$12,000 well spent!?

Some fellow classmate commented that my blog has been reduced to food and movie (read: fun) reviews since the middle of the quarter. Quite true, perhaps, because those things inspire me to write. There are other things that inspire me to write, but they may not be appropriate in this forum. Anyway, back to the blog.

Chicago is freaking cold now. I went from T-shirt in Boston to full ski gear in Chicago. It was so cold outside that I had brain freeze from just walking outside. And my bathroom door frame shrunk (seriously, due to coldness) and I almost got stuck in the bathroom. I've also never swore that much while walking alone. I hope the slopes aren't this cold...!

Corporate Finance - for all the hoola about the GSB being a finance school, this class is quite disappointing for many who have no background in finance. The teacher is actually above average, and yet sometimes he just looses the class. I can't really identify exactly what I learned from the class, which is my biggest beef with it. There should be some tools I can take home, but there weren't many (which is good for my finals, actually). Instead, what I think I learned was some very high level views on the world of financing. In fact, this is probably quite typical of what the GSB is about... giving you some high level tool kits and see what you can do with it. Didn't like this class that much, but intrigued by the subject nonetheless.

This also happens to be the only class this quarter in which I got cold called. Arg. My finals were quite disastrous, I think, but could go either way since I kept pulling sh!t out of my behind. For high level things, these may work. If I get an A, it will be the biggest insult in the Chicago education system. I don't really want a C though...

Negotiations - some have called this "an extention of LEAD." I have to disagree. One way to judge a class is from the finals, which was a group paper on an actual negotiation process. I'm not sure how the professor is going to grade it, but I have to say that I learned a lot from writing the paper. It consolidated what we've learned all quarter and addressed each tool one by one. Much more than LEAD.

I loved this class. I think every MBA should take some form of this class. You could argue every part of life is about negotiations... (uh oh, this is wandering into LEAD world) so this class is going to be useful at every part of life. =) haha. Seriously, I think a lot of people, like myself, went into the class skeptical. But through all the actual negotiation exercises, many of us realized that there is, in fact, some science behind negotiations. If we are able to break down the elements like we do in class, we can influence the negotiations in our favor. And that's all I ask in life: to had the odds stacked for me and not against me.

Organizational Change - heavy class discussions about nothing solid always makes a class fun... if the teacher and the students have all done their jobs. I'd say 90% of the time the class is in good flow and that we're learning a quite a bit. It's a VERY soft class, basically about how to make change happen - from motivation to creativity to gaining buy in to admitting mistakes to assessing blame in times of failure. Did I learn a set of frameworks that I can use? Perhaps. Was it worth my time? Absolutely. Would I take it again? Most likely. Would I recommend it to you? Only if you are interested in understanding how organizations work.

It's that kind of class.

Chicago Asia Pacific Group - this might as well be a class. haha. I loved everything I did for them.