Have not been posting for almost a month. Now I am kind of have been missing blogging and ready to post some updates. The two main reasons for my extended silence are the preparation for the professional certification exam that I took in two weeks after the end of the summer module, and the family vacation trip to Barbados. I hope I will have motivation and energy to put some posts with pictures and videos or may be a separate website dedicated to this vacation, as it was really quite interesting and a lot of fun to share.
But first I need to put closure to my first year of part-time MBA program at GWU. As I was writing in my last post in June I was not expecting any surprises with the grades, but I actually was nicely surprised. Based on my grades for intermediate assignments throughout both classes I had in the module I was expecting an A in Business and Public Policy, but the Nature of Markets was a bit murkier. Nevertheless I got A’s in both classes! For the first time in my MBA terms I became a straight A student . Admittedly, I had only two classes in the term, and they both were not quantitative courses. But still it feels really nice. So I got my closure for the first year.
Now that I had my vacation I almost feel like I would be ready to continue with the MBA classes right away. But there are no classes I could sign up for right now. So I have another month to chill out. I am planning to use this time to do some reading to prepare for the fall term and just to read some of the books I had to put on hold during the year, my personal MBA summer reading list: Superfreakonomics by Levitt and Dubner, The Tipping Point by Gladwell, and surprise-surprise! – Basic Statistics: Tales of Distributions (with CD-ROM) by Spatz.
Even though I got my B and B+ in two statistics courses during the first year, I know I need to get a better grasp of the subject and solidify everything I learned in a hurry. I stumbled upon this book while looking for an easier introduction to statistics. I wrote about this briefly in my April 5 post . Eventually I found Basic Statistics: Tales of Distributions (with CD-ROM)
and I really look forward to pouring over it in the next month. I will write a more detailed review once I finish it. But from other reviews on Amazon.com and my reading through the first 30 or so pages, I can tell that this is the must book for all of us who have stats anxiety. If you are preparing for MBA stats classes in advance or even take them at the time you read this post, I recommend to grab this book and start reading it ASAP. Statistics is not an easy subject for most students, but this book will make your experience with the stats as painless as humanly possible. I bought the eighth edition of this book used from Amazon for some really funny money, about $6. For the purists, like I used to be, but not anymore, there is the tenth editionn of Basic Statistics: Tales of Distributions available new between $129-150 on Amazon.com.
Enough blogging for the day. Hopeful to continue posting regularly in the time before the second year of my MBA studies starts.
I know, I know, I already reported it once, almost two months ago, that my first year of part-time MBA was over. But it was according to the business school’s schedule, not my personal. If I did not take take classes in the first summer term module, then it would indeed be the end.
But now I can honestly say to myself that the first year of MBA is finished. For some reason I don’t feel the same level of exaltation that I had back at the end of the Spring Term, just a deep sense of relief and calm serenity It works for me.
I am still waiting for my grades in both classes I had. In Business and Public Policy we had our final paper and in-class group presentation on Tuesday last week. Yesterday I submitted my take home exam in Nature of Markets. I don’t expect any surprises with grading, so I can mostly take my thoughts of the school for now and engage myself into other, no less pleasant, things in life: going to the pool with the kids, hiking on weekends, preparing for a vacation trip, read for pleasure, etc. And the beauty of it all is that I have 2 (TWO) FULL MONTHS of SUMMER BREAK. That’s a big luxury. I really feel for some of my classmate who opted for both Summer Term modules. That would be too much for me. My summer break is much-needed and well-deserved, and I am taking it!
There is still another test for my professional certification that I need to take in less than two weeks from now, but that really does not bother me too much. You always can re-take it without negative impact on your graduate GPA for the rest of your life . So I will take it easy.
I hope I will not disappear from this blog for the rest of the summer, but I am not making any specific promises. I have a lot of stuff I would like to put on the blog, but I don’t want to strain myself either. On the other hand, now that I don’t have homework and required readings, maybe I will fill this time with updating the blog. We’ll see how it goes, stay tuned! Have a great summer!
Since the term had been winding down to its end, and I was basically done with all my deliverables, last weekend my wife and I had a little treat: another theater night at Synetic. I had a post back in February about this theater and their Antony and Cleopatra play.
I know it may sound ridiculous, but I think of Synetic as of “Apple” in its latest stretch of innovation from IPod in 2001 to IPad- 2010. This outlandish comparison is influenced by the Apple, Inc. case we had to work in marketing course this summer term.
