Friday and I'm off to class

Thanks for all the nice comments on Reggie. It was a tough weekend, but getting back into routines was nice. We had to spend a lot of time at home this week for Rodney, the beagle. I had heard that other animals go through a period of mourning. I just didn't know how bad that could be for them. He's coming out of it though.

On the plus side, I had a lot of nice positives this week. I barely squeaked an "A" on the Econ mid-term, but hey... an "A" is an "A". The grades ranged from 92-29. 72+ (my grade) was an A and 50+ was a B. We still had 6 people flunk. I was mad at myself since 3 of my errors were careless. BUT, I'll be going into the final well positioned for an "A".

LOST has started and as always, I'm mesmerized by it. Naomi... who the hell are you? And Ben is still the creepiest person on TV. Anyone know how many episodes were made before the writers' strike?

Happily the work situation is over. I let go of the person last Friday. (Yeah, last Friday was a pretty bad day.) Unfortunately, it's a lot more work for me, but at least the work is being done right.

Have I mentioned how much I love my study group? There are six of us who now meet on Wednesdays (outside of our assigned groups) to go over the homework problems from the chapters. We get along, we laugh, we eat and we learn. It's exactly what I expected graduate school to be. Four of us from the group will be staying an extra three days after Vietnam to travel to Angkor Watt in Cambodia. Any recommendations on your many Cambodian travels would be appreciated.

OK off to class. Today is our 6th class of Microeconomics and 2nd class of Operations Management. The professor is not very organized for this second class. Plus he treats us like undergrads. Every week is a small quiz to make sure we've done the readings. Memorizing is just a tad ridiculous at age 41. Oh well.

Have a good Friday and a great weekend.

Coaching Skills

Yesterday, I met with the professor who is to be my “coach” for the next 21 months.

He was actually the one I met at the MBA open house last November. That night, we had a great talk about going back to school and being older dads. (He was expecting his first child at the time.) I remember coming home that night and telling Larry ‘I found my grad school.’

This guy was the professor for the Organizational Behavior class as well. He is one of those speakers that is just mesmerizing. I love engaging people and tend to find myself drawn to them. When it was announced after our week long residency that we could pick a professor to read our 15-page reflection paper and serve as our ‘coach’, there was no choice for me. I knew I wanted this guy and even turned in my paper early to hopefully get him.

Yesterday we met. We chatted about kids and then moved onto the paper. This paper was a chance to examine the things in our lives that were holding us back from becoming leaders. It was a chance to talk about possible paths we might like to explore in our lives and how we’d get there. It was the quintessential ‘what do you want to do when you grow up’ paper.

“Well, I went through your paper and it didn’t really have a lot of direction going in it.”

That was his first sentence. My heart sank hard. I put a lot of effort into that paper. I’m using grad school as way to help me decided what to do next, especially in the area of staying in non-profit or crossing over into for-profit. I’ve set a lot of nonexistent barriers that have kept me from looking at the for-profit world and figured that by learning more ‘real-life business’ from classes and classmates, I’d decide if the move was right for me.

He pointed out that “your future ideas seem as directionless as your past has been. I mean, you have a degree that you didn’t do anything with, you spent some time working in logistics and now you are trying marketing. You really haven’t had much a of career path. This paper is supposed to be about your next step.”

He questioned why it was that I didn’t have more concrete activities in place to help me make decisions. I explained my uncertainty on what I might want to do in two years. “I’m not sure I want to take the perfect executive corporate job just as my son turns 7,” I said. The professor is an executive coach for the numerous executives in Asia and Europe. He told us how companies would spend $15K just to fly him business class to meet with them.

I said, “Well, I’m not as lucky to have had your life. You got to do all that and then you became a father. My life turned out differently and I have decisions to make. I’m just not sure and was hoping this would help.”

At this point I just wanted to leave, but he went on. “It reminds me of the Alice in Wonderland story. Alice asked directions from the Cheshire cat. When the cat asked where she was trying to go to, Alice replied that she wasn’t sure. The cat pointed out that it didn’t really matter which path she took.”

Who says motivation speakers only charge a few thousand dollars? I got this one for over $70K.

How dare he judge my life and how far I’ve come based off some 15-page paper. I’m proud of what my life is. I moved across the country without a job or any plans on how to succeed, but did. I’ve battled alcoholism and come out to everyone I knew. I may never be some international executive, but I didn’t ask to be either. I just wanted to better myself a little and keep learning.

I left dejected. Today, I stayed home to get myself caught up on statistics. The final is being handed out tomorrow and we’ll have about 10 days to finish. What a waste. I cannot get this crap. Every time I understand a concept, I can’t make the tools work to prove my answers are right. I’m frustrated and my body, especially my neck, hurts from the tension.

Today, I want to quit. I want to just scrap the $17K already invested into this colossal waste of time and walk away. Fuck stats, fuck him and fuck thinking I need this to make myself better.

Luckily, I have 10 more weeks prepaid to help make this decision. But I can tell you with a 95% confidence interval that I’m contemplating leaving.

And for the record, I can only say a 95% confidence interval. I can’t show you how to prove it.

(Thanks for listening.)

Breaking Point

I have totally hit it with Stats. Every week, we continue to get taught more and more of this. And never once do the professors stop to really make sure we are getting it. It's like fitting gallons of math through a pin size funnel. I just can't learn this fast.

There are eight weeks of this class. We have three reference materials; an online book by one of the professors (5 chapters to read), another book on decision making (9 chapters to read) and the actual stats book (13 chapters to read).

The stats reading is over 850 pages. Included in there are over 400 practice problems. Last week it took me an hour to get through 10 pages and fully absorb the concept. I am so far behind that I really don't even know what is being taught at this point.

But I think I get probability. Here's an easy one for you.
Figure out the probability that a 40 year old man will pass a stats class if he's reading 10 pages an hour and is three weeks behind in comprehension.

0%

(Sorry, just a bad day. I'll get past it.)