Sharon Update - Fall

(Don't feel guilty for skimming! This has turned into a detaily journal entry type rambling)

Phew,
Pittsburgh is getting chilly. I'm sitting on the floor by our space heater with a scarf on. I've finally broken out my winter coat, which surprisingly still fits!

Today is a very laid back plan C: grocery shop, clean, carve pumpkins. Plan A was the temple, but the water pipes broke, and plan B was to visit Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Waters and check out beautiful changing leaves, but we're expecting rain and maybe snow.

The past couple of weeks have been really great, with lots of blessings included.
* Anthony's been handling the stress of applying and interviewing for jobs very well. He turned down a second interview with Deutsche Bank to have first interviews with IBM and GE. He felt really good about his IBM interview, which selfishly made me a bit nervous since they warn that the job could potentially include travel 100% of the time. But!.. he's heard back from GE, has had a second screening interview with them, and will be flown to Connecticut for a third interview in early November. Yay! We're accepting prayers.
* Anthony's also been handling school stress well. I came home from work the other day to find all the laundry done and folded, and if he happens to be home, he tries to have dinner on by the time I get home. I married such a hunk.
* Prego: I'm feeling really good and getting big. I bought a couple of maternity dresses last week which helps me feel less frumpy. My energy level has been pretty good and yesterday I had another appointment with my midwife. He is so cool!, and answered all my many questions just as I was hoping he would.
* Work is going pretty well. We had performance reviews, and I got a raise! I wasn't expecting it in the least since I just made the transition to salary, and thought that would be considered a raise. Every little bit helps. One of my co-workers was...released?...fired? No-one really knows. But it's made this week a little stressful with a more difficult teacher to student ratio. I've kind of given up the hope of getting off work on time, but it's o.k. Coming up with lesson plans has been taking a lot of time, but it's pretty fun, and I figure I can keep all my ideas on file for fun family activities. Last week was "Staying Healthy" week. Ruben, my kids loved the Oral Hygiene song. I taught them the chorus, and then we danced around in a congo line.
* Church: we're staying busy as usual with our callings and are feeding the missionaries tomorrow. Hopefully we'll be able to get some of our recent convert friends over as well.
* Fun: Last week we finally made it to the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh's contemporary art museum. It was sweet! Very refreshing and thought provoking. It's been a while since I've immersed myself in modern art. It made me think of fun days as a security guard at BYU's museum of art. (Joan and Lynne, which reminds me. Shawn and Amy Moon who you worked with there, and married each other...are in our ward. Sheesh, it's taking me a year to remember to tell you that!)

Last night we went out for a date. Which was really fun, since we've been so tired, most of our dates have consisted of grocery shopping, watching a movie at home, or babysitting for other people. We went to a cool restaurant called The Bangkok Balcony, and then Coldstone for dessert. I have to brag about our concoctions for a second just incase you are planning a trip to Cold Stone any time soon. 1: Pumpkin mixed with Cheesecake icecream with white chocolate, grahm cracker, and pecan mix-ins. 2: Fudge brownie batter ice cream with snickers, reeses pb cup, heath bar, and snickers. Woah. That may have been gilding the lily a bit, but how can you go wrong with gilding chocolate with more chocolate? Anyway, it was fun to dress up in jewelry and a little makeup....and apparently on rainy Friday nights, everyone else is staying in, which makes for quick service.

Alright. Love you guys!!!! We love you all, and think of you every day.
Sharon

Case Challenge

This weekend I was able to be a part of a really fun competition. One of the large consulting firms sponsored a case challenge competition at the Heinz College. This post is all about how the competition worked and how the team I was on did. I’ve written a lengthy reflection here, so if you just want to know how we did you can jump to the end.
The competition worked like this.

Thursday evening at about 6:00pm they issued the case. Teams have a little more than 36 hours to go through the case, figure out how they will approach it, and come up with a solution.
Saturday morning at 8:00 am teams must turn in electronic copy of their PowerPoint presentation that will be used for presenting to the judges.
Teams a randomly split up into 5 rooms, 5 teams each room. One at a time each team presents to a panel of judges (who were role playing people in the case), no other teams are present. The team has 20 minutes to present their solution and 10 minutes to answer questions, and defend their solution. This lasts until about noon Saturday.

After lunch, the 'Top 5' is announced, which is the best team from each room. Those teams receive a 'twist’ or new development in the scenario and had one hour to adjust their solution and presentation.
Each 'Top 5' team then presents their adapted solution to a new panel of judges, answers questions, and defends their new solution with the same time restrictions as the first round. Eliminated teams, and other top 5 teams who have already presented their solution can sit in on the presentation, but can't ask questions.

Finally, they pick the best team.

At each stage the team is evaluated on how they approached the problem, the solution, the presentation (the actual PowerPoint slides), presentation skills, and their ability and skill at answering questions and defending their choices.

This makes for a long 48 hours if you go all the way through the competition. The environment is very competitive as everyone is motivated by the prestige of winning a competition sponsored and judged by a high end consulting firm and also the lucrative prize of $500/team member for first place; $250/team member for second; $150/team member for third place, and a bunch of nice prizes for the fourth and fifth team.

