Course 7 Seminar question

[Not Mike]

Just curious about the logisitics of the seminar.... I live locally where the seminar is being held.... I was wondering if it's a bad idea to stay at home and commute in every day... anyone else do this? did it work out for you?

Thanks...

[yunr]

The sessions start at around 8.30 in the morning. It goes on to 4 or 5, but for the first two days there are evening group discussions. I don't think you will be at a disadvantage for living locally, but you will be prepared if your group turns out to be very diligent about the group presentation and you will end up staying very late.

[ajphilly]

You will have to work in the room for the project. That might be annoying since everyone will be walking in and out and people are just loud. For me, I was glad to be able to work in the hotel room on the project.

[Sandman]

If you have a commute, I would recommend staying in the hotel. There were several nights that ran until 9:00 working on group projects.

Also, I must say that I did the entire project working in the seminar room, and had no problem. There was no temptation to take a significant break, and I chugged through and got done early.

A final note: it's OK to get done early. They give you a lot more time than you really need. There are plenty of type A's who want to use every possible second to go over the project again (and again and again and again and again ...) Don't sweat it if you finish early. Go and have a brewski. :beer:

[Not Mike]

Cool, thanks for all of the advice... I figured that staying there was the best option, but thought that I should at least consider the cost savings.... I haven't even begun to prep for this thing, what kind of time commitment am I looking at?

[yunr]

The pro is you can stay in your room and do this project instead of staying in the seminar room where constantly there are people coming down to print their pages.

However, we did have a problem with the hotel on the last day. The cleaning lady kept calling and calling and that was very annoying.

I am not a perfectionist by any means, but I utilizaed every second possible to finish this project. there was a lot of re-writing than I expected!

[asdfasdf]

:bump: For those who have gone to the seminar before, is it just impossible to concentrate in the room the SOA keeps, like are there constant conversations, or is it around the noise level of a standard cube?

Washington is out of the cheap rooms and I wanted to double check if staying at the Hilton is really worth it.

Also were there breakaway times during the first days where people all went back to their rooms for like 1/2hr, or does it go pretty much staight through?

Thanks for the thoughs

[yawn]

I stayed with relatives 20 minutes from the seminar and had no problems. Our evening group work was done by 7 both nights. Writing the project in the seminar room was fine for me. During lunch time, a huge group of noisy AutoZone auto parts workers had a lunch or an awards ceremony in the ballroom next to us. We could hear them yelling over the loudspeakers about sales awards and cheering, but it didn't affect me.

[yawn]

Also, very few of the people at the seminar were doing their projects in the seminar room, so you could pick a spot all by your self to work. I didn't hear any conversations from the faculty or the other students while I was working.

[Chubbs_23]

For those of you who have attended a Course 7 Seminar before, when did you book your return flight for?

We have until 8:30pm on Thursday, but from what I hear, most people are done before that. If you finish early, you just drop off the paper and leave right? When is the earliest you would book a flight out, and still be not worried about time?

[Soccerboy]

erm..the next day..just to be safe..so many things can go wrong, network problems, hotel problems, etc..I won't risk it

[micaelagb]

I'm staying until Friday, too. Our co. has an office in Chicago, so I'm taking the opportunity to meet with some of the folks out there before coming home on Friday afternoon.