It’s really funny how MBA affects the way of thinking and the view of the world. In a sense you start to look at things from a very specific and somewhat narrow perspective. Yes, it’s true that your perspective actually broadens and becomes more systematic and synthetic in everything referring to business. You gradually become able to look at business in more integrated fashion: see it from different angles, whether it is statistical analysis or ethical implications. But at the same time, you start to apply the same methods of analysis to other things, seemingly unrelated. I would put it this way: MBA broadens your way of thinking about business, but narrows your veiw of the world. I don’t say it is inherently bad. But now it makes much more sense to me that business schools try to attract diverse application pool in many regards, including professional backgrounds, undegraduate majors, phylantropic endeavors, etc. MBA program will instill the systematic approach of business thinking in the students, but it is very crucial to have something besides that. It is a sort of checks and balances in professional business education.
Back to Synetic. Why I compared Synetic with Apple? Because every time I come to their plays, I wonder what else can they come up with to surprize their audience? Have not they already done a great job in their last play? Can you really add something new to it? Are they going to plateau this time and just give another great performance, like the one before?
But every time I come, it’s not ‘just another great performance’ – I am utterly bedazzled every time with their interpretation of the seemingly known texts. And this time with Othello they again were able to astonish me beyond my expectation. Just like Steve Jobs and Apple with its streak of innovation of the last decade .
As one critic wrote about Synetic’s Othello, “I thought they had reached the pinnacle with their last outing, Antony and Cleopatra, but clearly there’s no end to the brilliance of this company when it applies its physical theater style to the Bard. Hyperbole? Head to the Kennedy Center’s Family Theater and judge for yourself.”
I fully undersign under those words. If you are around DC area, the play is going to be on till July 3, so there is time to catch the magic.
Have not been able to post lately due to the overwhelming amount of work in business school. As much as I prefer qualititative over the quantitative classes, in terms of time it is not really easier. In quants it takes me a lot of time to comprehend the concepts and their application. In qualititative classes [...]
This style of management -herding the flock- is actually not as uncommon as it might seem in our “enlightened” era and all the advances in management theory. Quite many managers in business and leaders in public arena are still treating their subordinates and constituents as a flock of sheep which needs to be herded and manipulated into going through the “desired” gates. Even if it is done in more subtle inconspicuous or sophisticated ways, this still is the underlying philosophy of those “shepherd dog managers”.
One of the two books I attempted to read on my break between the Spring and Summer Terms in my part-time MBA studies was The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. It is really a great read, though I have to admit I haven’t finished it yet. Not everything in the book is really applicable, or even [...]
Tonight I had my second class that I am taking in this Summer Term at part-time MBA program at GWSB. I have been looking forward to this course and it seems that my high expectations will be met in this class. I have long been interested in marketing and I really expect to learn a [...]
I had the first class in my summer term tonight: Business and Public Policy. I can tell from the class that it is going to be quite interesting. Some of the concepts that we were exposed to in the class went against the grain of the widely held beliefs by free market proponents. So in a way [...]
One day at the end of April I had a breakthrough, thanks to my MBA Entrepreneurship class. Not that the breakthrough had much bearing directly to the class, but it was definitely induced by the ideas I had been introduced to during the course. One night on my way to GWSB I got a brilliant business idea. I don’t really [...]
In our Human Capital Management class professor showed us a great video from TED.com featuring Dan Pink’s presentation on relationship between different motivational factors and human creativity and efficiency in solving problems. Needless to say, Dan Pink is a very entertaining speaker. I enjoyed his talking very much. But even more fascinating for me was the [...]
A week ago on Wednesday I encountered a somewhat new format for the final exam in my MBA pursuit. Usually, if it was not multiple choice, the exams had a requirement to write a short answer. If it was a longer narrative required, then it was usually done through the final research paper or a case write up done [...]
It’s official now. My actual last class of the first year in part-time MBA program at George Washingtonn University School of Business was on Wednesday last week. That week we had the final in-class presentation in Entrepreneurship class, and final written exam in Managing Human Capital. But I did not feel like reporting this milestone because I still [...]
One of our assignments in Entrepreneurship class at GWSB MBA program was to conduct an interview with an entrepreneur of our choice. This was an individual project, so we had to find a worthy candidate on our own and to interview him/her. To make it easier, we were even given a set of questions which could be [...]
I already had a post about the making of the Elevator Pitch by our team in Entrepreneurship class. But I wanted to give a bit broader review of that particular class and talk in general terms about the cases that were presented by various groups. I really found that exercise quite stimulating. It also provided the opportunity [...]
In one of our classes on Human Capital Management we were discussing employees’ compensation. Obviously, among other things we were touching on all hot topics related to the issue: executive compensation, fair pay, incentives, indirect compensation, etc. Our professor gave us an in-class exercise: we had to get into four groups and come up with as [...]
This last class our professor in Entrepreneurship had another very special treat for us. This time he had invited to our class the co-founders of PointAbout – Washington, DC-based mobile applications start up – for a panel discussion on entrepreneurship, what else? I really enjoyed the meeting and the four guys were just fascinating. As the [...]
