Being a good Villanova student I was slightly disappointed that no one asked for my input on Bartley Hall’s new Applied Finance Lab. Here are some of the renovations I would have suggested. I would have set up a nice shrine around the screens that project economic statistics in graphs and numbers, where students could kneel in prayer and make burnt offerings to ‘The Market’. Perhaps an icon of Alan Greenspan would do nicely there as well. I also would have included a few wonderfully sterile cubicals with florescent lighting overhead, where students could practice sitting for hours listening to elevator music and playing computer solitaire. It also would have been advantageous to include a nice corner-office simulator where real live 55 year-old men could volunteer to come in, so that students could practice their delivery of the line: “I’m, sorry, but we’re going to have to let you go… it’s nothing personal”. Instead of showing the Cartoon Network on the large plasma-screen television as they do now, I would show footage of migrant workers. After all, once students enter the real world of business, they might not get another chance to see the types of people that could be working for them in this capacity. I would have also included a nice glass ceiling, which would actually be the floor of the gentleman’s club upstairs, where men could smoke cigars and watch the golf channel. Finally, I think a state of the art gas oven/range would be the perfect place for senior accounting students to practice ‘cooking the books’. I guess my design might be a little controversial, but then again, at least with my fancy set-up people would know what to do with it, other than just have it look cool.-Gregory Grimes