As mentioned earlier, the Women's Conference that I was asked to speak at was on Tuesday, so I volunteered to speak to some School of Business classes on Monday. My 1st class was at 9:10am, which was really 6:10am for me. But I knew that the students would probably be somewhat comatose because of the "early hour" for them and the fact it was a Monday. I was excited because the person teaching the class was one of the professors whom I really held in very high regard because he treated students like adults from the get-go. This was Dr. Ken Shaw, who always went by Ken, even when I was one of his students.
This was a sophomore level class so I knew that there was a good chance that most of the students were not in the mode of asking career-oriented questions. So I just tried to make the most of the 3 or 4 people asking questions. One student, Andy, asked a great question based on some of the work I am doing at Microsoft with regards to Unlimited Potential and how it impacts our competition with Apple (the answer is, "it doesn't", but good question). Ken tried to get more people engaged and tried to facilitate more dialogue. One student in the front, Rachel, raised a question and basically called me out for giving advice that definitely geared towards the more traditional college student (18-23 year old) as opposed to the non-traditional students. On campus, they are known as 'non-trads'.
Rachel's feedback was completely fair, and so I asked more about her background. She had served in the military for 4 years, so she is slightly older, has some more maturity than your typical student, and is also married with a 2-year old. Rachel actually had concerns around the fact that because she was "older" that recruiters wouldn't take her seriously. Maybe she was 22 or 23, 25 max, so clearly not "old". Plus she was concerned that as someone pursuing a degree in Management Accounting, recruiters would not think her time in the military was relevant experience. In my experience, that couldn't be further from the truth. I felt she might be more comfortable at the talk I was giving at the Women's Conference and invited her to come as my guest – more on that in a different post.
After class, I was talking to Ken and we were both lamenting about the fact that his seniors would have gotten more out of my experience than his sophomores. So I asked when his senior classes were, and I was free during one of them. That made for a hectic day and that café in the School of Business ended up coming in handy. J
I then had the pleasure of going to Bill Lundy's (aka Lundo or Wild Bill). I had e-mailed him prior to coming up to see if he wanted me to cover any specific topics but never heard from him. So I wasn't sure if he even remembered me. He sees me in the hallway, just lets out a huge laugh and yells, "Jill Consor!" It was hysterical. It got even funnier when he asked what his prized pupil (Lisa A.) was doing. When I told him that she was an organic farmer, he almost fell over. The best part is that the Alumni photographer happened to be taking pictures at that moment, so I can't wait to see how those turned out.
What is unfortunate is that Lundo and Spector are no longer teaching upper-level Accounting classes because of some accreditation rule that requires all of the teachers of upper level courses to have PhDs in Accounting. Huh? So if my friend, Nancy, a partner at E&Y, wanted to teach Auditing (an upper-level course) at Oswego, now she has to get a PhD? I don't get it. And the students lose out. I can say that while taking Lundo's class was super hard, it gave me a unique perspective on Accounting. What a bummer. Lundo is also retiring at the end of the calendar year. I hope he stays in touch as he was the one who made it possible for me study abroad and graduate in 4 years, which is nearly impossible to do at Oswego.
Again it was Intro Accounting, so it was sophomores and some juniors. But given my Accounting degree, I figured there might be more questions. Of course in this section, there were NO Accounting majors. But there were more students engaged and someone from the Alumni Office snapped some pictures of me talking to students, which I found to be funny. Lundo has mellowed A LOT, although all of his students still think he is crazy but I didn't see any evidence of it. Again, these kids are soft and have it easy. And for those of you who had Lundo, he still uses those overhead transparent sheets to explain concepts to the class. Some things don't change.
After that was International Business with Dr. Khan. He was not teaching at Oswego when I was there, but he was incredibly welcoming and happy that I was taking the time to talk to his students, mostly seniors and some juniors. Unfortunately we again had a handful of students asking questions, with a fair amount of the students not paying attention. I guess they have it all figured out, but that's fine. The students that are keen on getting help will seek it out. I spent a lot of time talking about my international experiences, which I consider myself so lucky to have.
Then we had my final class of the day back with Ken. It was pretty much all seniors. This was the most polarizing class in terms of extreme interest and extreme arrogance. For the latter group, I had to literally stop myself from giving these kids too much of a reality check. It is kind of hard to describe the vibe, but it was shocking and this was the class of mostly seniors! There was such a sense of entitlement in this class and this was the day that that the Dow dropped 500 points!! The other classes had some people who had a little entitlement going on, but mostly because they were underclassmen, they didn't think that career stuff affected them now. I never really believed that even when I was a student, but I can understand the perspective so it doesn't really bother me that much.
