Edward Gordon
Welcome back to "My Week in ESTEEM" where students reflect upon their experiences in our program. This week's blog is brought to us by Edward Gordon, a Miami University graduate, who discusses the end of classes for the semester and the accompanying Christmas festivities.
If you’ve been following the My Week in ESTEEM thread, you’ve seen a variety of different experiences and this week was no exception. Like building a business, there is always something to do; be it work on the thesis, another venture, or simply take some time and plan something fun. This week I continued to work on my thesis project and finished up all the classes for the semester. My thesis focuses on using silk to address the massive need that is osteoarthritis and this week I worked to find more interviews to validate the proposed solution as well as finalize the third chapter: Intellectual Property of my thesis document. I also spent time this week working on two different projects for the McCloskey business plan competition. One project focuses on addressing a better way to test counterfeit drug to help protect patients and the other aims at developing a better home solar collection system to help home owners reduce their carbon footprint and lower their energy costs. The week was packed with exciting opportunities to work on my many interests (a common theme through this year’s class) but also was accompanied by many chances for fun.
On Monday, we had our last marketing class and had the chance to see the more relaxed side of our professor, Mike Kitz. During the last class, he imparted to us some words of wisdom and invited the entire class to his home for a pizza party to celebrate all that we had accomplished through the semester. A few of us also had the opportunity to listen to Professor Kitz and Felipe Pinzon, a current ESTEEM student, trade off playing guitar and singing songs. On Tuesday, the Notre Dame Men’s basketball team played Stony Brook and handed out ugly Christmas sweater t-shirts to the first 500 students. Some students took this opportunity to get some Notre Dame Christmas swag while others went to a free skate hosted by the student government to see if we could look as good as the Notre Dame Hockey has this year.
If you can’t tell, we had a bunch of fun on the ice but I don’t think any of us will be making the hockey team any time soon (we might have fallen a few times). If you think it’s impossible to have more fun than skating on the ice, I would have agreed with you had I not been a part of ESTEEM this year. On Wednesday, one student put together a group dinner and cooked everyone chicken tikka (absolutely delicious), which can only be followed up by more food on Thursday night during the ESTEEM sponsored Christmas dinner at a local restaurant. We had the chance to pass out secret Santa gifts, eat some great food and take our best shot at determining which baby picture was what ESTEEMer. You can see mine and possibly understand why meals are a memorable part of my week.
To cap off the week, most of us gathered at one house and celebrated both the Christmas spirit and the end of classes for the semester. We all dressed in our Christmas attire, played games, and just enjoyed each other’s company. We had a fire out back and shared chocolate treats as well as cookies. In perhaps homage to the entrepreneur mindset of “replicate quickly and fail quickly”, two teams put forth their best effort at building a gingerbread house in less than five minutes. Though it might not look as pretty as some, this was the house that stood the longest and took the win! (Go team Lynette!)
This week was a fun filled time that had a work hard play hard mentality. From being able to close out classes this semester to enjoying good times and great laughs, it was a successful week that showed not every moment has to be hard work but hard work does make the fun times even better. As our director David Murphy would say, “Be Excellent”!