Hello everyone! Today I wanted to give an update on my MBA journey before starting my final semester.

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After the debacle of last semester, I am just saying this semester better be amazing or else. If you missed any of my posts over the last year and a half about my MBA journey you can catch up on my blog, no problem! Anyway, this semester is meant to be good, so hopefully there’s no surprises this time.

Registration

So this has already annoyed me. I registered right away last year in November when registration opened. Apparently my registration was undone somehow? At the end of December I went to go look up my schedule in my email and couldn’t find it after a quick search so I just logged in online and there were no classes listed for me in the spring! I was beyond livid so I registered again for them. I forwarded the email to my personal email so I will have a record if it happens again since I must have deleted my first confirmation on accident. I remember vividly getting it and reviewing it though since it’s sent immediately so hopefully this is the one thing that goes badly. Luckily I was able to get the two classes I wanted so it didn’t really matter I guess except if the semester had started and I hadn’t been registered I would have been even more annoyed!

Classes

This semester I have two classes. I have one on Mondays from 6-10pm and one on Thursdays from 6-10pm. Both are 8 weeks long so I’ll be done the final week of March with classes for the semester! I guess my next update will be an “End of the Semester” post? It seems silly to do a mid-point check in at the beginning of March and then do a wrap up post a few weeks later. Although that wrap up post would be in April so we’ll see. At least I’ll probably update more on Instagram each week though. I’m going to work on getting better at my Instagram stories.

Sales

So my Monday night class is my Sales Strategies and Techniques. I have no intention of doing a sales job myself however a friend told me it’s great for teaching you how to sell your ideas to upper management which would really help. Otherwise it’ll help when I start my own business and basically am going to be a saleswoman as well as an everything woman haha!

My first class was a great experience. At this point I know most of the people in my year. I believe two of my least favorite people in the program are in the class but three of my most favorite are there too. One of my faves and I had a great time joking about with the professor before class started and so he of course roasted both of us during class. It was a great time although I did tell him I thought he was overly optimistic that I’d be successful in selling Amazon Echos to the Chicago Public School system, which is my final presentation. He laughed and said I was so he has a lot more confidence in my skills than I do.

My professor has a ton of experience in sales, which is amazing. Also he knows how to turn on a computer and created a powerpoint presentation so already he’s a huge improvement from last semester’s professor. I thought he did a great job of explaining all the information. I thought I was going to hate this class, but I’m actually really excited for the rest of this class.

Project Management

My Thursday night class is Project Management and I actually would like to be a project manager. I feel like that is something I’d enjoy since it’s outward facing but also overseeing the internal team and making sure everything is on task. I’m excited for this one! Now, this class could be online or in person and I was tempted to do it online because then I could save myself a trip and February still has temperamental weather. However, I don’t do as well with online courses so I’m going to suck it up and go to class in person. Keep your fingers crossed we don’t get bad weather when I’m out in class!

My first class here was also a great experience, I am happy to say! So as I said, the class can also be online so every class is both live streamed on our online class tool Blackboard, but also recorded and saved into Blackboard. We had someone join from New Jersey I believe it was and someone else from California. Fun story, I thought I recognized the name from California but wasn’t sure. Well, it’s someone I knew from undergrad! She recently got married and changed her name, so that’s why it seemed familiar but I wasn’t sure until she sent me a message on Facebook where we’re still friends. How lovely!

My professor not only has a lot of project management experience but also trains business professionals as project managers, so this is really promising. He’s a newer professor but I have no problem with that as I feel that the MBA program is supposed to be more “real world” anyway. While this class is a lot more information thrown at us than sales, both are very well presented and I’m really excited for this class as well.

Books

Books for both classes ended up costing me about $90. I had one book for Sales but that cost me nearly $40 and the two for Project Management took up the rest. I did manage to find them both used so that’s a silver lining at least. It’s a bit more than I wanted to spend anyway on books, I was hoping for around $50 but I did avoid the books that were described to have damage and such when making my selections.

Looking to Graduation

I’m still waiting to hear about my graduation application that I completed back in November. I got an email about the dates for the ceremonies (one undergrad and one graduate) and it said more information would come mid this month but I’m not sure if that means I should have gotten an approval already and this is information after the approval or if it’s an approval and information. I emailed to check, and I’m sure that the fact that my classes were dropped on that website that is the delay as I’m pretty sure it had said I was going to get an email in a few days back in November. Either way, I have to save money for that too because I want to get a nice dress for the day, plus shoes, and I looked up the cost of the cap and gown. I had seen in a previous website it was $500 but now it’s listed at $70 through the college bookstore so I guess I’ll go with that. I think the worst part about it is that business students don’t even get a good color for the hood. We get tan. Tan. Sigh. The things I do for the sake of knowledge and learning.

Oh, and I am totally getting a custom double frame for my diplomas. If you have any good suggestions on where I can get that done, let me know. I know Michael’s has frames and can do custom work but do they do a good job? Please let me know if you have gotten any frames from them or anywhere else!

Although, now that I think about it, if I can find my diplomas from middle school and high school, get separate frames for all of them, and put them on the wall then I have my own gallery wall! #CollectingDegrees

Other than that, there’s not much else to add! Other than that, I’m really looking forward to the end of school. To be honest, I’m still considering asking for a refund for last semester’s class but also I feel like it might just be wasted money at the end of the day.

Once I’m done with the program I hope to be more dedicated to my blog. I have so many ideas that I’ve been holding off on just because I want to dedicate more time to them. Plus there’s other classes I want to take not related to a degree and learn about so much more as well as finally plan if/when I want to move to San Antonio. I’ve pretty much only been putting it off because of school and since my dad seems more determined then ever to move it’s time to really plan!

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So that’s my MBA Update for the start of my final semester of grad school! I can’t believe the end is nearly here. Time really flew by, and I’m so excited for the next adventure after this chapter of my life ends. Any guesses on what might be next?

Thanks for reading!

Pamela Silva 

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