First Day of School!

Today was the first day of school here in beautiful Bloomington. And I have to say even though I have done this 16 times now, I think that for the rest of my educational career I will always get nervous on the first day of school. Even though there are no presents, it is similar to the feeling you have on Christmas Eve. You know what is coming on the horizon, and for me at least I have always struggled to fall asleep and then I wake up early on both days. There is something about the first day, so many endless possibilities, so many people you haven't seen all summer, and so many things that you just have no idea how they will work out. I am a self-described nerd, so I kind of looked forward to the first day of school as summer began to wear down, but everyone wants to cling on to the last few days of rest and relaxation before you have to focus on hitting the books and getting to work.

This semester will be like nothing ever before for me. I "technically" am a semester ahead thanks to summer classes, and there is a little part of me that feels bad for my fellow peers who are beginning their I-Core journey. Then I just think of how much work the classes and case are, and those feelings of pity for my classmates quickly transform into feelings of happiness. In addition to embarking on my major classes, this is also going to be a big semester for recruiting in hopes of landing an internship for this upcoming summer. It's pretty incredible that we are one day into the fall semester and I am already thinking about next summer, but thus is the tribulation of going to business school. In a couple of weeks there will be career fairs held at the lovely Bloomington Convention Center, and thousands of Kelley students dressed in Business Professional will have to squeeze around each other, hoping to just get a quick conversation of insight into a wide array of companies that come to recruit the nation's best students (I may be a little biased, but the numbers speak for themselves, Kelley consistently ranks at the top of rankings from recruiters in regards to quality of students, thus ending the humble brag). That will be just a slightly stressful experience, but thanks to my parents poking and prodding me at the College Convention that we went to, which seems like ages ago, I think I'm ready to take on the challenge.

Before I end this relatively short post this week, I need to give a special shoutout to my Mom. Every first day of school, my Mom would force Will and I to stand on our front porch with a sign commemorating the new school year. At this moment we would begrudgingly smile and take pictures and hope that none of our neighbors saw us do it- even though the Schroeders were doing essentially the exact same thing across the street (Man I hate it when parents can use the argument "But everyone else is doing it). This past May during Will's Graduation Party, these pictures were hung with care on our porch, and all I have to say is WOW how things have changed. Even though these pictures were not always taken with earnest, they are fantastic pictures, and they do a pretty good job of showing how we evolved from small elementary school students all the way to big university boys. So here's to you Mom, forcing us to take those pictures actually worked out well for us in the end- just don't expect us to eat and squash or zucchini while we are away at college.

Go Hoosiers,


Duncan Hensley
Indiana University
Kelley School of Business '18