Hi everyone! I have officially turned in my last three assignments for my J-Term class so I’m going to go over the class with you! Even though the class was only one month long, I do want to do a post in between each term and technically this was a term.

J-Term 2018

So this month I took Analytical Tools for Management, which was a very fancy way to say “torturous statistics” I think. I was in class Saturdays and Sundays for three out of the four weekends this month from 9am to about 3pm. The first two weeks we had one group project for each week with a different group. For the individual assignments we had one the first week, two the second, and three the third week. We also had a reflection paper due for our program and that was due a few days before class started. I received full credit for it, as most people who complete it do.

The first week of class was very stressful. I have a Mac so the program we had to use for Excel didn’t work as it’s an add-in that wasn’t fully compatible. I managed to get it to work but it wasn’t in the same format and not as user friendly. I ended up having to get to work early to run the reports I needed on the computer there or stay late after clocking out. I had to rely on my group to run the reports I needed so I am sure they didn’t give me a high score on the peer evaluation as they probably felt like they had to do my work for me. Eventually I got everything done though and it worked out in the end although my group left allll the work until the last minute. At least they all showed up to our conference call the night before the work was due. Someone else in the class said he ignored his group chat notifications the night before while at the bar… Onto week 2!

The second week of class was so much better! The part of Excel we needed worked perfectly on my Mac and I actually felt like I understood this much better than the first week’s work. For the group project we tried to split the sections but I was assigned to work on scenarios 2 and 3 (out of 3). However when I went to start them I realized that I needed to continue the work of scenario 1. Since it wasn’t done yet I had to do all three anyway. The people I was working with didn’t reply to my email for about a day but once they did they confirmed they got the same responses I did. One of my group mates went AWOL because he didn’t download the app we were using for the group chat and he didn’t check his email. To make up for it we made him present by himself so that also worked out. Apparently he though we hadn’t done anything at all by Wednesday and he started doing the work we had already done. When we saw his email Thursday and one of the other group members finally got in touch with him then we got him up to speed. One of my group members (the really annoying woman from last semester) insisted we meet on Friday night to do the nearly finished presentation so we showed up and worked on our homework. I had trouble with one and finally got it to work at what seemed to be the last minute! It all worked out though as I got full credit for the project and both assignments.

The last week of class was building on the second week’s work but was quite challenging. However the professor said if we got stuck we could email him our workbook and he would point us in the right direction, which was incredibly helpful. We had the last three assignments this week and I had trouble all week with one of them. Earlier this week two of my classmates and I jumped on a conference call to try to figure out our assignments if we were stuck. Our professor encouraged us to all work together and so we took full advantage of that. I finally managed to finish it today and emailed all three to him so he could grade it.

So now I’m now waiting for my last three assignments to be graded. As of now I have a solid A but there are still 180 points that will come from the assignments I just emailed today. I also need to do my course evaluation which is due on Monday or Tuesday I believe so I will do it over the weekend.

I will say the only reason I got everything done and didn’t pull out all my hair was because I took at least one day off work each week. Those days were dedicated to homework, so I was able to get a huge chunk of work done those days. Thank goodness for vacation days!

So did I learn anything from this class? YES!

I already used some of what I learned and my overall greater knowledge of Excel at work. One client asked me if I could create a new Excel workbook for her that would work better for her needs. She handles hundreds of reservations and passes them to me so I can book them. The previous version of the grid worked, but not how she wanted it. I managed to create a whole new workbook style for her to use and she LOVED it! I never could have done it without so much knowledge of how the formulas on Excel work. Another instance is actually going to do with my new stats knowledge as the director of my department asked for help compiling information so I’ll be able to use even more.

Spring Semester 2018

Next semester (which starts next week Tuesday night!) I am taking Marketing Management and Finance Management. I can’t wait because marketing is actually what I always thought I would do throughout undergrad. I haven’t done it but I loved those classes. I also really enjoyed my finance course that I took in my last semester of undergrad. I wish I had taken more.

The professors for both of these courses were professors of mine in undergrad. The program director is my marketing professor and I took his capstone course before. He remembered me right away back in March of last year when I first went to the school for an informational program. The other professor actually taught one J-term I took about Excel (funnily enough) and he remembered me right away as well when he saw me in one of his Excel workshops last semester. They were option but super helpful as we learned so many tricks of Excel.

One of my classmates last semester did say that these courses weren’t nearly as hard as the fall courses. He had already taken these so that was reassuring for sure! I am excited for this semester. Because of my travel plans for personal and work reasons I will miss two classes but hopefully I won’t miss more than that.

I am also meant to select my specialization for the rest of my program next semester. I am going back and forth between finance and project management. If I do the project management courses I could get the PMP certification and I think it would be amazing to have both an MBA and the PMP certification so early in my career. I want to talk with a PM at work and perhaps shadow them for a bit to see if I would like it. However I’m so busy I don’t think my schedule would allow for that.

Something I had been considering was studying an extra year for a JD degree. However I would need to take the LSAT to apply to the partner law school with my college and I don’t feel I could properly prepare for that right now. I really would love a JD degree as well, but it would mean another year of tuition (although technically it would save me a year if I did it separately). Also I don’t think I would ever utilize that degree. Although I am starting to think that my collecting addictions are degrees and student loans.

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And that’s pretty much all my thoughts at this point about my MBA journey. How are your current life journeys going? I’d love to know!

Thanks for reading!

Pamela

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