The arrogance and sense of entitlement bother me a great deal. I keep hearing it is a generational thing. I don't know. All I know is that I was disappointed in the attitudes that I saw in more students than not. Curiosity was more the exception than the norm. And these kids (the traditional students) are so micro-managed by their parents. One student has a credit card and never even heard of the term 'credit check' or 'credit report' (yes, she was from Long Island – a couple of towns away from where I grew up). When I was running later on in the day, I was trying to think about how do you make these kids feel more accountable for their own destinies? Couldn't come up with anything that could be implemented and truly effective.
But there were a handful of students that were engaging, concerned and prepared. I'm glad they were concerned because it showed me that at least they were paying attention to what is going on outside of campus. I hope those students reach out to me because they are the ones that I would be willing to help because they understand that the jobs are not going to just land on their lap. I don't know if anyone can say that a job just landed on someone's lap coming from Oswego. I mean if you had stellar grades like Lisa did, maybe? But she worked her ass off and no one begrudged her success because they knew her work ethic was second to none. Lisa was also more mature than a lot of other people at Oswego. She definitely had the big picture in mind. And now that big picture is an organic farm, which is awesome because now she gets to apply her smarts to something she is truly passionate about.
One of the interesting takeaways from that class was listening to a student named Bobby. You can tell that he was completely freaked by having too much information at his disposal on networking, interviewing, etc. Whereas I think we didn't have a lot of information at our disposal, I think some students may be overwhelmed with advice. Then of course there was the student who said he had an interview on Monday, but asked if he should prepare a resume to bring. Hmmmm.
The next day I was meeting 3 students to talk about a winery supply chain project that they were working on. Given that I am the Chief Advocate of Purple Teeth at Purple Teeth Cellars LLC, it seemed like a good idea. I was told that they were 3 hockey players, which normally wouldn't be relevant but when they introduced themselves, they were nicely dressed but one of them had a black eye from a recent game. He had a good sense of humor about it; I guess you have to as a hockey player, right?
They are basically conducting a survey of wineries in the Finger Lakes and Long Island regions to see if they can identify process improvements. An alumnus, also a former hockey player, has a supply chain management business and is thinking about expanding into winemaking supplies. The idea is that they would make recommendations, similar to what consultants do, and try and build a business out of it. So it was Brendan, Mark and Mike in the conference room. Of course, the Alumni photographer came in and said, "Pretend like I am not here". OK, sure.
They did some good analysis, but like when I was in college, they are not wine drinkers. I had to explain to them that people go into winemaking because they love the art and science of it. They love wine. They don't necessarily do it to make millions of dollars in profit, and this is especially true of their target demographic of small and independent wineries. So I had to explain to them in a non-hypocritical way that they needed to drink wine in a way that didn't involve chugging, funnels, keg stands, etc.
I give them props for taking that feedback well. I gave them some thoughts on how they learn the basics of wine without spending a ton of money, and offered to provide some help where I could. I also told them that if they are doing supply chain management work for wineries that they should see if they can volunteer on a weekend in the next couple of months because this is the time of the year where "everything is happening" with the picking, crush, de-stemming, etc. They'll be able to gain more credibility with their prospective customers if they have attempted to walk some part of the walk. I hope they do it but I know that with hockey season having 2x/day practices, it is going to be tough to fit it in. But again, they were very polite, had lots of enthusiasm, and had lots of great ideas. While it wasn't the smoothest presentation, they came prepared and asked some good questions. I left impressed.
Oh and I mentioned the lack of attendance at The Shed on the previous night to the students. They didn't have any excuses given playoff baseball and Sunday Night Football, along with the associated drink specials. A few were embarrassed and asked if I wanted to meet them there on Monday or Tuesday evening. Between dinner with the President of SUNY Oswego and my flight to NYC, I had to take a pass. That could have been interesting.
Some of you may be aware that Marc and I used to make wine under the name Purple Teeth Cellars. While we did shut it down to pursue other interests, we still value and cherish the relationships that we developed with winemakers, vineyard owners, restauranteurs, sommeliers, etc. 
Certain areas experienced devastation and the fires exacerbated an already fragile housing ecosystem in the area for residents, but businesses were definitely up and running. While we only visited a couple of wineries while we were in the area, most wineries were open for business. Same for the restaurants. We caught the end of the season of seeing colors on the vines, which was a pleasant surprise. It was actually quite picturesque in early December and the weather was perfect for a hike in the area. OK, I did squeeze in a visit to CrossFit as well [duh - have to burn off the amazing food and wine].
And while no one prompted me to post this, I'll just say that I believe that the people in Napa and in Sonoma would LOVE IT if you would consider visiting during their "off-season". When your small business is severely curtailed during the busiest season of the year, it can mean the difference between staying afloat and going under. The weather is still nicer than in most places in the US during this time of year and prices are going to be pretty reasonable to stay, to eat and to drink than during "high-season". 
