Late Night Student Lounge Observations
Michael Gurovitsch, BBA 1
Issue date: 3/14/05 Section: Opinions
- Page 1 of 1
Space is an interesting entity. The quintessential homonym. For example, the entire crew of the Apollo 15 space mission was comprised of University of Michigan graduates. I am only writing this article because I realized late Saturday night that today's 16-page MSJ issue contained extra space. Ross students space out frequently in class.
For me, the most interesting space in the entire Ross School is the Student Lounge. My feeling can be best expressed in these two hastily thrown together haikus:
Lounge has chairs to sit
People always mingle here
Tasty salad bar
Undergrad and Grad
Cross paths in the student lounge
Free grub on Monday
Are those even Haikus? And to think I got a B in creative writing my senior year of high school. My poetic shortcomings aside, I have noticed some interesting things about the Student Lounge:
* THE STOCK TICKER: It makes me feel like I am a real Wall Street player when I can look anytime and see real time bid-ask spreads on the Yen. I suppose if I had a nice stock portfolio it would mean more to me. I often find myself in the lounge on the weekends feeling bad for Friday's NASDAQ net losers. They have to sit up on the board all weekend and face the derision of the student body. For example, kudos to Travelzoo Inc. (ticker: TZOO, in case you are interested in buying ...) for losing 7.9% of their value in one day.
* THE TELEVISIONS: Who controls these anyway? They do a good job. I am always impressed by the variety and how the powers to be successfully tune in the different televisions to Bloomberg, CNN, and FOXNEWS simultaneously. My only hope is that during March Madness (see pages 8-9 if you are not familiar with the term) all televisions are tuned to college basketball games. In fact, how about Dean Dolan spends some of that Ross donation to buy the NCAA Tournament Television Package.
* THE FOOD: I see an arbitrage opportunity for the students. Short the hot entrée and long the salads. The hot entrees are always so overpriced. I once got a small plate of some sort of cheesy pasta and it cost like $6 (that's a steal compared to the $3.50 charged for two pieces of bread and one kind of meat). The salads, on the other hand, are cheap and delicious.
* QUIT CHARGING ME 10 CENTS FOR A CUP OF HOT WATER SO I CAN BREW MY TEA THAT I BROUGHT FROM HOME. MY OUT OF STATE TUITION SHOULD COVER THIS SORT OF THING: See title. (I don't want any sassy emails telling me to bring my own cup. I tried that and I always forget to bring it home.)
* CLOTHING DISPLAY BELOW STOCK TICKER: Very nice. Clean presentation. Attractive merchandise. Apparently there is a reason why our MBA program is ranked so high in Marketing.
* MUSIC: I would like to hear some ambient music in the background. Nothing to detract from group studying. Maybe some soft jazz, classical music or nature sounds.
* MAILBOXES: Do people really use these things? I open it about once every two weeks and it's just spam. Stop it. Or don't. I actually don't care.
For me, the most interesting space in the entire Ross School is the Student Lounge. My feeling can be best expressed in these two hastily thrown together haikus:
Lounge has chairs to sit
People always mingle here
Tasty salad bar
Undergrad and Grad
Cross paths in the student lounge
Free grub on Monday
Are those even Haikus? And to think I got a B in creative writing my senior year of high school. My poetic shortcomings aside, I have noticed some interesting things about the Student Lounge:
* THE STOCK TICKER: It makes me feel like I am a real Wall Street player when I can look anytime and see real time bid-ask spreads on the Yen. I suppose if I had a nice stock portfolio it would mean more to me. I often find myself in the lounge on the weekends feeling bad for Friday's NASDAQ net losers. They have to sit up on the board all weekend and face the derision of the student body. For example, kudos to Travelzoo Inc. (ticker: TZOO, in case you are interested in buying ...) for losing 7.9% of their value in one day.
* THE TELEVISIONS: Who controls these anyway? They do a good job. I am always impressed by the variety and how the powers to be successfully tune in the different televisions to Bloomberg, CNN, and FOXNEWS simultaneously. My only hope is that during March Madness (see pages 8-9 if you are not familiar with the term) all televisions are tuned to college basketball games. In fact, how about Dean Dolan spends some of that Ross donation to buy the NCAA Tournament Television Package.
* THE FOOD: I see an arbitrage opportunity for the students. Short the hot entrée and long the salads. The hot entrees are always so overpriced. I once got a small plate of some sort of cheesy pasta and it cost like $6 (that's a steal compared to the $3.50 charged for two pieces of bread and one kind of meat). The salads, on the other hand, are cheap and delicious.
* QUIT CHARGING ME 10 CENTS FOR A CUP OF HOT WATER SO I CAN BREW MY TEA THAT I BROUGHT FROM HOME. MY OUT OF STATE TUITION SHOULD COVER THIS SORT OF THING: See title. (I don't want any sassy emails telling me to bring my own cup. I tried that and I always forget to bring it home.)
* CLOTHING DISPLAY BELOW STOCK TICKER: Very nice. Clean presentation. Attractive merchandise. Apparently there is a reason why our MBA program is ranked so high in Marketing.
* MUSIC: I would like to hear some ambient music in the background. Nothing to detract from group studying. Maybe some soft jazz, classical music or nature sounds.
* MAILBOXES: Do people really use these things? I open it about once every two weeks and it's just spam. Stop it. Or don't. I actually don't care.
