Memories of groups formed based on the first letter of our last names stream through our minds….silently for most. Me, well I share most things, requested or not. The scene at the hotel is organized chaos as we realize we are randomly assigned with a roommate to stay the night in what amounts to matrimonial beds. The ‘men’ rush to put a little bit of separation in between the beds before the surprise roommate arrives and an awkward moment ensues. I introduced myself to my roommate from Japan and dragged her to the bar immediately.

(If I continue with this blog I may have to incorporate a few lies to avoid sounding like an alcoholic, but do not be fooled…we are all leaning that way for the next two years….in efforts to boost our time management skills we plan to sprinkle in a few hangovers from time to time-we’ll call it multi-tasking).

After a nice dinner we all decided to loosen up a bit, but true to form, they had us loosen up with another competition. A flan eating contest, a dizzy bat/beer chugging relay (did anyone notice the absence of a bat and the presence of a metal pole-clear disregard for our safety after the copious amounts of alcohol served at dinner-foreshadowing for the next day) and then there was the ‘dance-off’ judged by a handful of second year students. While all the teams were practicing a coordinated routine I was busy refining my negotiation skills. According to the judges, we finished in second place with perhaps the worst dance of the night. Lesson learned….second year students not only like wine, they can be bribed with red OR white – they aren’t very discriminating.

Cue the post competition dancing and cue the Belgian scrapping the salsa dancing in favor of the more ‘American’ style. There were all types of dancing skills represented but none more fascinating than the Flemish style of ‘dropping like its hot’ and then well, just staying there….on the ground amid the countless number of shattered wine glasses and spilled wine. 180 (more or less at this stage of the night)of us throwing our bodies together like we’ve known each other for years or perhaps wishing we would remain strangers.

Overall a good time, we conducted ourselves like adults, made some bad decisions, lied about them and got the rumor mill going. Then we followed up a night of debauchery with a race in cars constructed by the same fatigued and hungover crowd. No one died, there were some war wounds, but no one died.

Ayúdeme

There is always a moment. Or is that just in the movies? You know, the moment where the director opts for a fast forward replay through a picture show of the hour we just watched only to halt it in the present moment of the film. It’s all in a moment where everything catches up to you.

As previously mentioned, there was a lack of true forethought and reflection in the act of packing up my amazing NYC apartment, kissing goodbye my friends and family and moving to a foreign city I had merely heard of. It caught up to me in just one moment. The planning, studying, applications, interviews, visas, packing, unpacking, repacking….all of it was on fast forward replay when I grabbed the doorknob to leave the bathroom stall at Cerveseria Catalana and it would not open.

 It was not a simple issue of try, try again. I was locked in. And after the slide show finished in a flash, I mentally welcomed myself to Barcelona, Spain. A city I had merely heard of that was my new home and a city in which I was unaware of how to ask for help if, God forbid, I ever got locked inside a tiny bathroom stall. 

I made my way out after nearly five minutes of sparring with the doorknob in a less than subtle way. The two snickering teenagers that witnessed the act were somewhere between startled and thankful, for I had just used my non-existent karate skills to compensate for my non-existent Spanish speaking skills.

I am completely handicapped by my lack of Spanish speaking skills, which in general depresses me daily. My roommates speak Spanish as their native language and the non-native speaks pretty well too. It’s a perfect environment to learn! If only they would slow it down a bit.

I asked my roommates how to say help in Spanish and figured I could work out the tone depending on the particular dilemma I would surely find myself in again soon.

Throwing darts at a map....

I would say ‘fly by the seat of my pants’ is not necessarily applicable to my life. Unplanned, certainly, but there is an element of control that flirts with every decision I make….at least subconsciously. But then there is Barcelona.

Going back to school has always been in the plan, but I never bothered to think about when and where. Then, as the grasp of subprime mortgages loosened its chokehold, the future suddenly snapped into focus; MBA. There was a bit of a problem. I did not have the forethought to plan the finances appropriately for attending business school nor had I considered that after April 30^th 2010, most of the top programs shut their doors to new applicants.

It was April 1^st. Damn. A GMAT study regimen and an unhealthy number of essays that wouldn’t write themselves did not bode well for an April 30^th deadline, plus I had that job thing to juggle too. So Plan B. Isn’t Plan B always more appealing anyway? I never really liked the idea of staying in the United States for school. It seemed boring, more of the same.

So Europe it is, specifically Barcelona. After a quick attempt to study for said test and throwing together a few essays on the trials and tribulations of being me for the admissions committee, I stepped off the airplane and drank the air. This was going to be fun. Mind you I found Barcelona on a map about three weeks before actually coming here. I figured that was probably a necessary detail. In my research however I neglected to investigate the temperatures of this city….and more importantly the humidity.

Here I was-in a country I had never visited with my life in four bags of what I had whittled down to as being the true essentials. Barcelona. My new home. Who forgot to turn on the air conditioning? I thought thinking was tough after last month’s concussion, but this heat is making me a bit delusional. I definitely did not think this one through.

So the adventure begins. I am enrolled in business school at ESADE in Barcelona, Spain. I have never been here or met any of the people I will surround myself with for at least the next eighteen months. I need to find a home, the school, establish residency, frequent the bars and beaches and find a new footing in this beautiful city by the sea.

Did I mention I don’t speak Spanish?