They only accept 25 teams, each team with 4 members, into the competition. It is surprisingly difficult to get in because of the aforementioned incentives.

I was approached by one of my Indian friends to be a part of the team he was putting together. I was hesitant to accept since it was conference weekend. However, he is a great guy and we work well together, but don't have the chance to do so very often (we tried doing a coding competition last year that did not end up going so well). I also wanted the experience so I accepted. The other two team members I had never met before Thursday night. They were both great guys and we are all great friends now. We were one of the lucky teams that got in.

The case was a real life problem the firm had worked on with a few of the details changed. It involved a terrorist attack in the United States and the setting up of a new government agency. We were tasked with outlining and creating the plan to get the organization up and running quickly and efficiently taking into account a bunch of small details.

We didn't take the all nighter approach. Both nights we were done by about 11:00pm. We put in a lot of intense hours on Friday, but by 10:00 pm we were pretty much done. Saturday morning we made a few tweaks and turned it in. We were the last group to present in our room and weren't sure what to expect, they didn't have too many difficult questions for us.

We made the 'Top 5'. The hour we had to work on the twist was probably one of the fastest hours I have experienced in a long time, but our first solution was set up well for the twist so we felt good about our adapted solution. We were second to last to present, so the 3 other teams before us and a few other students were in on our presentation.

It was going well, until I got up to present my part. I was talking and suddenly my train of thought was interrupted mid-sentence and I lost what I was about to say. There was an awkward silence in the room. My mind switched to crisis mode, what was I trying to say, why couldn't I think of it. I glanced up at the slide behind me to try and get my thought back, no luck. Thoughts like, 'oh, no! I blew it for the team', and 'I can't believe this just happened' started going through my mind. I was able to keep my anxiety down and stay calm, and eventually started talking again picking up on the last point I remembered talking about, suddenly I remembered what I was going to say. I was so relieved. Even with my pause, which probably wasn't as long it felt, we finished in our 20 min. limit.

Naturally, the second round of judges had tougher questions and was a little more aggressive. We had prepared ourselves well and we all participated in the Q&A.

We had to sit through one presentation then wait for about 30 minutes while the judges debated the rankings. They then presented the solution the firm used on the actually engagement, which was much more detailed and comprehensive than what any of us had come up with.

They announced the winners from 5th to 1st. After the 5th and 4th positions were announced and our team hadn't been announced, we all looked at each other surprised. 3rd, still not us, my mind was going crazy and my heart starting to beat. 2nd, another team, we looked at each other with awe. 1st place... The Jaguars, our team.

Wow. What a rush and how exciting. None of us could believe it. The craziest thing about it all, and this would be true even if we hadn't won, I kind of liked the whole process and really enjoyed doing it.

Some thoughts I had. It really seemed to be more about how you thought about the problem and how you were able to present that, rather than what you came up with. I guess that’s how it is in the real world. It doesn't matter if you have the best solution in the world, if you can’t communicate it people won’t appreciate it and accept it, it won't get anywhere.

Caterpillars, crime and kicking - Sharon Update

Hi Family!
Happy Conference weekend!

*Work has been going really well. The week on Greek mythology turned out really fun. We counted how many snakes are on Medusa's head, and made cyclops eyes to wear on our foreheads. No parents have complained about nightmares...so that's a good thing. Next week is going to be based on The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which I wasn't to pumped about after 4 weeks of world-culturish type lessons. But now that I have it all together I'm really excited. We'll talk about butterfly life cycles and make antennas to wear as we fly around the room. We have a couple of new students from the toddler room...un-potty trained. Ah, preparation for parenthood. I'm also trying to help train a new assistant, who seems really cool, accept for when it feels I'm trying to do one on one projects, take kids to the potty, and resolve conflicts between 14 kids all at the same time. A conversation this week concluded that, if you see the autistic after-schooler kicking me in the stomach, that would be a good time to step in.

*School: Anthony seems to be doing really well. He's spending the weekend working on this Deloite competition with a group. It sounds challenging and fun.

*Job interviews: He's had a few set up, and it's weird to think how soon this transition from school to real life career will happen. Where will the wind take us?

*Fun: Last night I went with a friend from work to see a performance of Crime and Punishment. Wow! It's like 2 hours of punishment, with a few minutes of crime. It was very very well done with a small cast of 3, and brings up interesting insights on sin and repentance. This friend works in theater and has been really nice to get me (and Ant, accept this time) into 3-4 different plays for free. She's fun to hang out with, because religion in general is totally foreign to her. So she always has really fun questions about the church, the Word of Wisdom and Law of Chastity. Today, I'll go to a birthday party of one of my students in between sessions of conference. I'll be shocked if it's not Spiderman or Batman themed.

*Pregnancy: Woah, I'm getting fat. :) I can still fit into all of my pants...which I buy baggy to begin with. But on Sunday I realized that it's time to look beyond my closet for church clothes. I have a cool V.T. companion that lent me some cute clothes, so I'm good to go for another couple weeks. I'm thinking about being a pear for Halloween. It's been really fun to feel the baby kick. And I'm generally feeling really really well, accept for not wanting to wake up in the morning.

So that's life. We love you guys and hope all is well!
Sharon