Week in Review

Tuesday

This was a very long day. After working the night before, I had to sit through classes all day on Tuesday. Thankfully, the classroom was ice cold and that helped to keep me awake. We spent most of the day on Decision Science and Information Systems which was my undergraduate major. It helps to have a class you are strong in to offset the class(es) in which you may have to spend a lot of time studying. After spending 6 hours in DSIS (not including an hour lunch), we were introduced to our Leadership class. I have this class for two hours at the end of each day and it’s actually pretty fun. Most of the activities are done as a group, so you do some reading and then discuss and decide as a group what to do. It leads to some heated debates, but we have learned to work together as a team and are getting better everyday. After class got out, I headed home for a nap. I worked on the yard for a little while and then caught up with a few people I had not talked to in a while. I even made time to go watch my friends play sand volleyball at Marikka’s. I was so tired Tuesday night, I even overslept.

Wednesday

I had a hurried start to my day, because I slept through my alarm. I got to campus in time to park and arrive in Accounting just a few minutes late. Our instructor had not gotten the class to quiet down, so I didn’t think it was a big deal. Like the day before, only different, I had Accounting for 6 hours. The main focus of this class is to learn to read financial statements in order to be a better investor. We will be using Coca-Cola’s annual report and 10K for much of the in class work and translating what we learn to other companies throughout the semester. I haven’t had accounting for over a decade, so this class is my hardest class right now. Things are getting better as we get more practice and figure out what the instructor wants us to learn. We are looking pretty closely at financial information not just to find out what certain numbers are, but also to be able to understand what they mean. It’s somewhat interesting, so I think if I can stay awake during class, I’ll be okay. We did more group work in Leadership. There was a slight communication problem in the group, but we discussed it and I think everyone has moved on. I went to Marikka’s again because my team was supposed to play volleyball. We got rained out, so I had a few drinks and hung out with Marc and Doug Jr.

Thursday

I guess lightning can strike twice, because I was late getting up today too. We had our first test in DSIS, so I was behind the eight-ball when I walked into class. We have a test at the beginning of every class period in DSIS (so every other day). This was a pretty basic exam, so it wasn’t a big deal that I was late. I sat down and finished the exam in 20 minutes or so. Then I hung out in the hallway with the others that finished early and talked about the workload as well as plans for the weekend. Most people were planning on getting caught up on reading. We learned about some statistical analysis that you can do with Excel and then worked problems after lunch. Leadership had us analyze some more real world cases and give a group opinion on what was wrong with the team we read about and what should be done next. We had a Business Application due for Accounting the next day, so my group decided to stay late Thursday and work on that along with a Team Contract that was due on Sat. for Leadership. The Team Contract looked more complicated, so we started out on that. It took us a long time to get through with it, because we ended up stopping several times to address other issues. We also seemed to get off topic easily. After we finished the Team Contract, we moved on to the Business Application. We briefly ran through the questions for it and agreed to do some more work individually before class the next day, since we were being kicked out of the computer lab at 9pm. I stayed in the rest of Thursday night and got some homework and reading done.

Friday

I was up and out, pretty early on Friday morning. I had my Accounting homework to turn in and then we sat down to discuss the Business Application as a group. It didn’t take us long to finish typing it and then submit it to the professor. We then had 4 hours of Accounting class to sit through, but it was broken up by an hour lunch. In Leadership, we were one of the two groups that choose the right answer for the case study. That was nice, but then we had another case study to turn in by the end of the day. Hopefully, we did well on that one too. Some of the MBA students were headed downtown to celebrate “surviving” the first week. I, of course, had to head off to work. I was already late and knew I would be leaving by 12:30am or earlier, so that made for a good night.

Week in Review

This new MBA program is no joke. While much of the material so far has been review, the sheer volume of work that we are expected to complete day in and day out is astounding. I am looking forward to only being in class from 8am to 12pm daily and then doing individual and group activities in the afternoon. Only 3 more weeks of “boot camp” left.