Summer Semester So Far

Well, next week I have my midterms for the Summer Semester, and tonight I’ll probably be drowning in reviews and studying there for.  During Spring Semester I did weekly updates of how my classes were going, but so far I haven’t done that this summer.  This resulted largely because of two lost blog days per week to my “hiatus”.  And now, I can’t believe the summer semester is basically almost half over!  So, I thought I’d provide a midpoint update to how things are going in class.

The classes I’m taking this semester are required classes for the program I’m in.  They’re the last of the “Core” classes.   The first of these is Managerial Accounting and the second was Leading People & Organizations. 

The former I was decidedly not excited about.  What I do in my day job can largely be considered Managerial Accounting, so I know my way around the subject matter to some degree.  But of course my goal is to shift my career away from the world of Finance & Accounting, which is at best a necessary support function of business, and toward Marketing, which really is more of a core function of any business (if you build it, they will not come, unless you market it and market it well).  So rehashing something that I kind of half-knew in a field that had little long-term interest for me was not an exciting proposition.  But, so far, the class has been reasonably enjoyable.  I’ve learned things about how I could do my job better than the way it’s currently done where I work.  And even if my long-term goal is to get out of this field, what I’ve learned will, I think, still be helpful in future strategic planning for whatever company I may eventually work at, and may be especially helpful when working with various managerial accountants in those companies in the future. For instance, asking them “hey, could you do this or provide me with this data?”

The second class was inherently more interesting-sounding, to me.  I’d enjoyed my various organizational theory and development classes in my undergrad experience, and I’d also enjoyed the leadership program here in my MBA.  So this promised to be an interesting class, at least.  And so far it has been (other than one incident in which I made an ass of myself [long story, but I forgot that one of the readings I had done for class was, in fact, an assigned reading, and proceeded to make a fool of myself by referring to in class discussion as though it were something I had discovered on my own]).  The topics in this class, so far, have centered around cognitive biases that affect decision-making and working with teams.  Basically, the class is focused on the various tasks and challenges faced by leaders of organizations.  I may not be a leader of an organization (yet) but the information is still useful, nonetheless.

So, that’s the semester so far.  It’s been interesting, even if it’s been a challenge – especially since many of my free weekdays have become days focused on career-planning activities: sprucing up the resume, learning interview skills, and zeroing in on what I will do in my post-MBA career.  All of which will be very important in my ongoing “support of my family”, a responsibility which has taken on new importance with the advent of B.T. into our home.