Continued from Executive Summary – Brewing Disaster. What started and promised to stay as just another lackluster group assignment, turned into probably one of the most empowering experinces in my MBA endevour so far (Ok, getting an A in Microeconomics comes as second close ). // When I showed up for class a bit earlier than [...]
On the first day of classes our professor in Entrepreneurship prompted us to form study teams to work on a few group assignments throughout the course. Namely, we were expected to work in groups on the Executive Summary and Elevator Pitch for some business start up. I joined a group of classmates I knew from my [...]
Nothing too exciting happenned at the exam. The format was open book, open notes. Needless to say that even with this format I felt a brain-freeze, as oftentimes the case in my quantitative classes. Will see how I fared on the forced grading curve. The stuff covered in the exam was all the material we have [...]
Have not had enough time to post lately as I have been doing a lot or writing for my classes. I finished and submitted to the group my part of the research on the Nordstrom: Dissension in the Ranks case for Human Capital Management class. So far, my write up is the first for our group. [...]
If you followed this blog for a bit, you might have noticed that I have been participating in group projects in some of my classes since the beginning of my part-time MBA program. So far, I have co-authored two group research papers (Business Ethics and Global Perspectives) and have been doing group assignments in Managerial Accounting [...]
There was another blast class in Entrepreneurship this week. From the two first classes it seems that the main purpose of our instructor in this class is to evoke our creativity and show us how indispensable it is for those of us who aspire to venture on our own or join a start-up after getting [...]
On Monday I finally got my grades for Global Perspectives. The Managerial Accounting grade came within a couple of days after the final exam. I waited to get both grades before posting on that. Both grades came as a surprise to me: a pleasant one and somewhat disappointing, even though I got straight B’s in both classes. [...]
Don’t panic, they are not outlawed yet. But the trend is there. In my MBA experience at GWU School of Business I have encountered different policies by different professors on the use of laptops in the classroom. There were two classes (Financial Accounting-1, Judgement and Uncertainty) where the use of the laptop was highly desirable, even though not [...]
Over the weekend I had to order the textbook required for my Human Capital Management course which started today. When I looked up on the internet the required book from the syllubus (A Framework for Human Resource Management 5th Edition, ISBN-13: 978-0136041535), I was not shocked to see the list price of $132. What’s new? I [...]
Tuesday class in Entrepreneurship was a blast. Professor has been teaching it since mid-seventies, so he can afford to be unorthodox. There were quite a few ideas he introduced in the class that would probably not fly if he was a younger member of the faculty. But this is a charm of having a seasoned educator, [...]
On Monday I had my first class of the second module: Data Analysis and Decisions. This is a continuation of the course I took in the Fall Term – Judgement, Uncertainty and Decision Making. I have different professor this time, just hope he will be able to explain the material at least as clearly as [...]
It just happenned that way that both our kids had sleepover arrangements out of house on Saturday night. Not a very common occasion in our family. So I decided to make some fringe benefits from this coincidence: to have a night out with my wife. Regular a la carte menu for such occasions for us (not that we [...]
Yesterday I had my last final exam in module one of the Spring Term at GWSB – Global Perspectives. Overall exam was not very difficult, especially given its open book, notes, internet access format. There was only one question I somehow had missed during the course regarding “foreignness liability”. Thanks to internet access I was [...]
I had a major blunder with my final on Managerial Accounting. I knew in advance that the case for exam will be posted on Blackboard a day before. But with all this cramming for the exam proper it absolutely evaded my mind. It was like a blind spot. I felt pretty good before the final [...]
Bookmark this on Delicious I have been reviewing the material for Global Perspectives final exam on Wednesday (tomorrow), when I incidentally found out that the final is actually on Friday. I was not planning to post anything until after my both exams, but now as I am getting a little breather, I decided to place these [...]
I have had a placeholder on my site for MBA Resources since I started this blog. But unfortunately I was not able to fill it up with any content so far. Admittedly, there are other sections of my site that are empty too for now, but eventually I am going to put some helpful links and [...]
Bookmark this on Delicious Yesterday at the Managerial Accounting study group we drifted at some point on the subject of how the exam methods are different in various countries. This discussion was prompted by a comment from one of our group members from China. We all found the pecularities of examination modes at college/university level, and [...]
Today we had our study group to review and discuss example exam for Managerial Accounting. We were in the meeting for almost 4 hours. First we went very briefly over all the cases we had prepared during the course. This review was very cursory, just to highlight the underlying concepts. We did not delve into actual [...]
Today I looked for the first time at the example final exam in the course pack. It really got me anxious. I got the same “numbers anxiety” I had before both of my Financial Accounting exams in the Fall term. All the concepts that are covered in the exam are pretty much familiar and related [...]
. Admittedly, I had only two classes in the term, and they both were not quantitative courses. But still it feels really nice. So I got my closure for the first year.
. So I will take it easy.
