Semester two of my MBA started last night! I was anxious to start back believe it or not. Even though we were only on a week break, I missed my group and my cohort! I was excited to use my new bag and get back into a routine. What I was not looking forward to was the exhausted feeling I have on Fridays. I'm pretty much a zombie all day and really don't get much accomplished. I usually treat myself with Starbucks on Friday mornings for a week well done, but I overslept this morning and was 30 minutes late for work, so I'm fading fast.
I think this semester is going to be just as intense as last, but so far it doesn't look like we'll have papers.projects as frequent as last semester. There was something due pretty much every week last semester and that was pretty stressful.
I liked both of my professors right away. They both seem like a lot of fun, and they like to laugh (my kinda people), but they want you to learn and grasp the subject at the same time.
Critical Thinking: I had heard from several people--and so had others in my cohort--that Dr. Werner is very passionate about scholarly writing and a stickler on APA formatting. The anxiety of writing was very apparent in the room, but Dr. Werner eased our fears some and I'm kind of looking forward to writing the paper. He asked us about our expectations of the class and each of us gave our input. For me, I would like to be able to make better decisions and judgments on a business level. Often these situations are presented to me without all the facts or sides and I have an immediate reaction, but I would like to learn how to ask more questions in a way to make a better call. As an HR professional, so much of what we do is gray area, there's rarely just a black and white situation, so being able to analyze a complex situation on the spot is key for me.
Accounting: Professor Moten is hilarious! He came into our Launch Event back in April and told the story about getting his MBA in Germany. He was very serious when tell this story so I was a little worried that is teaching style would mirror. Definitely not! He likes to tell stories and joke and he had us rolling all night. He is very open with his dislike of our book. It is written for financial accounting and we are supposed to be studying managerial accounting. I am excited about learning this. I took financial accounting in my undergrad so I have that foundation, but being able to read financial statements and understand what they mean for the business is something I really want to learn. So hopefully this class will get me there. Instead of just lecturing for the whole two hours, he will bring in exercises so that we are learning hands on. I'm excited about this. Doing is how I learn. Last night we did the main financial statements and I knew how to do them so I was proud of that.
We don't have a whole lot of group work this semester, which I'm on the fence about at this point. I love my group, I think we work well together and produce quality work, so I'm a little bummed that I won't get to hang out with them as much this semester, but at the same time it will be nice to have that evening that we met each week back.
On a side note, I finally looked at my grades from last semester. Two As and a B in Economics! I'm happy with that. Gran is taking me out to dinner this weekend to celebrate.
