Notes from the road, week 2

This week I headed from Columbus, Ohio to Buffalo and then Rochester, New York.  The focus of my week was college fairs (I had four of them), but I did have some high school visits as well.  Here are my notes from this week:

• On my way up from Columbus I stopped for lunch at a Chick-fil-a.  I was totally and pleasantly surprised by the conservative values of this place.  It isn’t open on Sundays, they had Christian music on the in-house radio, and the last one is the kicker: in front of each cash register there are placards that read, “God’s commandment is to not steal.”  You might be put off by all of this, but it’s refreshing to me that a company in this time would be so willing to stick to its values.
• I actually had a student look at the state abbreviation “MI” and think we are located in Maryland.  Wow, there is definitely no “i” in Maryland.
• Real conversation from a college fair this week:
  • Student: “Y’all Division I for sports?”
  • Me: “No, we’re actually Division III.”
  • Student (under her breath): “Ain’t no hot guys there.”
• Participated in three mall fairs this week. Spent time in front of Lens Crafters, Sprint, and the Bon Ton. Always interesting.
• Had a really productive workday at Starbucks on Friday. Worked through 3 HTML emails for the month of October. We’ve been averaging around 16% read rates on them — pretty excited about that.

Overall it’s been a really positive week for us in New York.  I always look forward to going back to Michigan, though.  As I put it to one of my New York colleagues this week, “at college fairs back home, I’m a rockstar!”.