How am I busier on the weekends than I am during the week?

No really, how? It amazes me what I can get myself into...

Friday we spent all day at school in a professional development course on Access. I've used it before, but I don't work with it on a normal basis, so some additional foundation was helpful. This particular class was just the "beginner" level - we'll move on to "intermediate" next month. That's when it really starts to become useful. It wasn't a bad class, though, I did learn a few new things that I can put into practice at work. It did, however, make for a long day. That evening I did some prep for the insanity that I knew would be Saturday, and that prep work on top of spending an evening playing catch-up with several friends resulted in minimal sleep. That was probably not the best plan.

I got up at 5 am (no I'm not kidding) on Saturday morning. I needed to finish a few things up at home before heading to campus. If I haven't mentioned it before, I act as an advisor for an on campus student organization that focuses on community service. They work closely with the scouting community, and on Saturday, they hosted a HUGE event (with over 900 scouts in attendance). The scouts come to campus for a day and take merit badge classes - it's a super fun event for them...and a super stressful event for us. The group has been planning the details for about a year now (they start on next year's event next week). I showed up to help with the morning activities and spent the hours between 6 and 10 resolving several minor (and a few major) crises.

I then drove out to Rogers to attend a memorial service - not the happiest way to spend a Saturday, but when you love someone, you're there for them through happy AND sad, right? It was a nice, quite service, and we actually ended up smiling and laughing a good deal more than one would expect at such an event.

Immediately after that was over, I drove back to Fayetteville, stopped at Party City to pick up balloons and then Rick's Bakery for an order of petit fours, then headed home to straighten the house and get everything ready for the baby shower I was hosting at 2pm - the theme? The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Cute, right?

Thanks to some help from my incredible roommate and another friend, we had everything set up and ready by the time the mom-to-be arrived (thank goodness!). The shower went off without a hitch, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. The highlight was definitely the beautiful goodies by Rick's (they always do a fantastic job).

I spent the rest of the afternoon with my roommate - alternately watching a movie, cleaning up, and pretending to study for the Strategy midterm we have coming up. Sunday was mostly devoted to ACTUALLY studying, with a few meetings thrown in for good measure. I felt quite productive, despite the fact that I STILL haven't done the pile of laundry I've been saying I'll do for about a week now...hmm...

Anyway, this week should be interesting. We've had three classes "cancelled" in leiu of other activities - Finance is cancelled all week because we have a three hour meeting tonight and we don't have Retail on Wednesday so that we can have time on our own to work on our midterm. Then, on Thursday, we have the scary Strategy midterm (eeek/sigh)...

How is it midterm time already? Have we had enough class to justify that? The snow really messed with my schedule. Time is just flying - Spring Break is in two weeks and then we only have six weeks of classes left! Graduation will be here before we know it...if I can pass that Strat midterm, that is...blerg. I'll let you know how it goes. 'Til then!

I earned my white belt today!

In the Lean Six Sigma world, though...so don't worry. We spent all day in a professional development class learning the basics of lean six sigma, and what all is involved in the process. After a brief intro, we were asked to participate in a simulation.

We were all employees at Beltmart, and we each had a job, be it time keeper, customer, supervisor, truck driver, line worker, etc. Our goal was to get orders in from the customer, process them, and deliver them back to the customer, all in two minutes. The first time through, it took an average of 4:40 to deliver a completed project...and not a single one was accurate...obviously a problem.

The next several hours (i.e. the rest of the day) were spent going through the DMAIC (de-may-ic) method in order to solve the problem the six-sigma way. Just in case you are wondering, DMAIC stands for:

• Define the problem
• Measure the baseline
• Analyze the situation
• Improve the system
• Control for changes

After we'd gone through each step, we were asked to implement a new system in order to improve our process. In addition, we were split into two teams. Now, for those of you that don't know, we (well, I) are/am a bit competitive, so the "teams" made it that much more imperative that we do better (we had to win!). Well, it appears we learned SOMETHING because our team's new average time waaaaaas...18.1 seconds! (and ZERO defects in the whole bunch). Impressive, huh? Note, the other team's average time: 21.3 seconds. I believe that calls for a:

MWAHAHA!

(nope, not competitive at all)

So, what does all of this mean? Well, it means that I can put "Lean Six Sigma White Belt" on my resume and that I can now move on to training for the Yellow Belt (if I wanna keep going). But, more importantly, it further differentiates me in the applicant pool and shows that I've taken the initiative to improve my decision making abilities (yay!).

It was possibly the best PD class we've done yet (I really enjoyed it). There were pictures taken...but I don't have them. I'll add them when I find (and subsequently borrow) from those that had cameras.

In other news, it's Friday and tomorrow is the last "home" football game - against UTEP (I use the word "game" lightly). So, since I don't have to be up super early, guess what I'm doing? Blogging and watching Harry Potter while sipping a cup of hot cocoa (with french vanilla, snowman shaped marshmallows). Go ahead, be jealous. It's okay.