Johnson Follies - MBA Lucha

So each year the Business School puts on a show full of student made videos dubbed the "Johnson Follies". Its a fun ending to the year. Here is my contribution - the MBA Lucha.


You can find more if you search YouTube for Johnson Follies.

Ivy League Trailer Park

Here is a quick recap on my past year: Since last fall our family returned from an summer internship with Johnson & Johnson in Philadelphia, studied a semester in Ithaca, New York (Cornell), then spent my last semester abroad in Monterrey Mexico. Just a few weeks ago we drove 32 hours from Mexico back to central New York in order to be here for graduation - it looks like we made it out before the swine flu hit. My wife Nicole likes to remind me, "You sure are lucky to have a wife who follows you around like this." I certainly am.

We arrived in Mexico in January and it was great. We'll surely miss the juicy tacos, limonada, nice people, loud singing at church, friends, culture, and warm weather - I only had to wear a jacket 3 times. During my semester abroad, the Wall Street Journal and other news outlets published many stories about the violent drug wars going on in Mexico and mentioned the city of San Pedro multiple times. We lived in that wealthy suburb of the Monterrey. Because the city is one of the affluent in Mexico, the Drug Lords can live there and flash their money just like the rest of the residents without any suspicion. We never met any of the Lords but saw lots of Ferraris and Porsches driving around town.

Luke (5) and Caleb (3) attended a Spanish Preschool each morning and loved it. They didn't mind that no one spoke English. His last day of school Luke said, "But Mom, I can't leave, I haven't learned Spanish yet!" The church we attended had a Sunday School in English with about 6-10 attendees There were a few families from the American Consulate in our ward who were put up in big beautiful houses in Monterrey and they played a big part of Hilary Clinton's visit in March. We had a wonderful time and highly recommend a semester abroad to any who has the opportunity. Nicole posted lots of pictures on our blog: http://theradrollins.blogspot.com/.

One thing we won't be missing is the Mexican police. In the past five years in the USA I have been pulled over zero times. In the past 4 months in Mexico I was pulled over 5 times. In each ocasion I told the officer that I can't give him money. In 4 of those ocasions he let me go without a ticket. However, the 1 time I did receive a ticket was on my drive out of the country. I refused to pay so he decided to give me the ticket and take my license. So now I don't have a license and Mexico is too far away to go the the police station to retrieve it...we are still trying to work that one out.

While in Mexico I spent about 60 hours of my life writing a business plan. Last fall I met up with a Cornell Biomedical Engineer student and we started a medical device company based on his technology - a contact lens that regrows damaged corneas. It will be a less invasive and less expensive alternative to cornea transplantation. Two weeks ago we presented at Cornell University's business plan competition and Rice University's competition. We won the Cornell competition and walked away with over $20,000. We plan to put the money towards the business and move forward with it. The technology is being developed with government grants, however, those don't pay me any money so I'm looking for part time work in Ithaca to put food on the table after I graduate in May. If you have any extra food storage please send it our way.

After we discussed my job plans, Nicole once again stated how lucky I was to have a supportive wife. However she wasn't as excited about my plans to apply for government housing and food stamps. After not having an income for two years we qualify for all the "free" New York social programs...an Ivy league MBA living on welfare. We actually have a lot of good friends who live in a trailer park in town and we've talked about moving there, my guess is that it is the smartest trailer park in the world as its full of Cornell PhD students sprinkled with central New York hillbillies. Who can beat a $9,000 home with a $300 rental fee. Those Cornell PhD's have money smarts too.