Cambridge Trip
A few weeks ago, I journeyed to Cambridge, MA for a three-day stint at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Summer Institute, where a recent paper of mine (and coauthors) was accepted at the Corporate Finance session. Thus far, getting a paper into the conference has been the highlight of my career. NBER is basically the cream of the economics crop, and it's attended by the best and brightest in the field.
My two coauthors are rock star economists. I am not, so I was thrilled to have a paper accepted. Even more awesome is that NBER paid for accepted authors' trips. So I got a flight and a great hotel room without having to submit reimbursements.
The bad part was that the conference was July 7-9, and I had a W.T. Grant Scholars application due on July 8th. Which of course wasn't finished yet. I was freaking. The application is 20 pages long...single spaced...and I maybe had 7-8 pages written by the morning of July 7th. I also had some sort of flu, which resulted in terrible things happening to my innards the whole time I was there.
On the morning of July 7th, I woke up after getting about 2 hours of sleep. A shuttle took me to the Indianapolis airport, and I flew to Cambridge. I hadn't bothered to pack a sweater. I lived in Cambridge one summer and it was hot the entire time. But as the plane landed...oops! I looked out the window. It was freezing and rainy.
I grabbed a cab to the hotel, showered, changed, and showed up at my session. I was so excited to see how our paper was going to be received. Wei did an awesome job presenting the paper. Our discussant was David Scharfstein, a huge mucky-muck at Harvard Business School and in the world of corporate finance. He said our data set (my data set, that I collected!) was amazing. And his only complaint was that our paper had too much information. He suggested we split it into two separate papers, and submit both to journals. Woo hoo! That discussion was pretty much the apex of my career so far.
At any rate, I sadly had to return to my hotel room to hammer out the grant proposal, missing the subsequent sessions. I had to turn the proposal in the next day...and two of my references still hadn't uploaded their letters of recommendation. I started stressing.
I ordered room service maybe 7-8 times in the next 26 hours, never leaving the room. I planted myself in my chair, save for allowing myself about 4 or 5 hours of sleep. It was crank time.
At one point, I ordered 4 Diet Cokes to be brought to the room. The room service folks asked how many glasses I would need. I was like, "Just one. I will be drinking them all myself."
Somewhere around midnight, my former adviser Susanna informed me that she was not done with her reference letter because her daughter contracted swine flu. Seriously. But in true Susanna form, she promised to finish the letter on time, despite the fact that (and I quote from her email) she now had to deal with "Mari [her other daughter], 4 chickens, a guinea pig, a dog, a parakeet, and about 1000 meetings to cancel over the next 10 days."
I felt terrible! I mean, what do you say to that? "Sorry to hear about that, but can you focus on me as much as possible right now?!?!"
By 5 p.m. on the 8th (after being in my room for like 26 hours straight), I started to hit the wall. I needed a break. I had maybe a few hours left of cleanup on my paper, which was due at midnight. Besides, NBER was hosting a clambake at the Harvard Faculty Club and was paying for me to go. How could I possibly turn down something that fabulous sounding? I figured it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Daphna informed me via Gchat that I was allowed to attend, as long as I got back to my hotel by 8 p.m. I boarded the shuttle and arrived at this opulent state of affairs:
The scene inside the banquet hall was pure ridiculousness. I am talking gigantic silver urns, spilling over with clams and whole lobster. I helped myself:
I was afraid I wouldn't have fun because I didn't know anyone. But I introduced myself to a table of economists and proceeded to have a rolicking conversation for the next 90 minutes.
The dude in the middle, Greg Brown, is the chair of the Finance Department in the Business School at UNC Chapel Hill and invited me to come give a talk. Cool!
I also networked like crazy, and by the end of the night, I had repeatedly fist-bumped Amit Seru a la Barack and Michelle.
I excused myself at 7:30 sharp and arrived back at the hotel at 7:57 p.m. The dinner was just what I needed to re-focus and turn the freaking grant application in.
I logged into the system. A new message appeared on the screen:
ALL APPLICATIONS ARE DUE AT 8 P.M. EST
OMG. Pure panic set in. That message wasn't there before I left for dinner. And in fact, I'd emailed the Foundation before and asked about whether the applications were due at a particular time, stating that if I didn't hear back, I'd assume midnight EST.
I know, I know. Spare me the lecture on planning ahead (I can already visualize the worried frown on Prof. Imazeki's forehead).
At 8:05 the system sent me a message that Susanna just uploaded her letter. Then Susanna sent me an email that she was worried it wasn't uploaded in time.
At 8:07 I sent an email to the program administrator, saying I'd have everything in by midnight, and was that okay, considering I'd already emailed about the time and hadn't heard a response?
