MFCNS Presentation & ISSA Movie Night

One of the things I absolutely love about Cornell is the countless opportunities that it offers, the innumerable ways to get involved. One of the (few) things I can't stand is the fact that I, as a human, can't possibly do all of them. I do my best though. Tonight for instance, I had about four different things to do roughly at the same time: the IS Colloquium, a talk on social networking websites, the MFCNS presentation on the causes of stress at Cornell, and the ISSA movie night. Thankfully, I was able to make it to two (and a half).

I got to hear about 15 minutes of the social networking talk, which seemed reasonably interesting, before I had to jet to the MFCNS presentation. For some clarification, MFCNS stands for the Meinig Family Cornell National Scholars. The program seeks to recognize potential campus leaders even before they get to Cornell. (Students are nominated during the admissions process.) The reason I went to the presentation was because of my work with Vice President Susan Murphy on addressing the causes of stress at Cornell. Who would have known that there was a research effort devoted to finding out just that? So they had some really good ideas and some potentially very useful suggestions. Hopefully I'll get to meet again with Susan soon to discuss the next step.

After that, which ended at 7:05, five minutes after the movie night started, I sprinted to Olin for the ISSA event. I think it went pretty well. There were definitely some things that we can learn from for the future, but I can't expect things to be perfect on the first try. The entire board is new, and we're all learning together. At our next board meeting, I'll make a point to reflect upon this event, and the lessons we can take away from it. One thing that I've learned rather quickly is that my relatively hands-off style of management doesn't work so well when the whole group is new and still needs to structure to function. It's definitely an opportunity for learning, and that makes me satisfied.