Last semester!!

Yeah it’s been a while since my last post…so what!

My last semester in grad school is in full swing now and so far it’s been one of the most un-enjoyable semesters I’ve experienced since I’ve been in the program. My dissatisfaction has nothing to do with the content. I have classes in negotiation and the Capstone course every MBA must take before graduation, which I am very interested in both. The third class is a directed study to investigate market feasibility of patents owned by Delphi. I was selected along with two other colleagues to pilot this class. Needless to say it’s an honor to be selected and exciting to be involved with real-life products that a bankrupt company may use to assist in their resurgence, if that’s possible.

The problem with this semester is with two of my profs. Typically, I’m not the type of student to unnecessarily blame teachers for my experience, BUT I can’t help it in this case. Both profs have made the same major mistake in lecture. The lecture simply covers the material that was assigned to read. In most classes I’ve taken in grad school the lecture is supplemental to the reading. It does not (and should not) simply review the assigned reading. That was acceptable in high school, I guess. It’s absolutely not acceptable in an MBA program. The other problem one of the profs has is that he’s entirely unorganized and has not properly explained his expectations. For example he requires us to submit a “thought paper” and a Journal entry every other week. He has yet to explain the difference between these papers. OH and he requires us to write a paper reflecting our thoughts and feelings regarding the exercises we do in class. Now what the hell is the difference between my “thought paper” and my thoughts about the exercises? Last night we spent about 20 minutes trying to understand what he wanted in these assignments. The entire class is still confused. We just got frustrated and told him to get back to us when he could give an acceptable description of the assignments.

I’ll just write something up then negotiate a better grade. After all it is a negotiation class.