June 2024 + College Visits #4 & 5

On the run every week this month.
Brandi and I got our strawberry picking in earlier this year because of the heat, but the berries were not as impressive.
Nick and I traveled down to Cincinnati to see Noah for his HS graduation. High points of the trip were a stop at the Air Force Museum in Dayton (not our first time) and their D-Day movie which was cool, and a new pizza joint down a country road. He humored me with an evening ballgame of Dayton Dragons v Lansing Lugnuts. No downside to this trip... except maybe for Nick using all the towels in the hotel.

Pool opened this year on June 12, we had a good Wednesday morning with no wind. Nick's notes and photos matter now, as Grandpa is about done with this exercise after 53 years, next year I suspect we'll be opening it on our own. I did get a good video of me cleaning the cover like Brandi's rug guy on YouTube.

Our fourth college visit was Western Michigan in Kalamazoo. This school has moved into a solid second-place spot on Nick's list, with an impressive engineering facility nearby main campus. It was a bit of a drive through Ann Arbor traffic, and early in the morning, but the campus is nicer than the other MAC schools, more impressive than I expected. We had a good tour guide, and seeing the dyno was the highlight. We took the back roads home past Devil's Lake, which isn't as rural as it once was, with dinner in Blissfield at Lena's. This school will be a little tougher commute, but the program is solid for what he wants.

There was a fifth stop at University of Dayton, which I didn't attend, but Brandi and Nick came away unimpressed.  True to the Catholic tradition, this college is the only one that required visitors to pay for a tour.  The church never misses a chance to take in a buck.

Flikr photos here.

OBW Company E

I enrolled Nick in a week-long college 'camp' named Ohio Business Week, while despite having been around 35 years, I had to check and make sure it wasn't a scam.  SFS mentioned it, but no record of alumni attending (although one kid was there that Nick knew when we arrived as an associate, Connor.) I'd hoped a week in a dorm away from home, and with 120 other HS seniors, would be good for him.  The results are better than anticipated.

Dropping him off, the whole operation looked sub-optimal, and a bit poorly organized.  I was hoping he'd connect with the tall blonde girl in front of us, but told him to at least make friends with some smart Asian kids if he wanted to win (seems smarmy on the surface but I wasn't far off from the reality). After sending his bags up to his dorm room, he marched off to his first session of the first day, no need for an escort from his mother.  He was relatively quiet for the first couple of days, but sent a few texts, like, "Not to sound like a bad person, but I'm in the same dorm as an <odd guy> or something, I have zero idea how to react, feels like I'm in a David Attenborough documentary."  That kid's name was Sam, and by the end of the week, they were solid roommates, who had spent hours comparing stories and notes, and a key reason Nick concluded dorm living isn't so bad. (Helped that they had A/C, it was 95 degrees here all week.)

By day two, he responded, "The product my company chose is the hardest to market, I hate where we are going, it's an over-complicated electronic pillbox."  He had other ideas, and sketches, around lubricating oil products and power-assisted hedge clippers, but the team decided, and he committed to the plan. He'd also concluded by this point their cafeteria pizza was the only edible food, and breakfast was irrelevant since he slept thru it anyway (once).

It was day three when he felt the momentum, and called me (not text) with an update. They had elected an Indian girl as CEO and he loved her (he didn't want a title for himself, "I just do what she tells me, it works better").  He'd been assigned all the visuals, creating hand sketches of the product and all of their materials, and created the product mock-ups in PowerPoint for their presentations. Later I learned the presentation boards were mostly his content, which I could tell from his notes. He'd found his place in the company, and was thriving.

Later on we'd heard stories of how the other ten companies had battles within their teams, were up late arguing, struggled to come to decisions. (They had some good-looking CEOs, apparently from some privileges households... didn't matter.  Nice lesson here.)  Nick told us they had no such issues inside his Company E, which is probably a contributor to their success.  Their biggest distraction were two teenagers that had the hots for each other inside the team, which Nick pointed out during the closing presentation, 'Couldn't you tell Victoria wasn't wearing a bra to get his attention?"

On Friday evening Brandi and I attended the closing ceremony, where several categorical awards were presented, and the organizers acted like an over-hyped rally. Despite the awkwardness from the outside looking in (today's society values some things that are just cringe moments for us older folks), the kids clearly committed to the week and learned alot.  Sitting there hearing Nick's company win Best Digital Ad and Best Marketing Materials, along with best cheer (where Nick was in street clothes when everyone else was in suits, because, he did 'the worm' on stage), we trudged along anxious for the exit.  Then his company won Best Overall, based on peer voting, and while I wouldn't have predicted it, I see it now.  Ask Nick what he was presented as recognition, and he'll tell you 'a block of wood', which was a nice plaque. But true to Nick, the minute it was over, we hustled for the door, pictures unnecessary, and were the first car to his bags and off campus in a hurry.  This will be a great memory for him, and a great resume builder.  Did he get the contact info of any of the other kids so they can stay in touch?  Nope.