At 8:30 the program administrator emailed me back (miraculously), saying it was fine. Whew.
I got to work. Then I realized I had a lot more to do than anticipated.
Like: The Foundation wanted a six page abstract. WTF. I was so mad I hadn't looked through the "abstract" requirements earlier. I'd just assumed they wanted an actual abstract, not a freaking dissertation.
At 11:57 p.m., Daphna IM'd me: Pal?
Me: Nooooooo
I was sweating. I pressed "Submit" at 11:59 p.m. It was in. I believe this is the point where I burst into hysterical giggling.
I called Daphna. She was like, "Um, I feel you are taking this whole procrastination thing to a whole new level. If I IM you at 11:57 and it's still not in...that might be a problem."
I was giddy. I spent the next few hours calling friends on the West Coast. I felt like celebrating. The adrenaline rush lasted until 2 a.m., when I crashed. Hard.
The next morning, I woke up feeling hungover. I was still sick, but was off to meet an old friend for breakfast at Henrietta's Table. Who was I meeting? My dear old friend Peter Coles. He was a partner in crime in graduate school. We bonded over our mutual love for Chienyo and shared many shenanigans. He was also involved in an incident in which he sortamaybe got kicked out of my sister's car on the night of her graduation...and we left him on the side of the road in West Hollywood...at like 2 a.m....at which point he was forced to take a very expensive cab ride back to my parents' house in Altadena....but I digress. Now Peter is a fancy pants professor at Harvard Business School, is doing great, and has met the love of his life!
I would also like to point out that, thankfully, Peter has not turned into a d-bag. When I walked into the restaurant, I noticed a lot of power-lunchers in suits. I got nervous. Was good old Peter one of these people?
I should not have feared. Peter walked in late as usual, in a grey hoodie, carrying his broken bike lock. I was so happy to see him! And have these eggs benedict (much better than the three other eggs benedicts I'd ordered from room service in the last, oh, day):
We had a riotous lunch. Peter amuses to no end, in large part because of his huge enthusiasm for...well, just about anything!
After breakfast, I hopped back on a plane. Ahhhh. Two days...the first two EVER away from Saya. Like a flash in the pan.
My two coauthors are rock star economists. I am not, so I was thrilled to have a paper accepted. Even more awesome is that NBER paid for accepted authors' trips. So I got a flight and a great hotel room without having to submit reimbursements.
The bad part was that the conference was July 7-9, and I had a W.T. Grant Scholars application due on July 8th. Which of course wasn't finished yet. I was freaking. The application is 20 pages long...single spaced...and I maybe had 7-8 pages written by the morning of July 7th. I also had some sort of flu, which resulted in terrible things happening to my innards the whole time I was there.
On the morning of July 7th, I woke up after getting about 2 hours of sleep. A shuttle took me to the Indianapolis airport, and I flew to Cambridge. I hadn't bothered to pack a sweater. I lived in Cambridge one summer and it was hot the entire time. But as the plane landed...oops! I looked out the window. It was freezing and rainy.
I grabbed a cab to the hotel, showered, changed, and showed up at my session. I was so excited to see how our paper was going to be received. Wei did an awesome job presenting the paper. Our discussant was David Scharfstein, a huge mucky-muck at Harvard Business School and in the world of corporate finance. He said our data set (my data set, that I collected!) was amazing. And his only complaint was that our paper had too much information. He suggested we split it into two separate papers, and submit both to journals. Woo hoo! That discussion was pretty much the apex of my career so far.
At any rate, I sadly had to return to my hotel room to hammer out the grant proposal, missing the subsequent sessions. I had to turn the proposal in the next day...and two of my references still hadn't uploaded their letters of recommendation. I started stressing.
I ordered room service maybe 7-8 times in the next 26 hours, never leaving the room. I planted myself in my chair, save for allowing myself about 4 or 5 hours of sleep. It was crank time.
At one point, I ordered 4 Diet Cokes to be brought to the room. The room service folks asked how many glasses I would need. I was like, "Just one. I will be drinking them all myself."
Somewhere around midnight, my former adviser Susanna informed me that she was not done with her reference letter because her daughter contracted swine flu. Seriously. But in true Susanna form, she promised to finish the letter on time, despite the fact that (and I quote from her email) she now had to deal with "Mari [her other daughter], 4 chickens, a guinea pig, a dog, a parakeet, and about 1000 meetings to cancel over the next 10 days."
I felt terrible! I mean, what do you say to that? "Sorry to hear about that, but can you focus on me as much as possible right now?!?!"
