TALK '10

I was reminded recently that I never really posted about how my speech/presentation went. So I'm finally getting around to it. Word up.

About an hour and a half before it started, an email went out saying the location was being changed. This was crappy because a) it didn't give ample notice, and b) it was moved from the business school to a different building, which means it was less likely that people would leave our lovely safe haven to venture elsewhere. Despite this, our turnout was decent.

My partner went first, and his speech was awesome. As I knew it would be since we practiced together.

Here is a pretty brief overview of what I talked about in each of my slides (total presentation was 20 minutes).

SLIDE 1

Thanks to Dan Mega for this awesome shirt. I talked about my middle name (which is a Hebrew word), what it means, and why I never use it (answer: because no one can pronounce it and because I go through enough strife having the same first name as a Disney princess).

SLIDE 2 (all the slides had pictures but I don't want to post pictures of my family here, seems weird)

My grandparents. Their time in Auschwitz, how a Nazi guard went out of his way to save my grandpa's life, and why being the descendant of Holocaust survivors makes me want to raise a Jewish family.

SLIDE 3

My family (and our awesome dog). How having 2 New Yorker parents and spending the first 8 years of my life in New York City made me think that NYC is the best place on Earth.

SLIDE 4

Jew school. Being the only non-orthodox family at an orthodox Jewish private school. Having half my classes taught in Hebrew, praying twice a day, and having all my friends and teachers tell me that going to public high school was going to ruin me.

SLIDE 5

High school. Why it was awesome and liberating compared to private school. How I ate my first non-kosher meal and had no idea.

SLIDE 6Tufts. Some stuff I did there (including bungee jumping in New Zealand, pictured above). How I managed to declare a second major in Judaic Studies a week before graduating, and how my JS education opened my eyes to exactly how conservative my private school education was.

SLIDE 7

Work. What it was like working for a company that no longer exists due to the financial industry meltdown. The time I ran into our (very well known) CEO in the elevator while looking like an asshole. Managing the layoffs of hundreds of people and why that sucked.

SLIDE 8

Business school. Why being in the minority as a Jew has been a learning experience. Why I'm always fascinated by what other religions and cultures do. Some times that I was unfamiliar with what was going on, like going to my first Catholic mass and why I thought I had to make out with everyone at the end. Conclusion.

That's it! It was a really great experience both getting to share this with my classmates, and getting to reflect upon the parts of my life that I hardly ever think about anymore. Good times indeed.

6 days!

I'm blogging again! Immediately! This is crazy.

The email announcing my speech went out yesterday! We had a last minute snafu because apparently the room that was booked for our talk got double booked and given to someone else, but I think the new room and time will make it so that more people come. They better, I'm putting an assload of work into this shizzle.

Here's the announcement!


Class of 2010,

The next edition of TALK '10 will feature ~my classmate who probably doesn't want his name all over my blog so I'll just refer to him as "Bob."~ '10 and Arielle ~my last name which probably all of you know anyway~ '10. (Does anyone notice how much they really like to emphasize that we're graduating in 2010?)

Date: Wednesday, October 14th
Time: 5pm - 6pm
Location: ~the name of a building at my school which I decided to take out even though it wouldn't really give away where I go to school, which is funny since I am horrendously open about where I went to undergrad but grad school is TOP SECRET~

A brief description of their talks are listed below.
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This Is What Happens When East Meets West
Bob on how being raised nothing meant everything


I'll explain how a Muslim hillbilly from the Himalayas and a catholic Midwesterner from Cleveland came together to raise 3 god-fearing damned-to-hell infidels who know where they come from even if that place doesn't actually exist. Then I'll explain how it all applies to the ~insert school name here~ MBA Class of 2010.


My life as a "Chosen Person"
Arielle on temple, Torah, and Tufts University (see? undergrad. GO JUMBOS!)


From my first unkosher meal at age 13 to accidentally majoring in Judaic Studies in college, the trajectory of my Jewish life has been simultaneously rewarding and confusing. I will share some of my grandparents' stories from the Holocaust concentration camps, and talk about what it was like being the only partially-observant family at a strict orthodox Jewish private school. On an unrelated note, I will also discuss my time at ~now bankrupt financial services company~, laying off hundreds of people at the ripe young age of 24, and my one encounter with CEO ~name of the CEO who most people know of now~.

So, that's out there. I still have some work to do on my slides and I need to practice to make sure I'm within the 20 minute time frame, but I think this talk is going to kick ass. Booyah.

Arielle, this is your life!

One of the best parts of my program is a speaker series called TALK '10 (I graduate in 2010, yo) that one of my classmates started last year. Every few weeks, 2 classmates will give 20 minute talks about their lives, with some PowerPoint slides of pictures up in the background. After that, there's 20 minutes for Q&A. Attendance isn't mandatory, but each talk gets a decent turnout from fellow students and a few faculty. It's been pretty amazing listening to my classmates tell their stories, as everyone who's gone so far has had really great things to say.

The pairings have always been sort of theme based. We started off with 2 people who had started their own businesses, moved on to 2 military stories (this talk was f'ing INCREDIBLE), and finished out last year with 2 tales of working in Washington. The first talk this year was by 2 international students who told stories from back home and what differences they faced when they came here.

The next talk is on October 14th, and is more ethnicity/culture based. One of my classmates will talk about what it was like growing up half-Persian in a supremely white area. He is paired with...ME. ACK.

My talk will be focused on telling my grandparents' stories from the concentration camps, being the only not-super-religious family at an orthodox Jewish private school, and other fun things like how I accidentally majored in Judaic Studies in college (for those of you who read my other story recently...it's a lot of overlap with that). And even though it's not related, I'm going to talk about my 3 years working in NYC because being a veteran of a no-longer-existing investment bank is pretty cool.

I'm pretty excited to give this talk, and opening emails from my mom with lots of pictures from my childhood and organizing them in PowerPoint has been great. But on the other hand, I'm pretty nervous. I'm pretty sure my life has not been nearly as interesting as the lives of many of my classmates, and I don't want people to come away from my talk thinking it sucked and that I was a bad choice. I also imagine that a lot of people will come primarily to listen to the guy I'm speaking with (people definitely have strong opinions as to who they think is fascinating enough to listen to for 20 minutes and they voice them openly whenever a discussion of who should be picked for TALK '10 comes up. I probably fall into the category of "not interesting enough"). So I feel like I have to impress those people.

I will probably post about it again as the talk approaches, and I'll let everyone know how it goes. The email announcing the talk hasn't come out yet, and I'm sort of curious to see if anyone asks me about it before the event happens.

But in the meantime, I will keep putting my slides together, reminiscing about my childhood, and thinking of what stories to tell to fill my 20 minutes.