Daily Snippet

Good evening from the halls of Bentley Dormitory on the campus of Lees-McRae College. Just chilling here this evening, watching some basketball, and relaxing from a busy academic and athletic day. Began around 7:30 this morning with a rather sluggish and begrudgingly rise out of bed after a restless night of sleep. Had another uneventful, bland breakfast this morning. Some french toast, eggs, OJ and something else that does not really stand out in my mind. Same types of breakfasts I have had over the last 4 years, while sometimes it is the best meal of the day at McDonald Dining Hall, it has never changed and always makes me long for something more.

Academics began with Business Ethics which consists of a student teaching and leading a discussion on the WorldCom/MCI accounting fraud that occurred a few years ago. Basically they were putting their expenses and assets in places that they should not be, creating a false sense of how well the company is actually doing. The CEO Bernard Ebbers tried to play off him self as a folksy, good ole boy from Mississippi who would wear cowboy boots and jeans to work. Interesting in how he kept trying to sell the company even after it was down to nearly $2 a share after peaking around $60. He said if it were up to him he would gamble on WorldCom. Really you would? This was a man who would spend millions and millions of dollars on yachts, multiple houses with large tracts of land. These were all backed by loans and stock options, which is OK if the stock is high, but very risky when stocks get low. He was basically a greedy SOB, who loved to micromanage, even charging his own employees to drink coffee from the coffee machines owned at their business, and is currently serving a 25 year sentence for securities fraud which will put him in jail until he is 88 years old.

After this class, I had about an hour and a half to chill while preparing for my 11 o'clock class. Spent this time listening to some tunes, surfing the net, catching up on the latest gossip, and doing some prep work for a role play in Professional Selling. This particular role play included a 3 person group where one person was the observer, one person was the buyer and one person was the seller. This was the second time we had done this in this class. Each person has to play each role. The seller was trying to solve a problem where the buyer's company had a leakage in their fertilizer and the seller had to make sure it was taken care of and also had to sell them a new product based on the needs of the buyer. As the seller you had to pay close attention and actively listen by asking the right questions to find out what the buyer was looking for. It was important to establish good dialogue and see if you can sell a new product or service to them. I came up with the service of actually laying down the fertilizer at their place of business based upon the dialogue we had established.

After this I ate some ham, mashed potatoes, peas, and peaches for another stellar, bathroom calling meal in the cafeteria. 1pm saw the departure to Johnson City for a small track meet hosted by Milligan College. I, along with the rest of my teammates competed in a 1500m duel, where times were unspectacular but competition was fierce. After that saw 5 guys off to do battle in the 3000m. Again competition was solid, and bragging rights were determined. 800m was not fast, but those competing, competed pretty well for the most part. The highlight to me was seeing Brad Tanis run a 1:58 800m after never having ran it before in his track career. All in all a good preview of things to come as we wind on down the road of track season. That's all I got for now. I hope you enjoyed this snippet into my daily life activities. Good night.

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