By 5 p.m. on the 8th (after being in my room for like 26 hours straight), I started to hit the wall. I needed a break. I had maybe a few hours left of cleanup on my paper, which was due at midnight. Besides, NBER was hosting a clambake at the Harvard Faculty Club and was paying for me to go. How could I possibly turn down something that fabulous sounding? I figured it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Daphna informed me via Gchat that I was allowed to attend, as long as I got back to my hotel by 8 p.m. I boarded the shuttle and arrived at this opulent state of affairs:
The scene inside the banquet hall was pure ridiculousness. I am talking gigantic silver urns, spilling over with clams and whole lobster. I helped myself:
I was afraid I wouldn't have fun because I didn't know anyone. But I introduced myself to a table of economists and proceeded to have a rolicking conversation for the next 90 minutes.
The dude in the middle, Greg Brown, is the chair of the Finance Department in the Business School at UNC Chapel Hill and invited me to come give a talk. Cool!
I also networked like crazy, and by the end of the night, I had repeatedly fist-bumped Amit Seru a la Barack and Michelle.
I excused myself at 7:30 sharp and arrived back at the hotel at 7:57 p.m. The dinner was just what I needed to re-focus and turn the freaking grant application in.
I logged into the system. A new message appeared on the screen:
ALL APPLICATIONS ARE DUE AT 8 P.M. EST
OMG. Pure panic set in. That message wasn't there before I left for dinner. And in fact, I'd emailed the Foundation before and asked about whether the applications were due at a particular time, stating that if I didn't hear back, I'd assume midnight EST.
I know, I know. Spare me the lecture on planning ahead (I can already visualize the worried frown on Prof. Imazeki's forehead).
At 8:05 the system sent me a message that Susanna just uploaded her letter. Then Susanna sent me an email that she was worried it wasn't uploaded in time.
At 8:07 I sent an email to the program administrator, saying I'd have everything in by midnight, and was that okay, considering I'd already emailed about the time and hadn't heard a response?
At 8:30 the program administrator emailed me back (miraculously), saying it was fine. Whew.
I got to work. Then I realized I had a lot more to do than anticipated.
Like: The Foundation wanted a six page abstract. WTF. I was so mad I hadn't looked through the "abstract" requirements earlier. I'd just assumed they wanted an actual abstract, not a freaking dissertation.
At 11:57 p.m., Daphna IM'd me: Pal?
Me: Nooooooo
I was sweating. I pressed "Submit" at 11:59 p.m. It was in. I believe this is the point where I burst into hysterical giggling.
I called Daphna. She was like, "Um, I feel you are taking this whole procrastination thing to a whole new level. If I IM you at 11:57 and it's still not in...that might be a problem."
I was giddy. I spent the next few hours calling friends on the West Coast. I felt like celebrating. The adrenaline rush lasted until 2 a.m., when I crashed. Hard.
The next morning, I woke up feeling hungover. I was still sick, but was off to meet an old friend for breakfast at Henrietta's Table. Who was I meeting? My dear old friend Peter Coles. He was a partner in crime in graduate school. We bonded over our mutual love for Chienyo and shared many shenanigans. He was also involved in an incident in which he sortamaybe got kicked out of my sister's car on the night of her graduation...and we left him on the side of the road in West Hollywood...at like 2 a.m....at which point he was forced to take a very expensive cab ride back to my parents' house in Altadena....but I digress. Now Peter is a fancy pants professor at Harvard Business School, is doing great, and has met the love of his life!
I would also like to point out that, thankfully, Peter has not turned into a d-bag. When I walked into the restaurant, I noticed a lot of power-lunchers in suits. I got nervous. Was good old Peter one of these people?
I should not have feared. Peter walked in late as usual, in a grey hoodie, carrying his broken bike lock. I was so happy to see him! And have these eggs benedict (much better than the three other eggs benedicts I'd ordered from room service in the last, oh, day):
We had a riotous lunch. Peter amuses to no end, in large part because of his huge enthusiasm for...well, just about anything!
After breakfast, I hopped back on a plane. Ahhhh. Two days...the first two EVER away from Saya. Like a flash in the pan.
Uh. May. Zing.
There's nothing more I can say.
Posted by
Mishy |
July 21, 2009 at 7:54 PM
Ashlyn, your working habits are as much a mystery to me as I'm sure mine are to you but damn, yours make for such better stories! :-)
Posted by
Jennifer Imazeki |
July 22, 2009 at 7:56 AM
Now it's my turn to procrastinate. I'm catching up on my friends' blogs and scanned through this from, oh, a month ago. But I had to tell you that Greg Brown was my macroeconomics professor at b-school at UNC Chapel Hill! He won't know me from Adam, but you should still follow-up on that teaching offer!
Posted by
Karen |
August 24, 2009 at 10:15 PM