Finished the second week of classes in my first module of Spring Term. The intensity is picking up just a little bit, but so far very manageable. It’s probably going to change this weekend when I will have work on two major projects:
- I am planning to work on my section for Risk Analysis Group Paper in Global Perspectives class. My intention is to have it finished and submitted to the person who was elected an “editor-in-chief” by the group. Technically we agreed to have all submissions in by January 31, so we will have time for cross-reviewing each other’s work, and then have the “editor” to tie it nicely in one unified final paper. But I want to have my part done ASAP, so I will not get distracted by this later in the module when I will have finals looming on me. Also this coming week we are going to have the first of the three graded quizzes. So I will have to read up some of the stuff I have skipped earlier.
- I will also have to allocate some time for working on my group case in Managerial Accounting. The case we submitted today was relatively short, total 17 pages of description and supporting exhibits. The one due next week is 40 pages long, so it may turn to be quite time consuming to prepare it.
Short reminiscence about our work on the case in Managerial Accounting. We have done most of the collaboration via emails. Yesterday, actually, three of the five in our group managed to get together on campus to discuss the case and decide what approach to take in solving the problems on the case. I did not even know about the meeting, so I was working independently on the case until almost 2 in the morning and submitted my write up to the group.
At some point during my work I received an email from the three with their write up. I thought that it was not quite on target, and they missed some crucial point in the case, so I continued to do my write up. When I finished I sent it to the group, solisiting their opinion. They thought that my approach to one of the three questions in the case was off target. Dah!
At any rate during the day I managed to to find some time to put together their and my versions in submittable format. The idea was to have two variants available for submission and decide in group which one to submit for grading. Half an hour before the class we had a short “emergency” meeting to re-hash the case and decide which version to submit. My variant was voted out. So we submitted the version prepared mostly by the group of three. That was OK with me. Especially because when professor went over the case in class, it turned out that most of assumptions in both variants were not quite accurate. This was another time in Managerial Accounting when I witnessed that “nothing is what it seems to be”.
Final note on Managerial Accounting case. In my approach to solving the case I “over-thought” the questions. I thought that approach taken by my team mates was too simplistic. So I dived into more sophisticated “slicing and dicing” of the numbers. As it turned out I digged to deep in not quite right direction. The solution from professor came out more elegant and less cumbersome in number crunching part then mine.
This issue of ”overthinking” on my part has already manifested in my Fall Term of the MBA program. It was in Microeconomics group project. I see the pattern and now I will try to be aware of this fact and try to avoid falling in the trap again. That’s why I am doing this part-time MBA program anyways: to learn to think in more general concepts from particular factual tidbits, rather than drowning in the swamp of irrelevant data. I guess the reverse process is also necessary. One just needs to know which is applicable in particular situation.
