Another one down. I finished the exam a little after 11 and got out soon after. Apart from the slippery cab ride home (it’s a little snowy here today) it’s been a nice relaxing afternoon. The cats seem happy to see me, I seem happy to see my couch, and Nellie’s off somewhere enjoying a spa with her mother. All is well…until Monday, at least, when it’s back to work and I have to start reading 800 pages of marketing textbooks.
[tags]mba[/tags]
Can’t talk. Exam-ing.
[tags]mba, exam[/tags]
A review of Meet The Spartans in Slate contains what may be the best line of the year so far:
This was the worst movie I’ve ever seen, so bad that I hesitate to label it a “movie” and thus reflect shame upon the entire medium of film. [Directors] Friedberg and Seltzer do not practice the same craft as P.T. Anderson, David Cronenberg, Michael Bay, Kevin Costner, the Zucker Brothers, the Wayans Brothers, Uwe Boll, any dad who takes shaky home movies on a camping trip, or a bear who turns on a video camera by accident while trying to eat it.
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Well, this is certainly an Afghanistan worth fighting for:
Last week, a court in Balkh province sentenced Perwiz Kambakhsh, 23, to death for distributing articles downloaded from the Internet that were said to question the Koran and the role of women in Islam.
[via Torontoist]
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Every time we come here for a course a few of us have a tradition on Thursday. Because we can’t bear the thought of another meal here, we order pizza, drink a few beers and relax a bit before heading off to study for tomorrow’s exam. As such the evening has become known as Pizza Thursday.
Pizza Thursday will commence a few hours from now, and we’ll be about 86% of the way through our week*. However, as we sit and enjoy our pie we’ll also just happen to be about 86% of the way through the entire program. Usually Pizza Thursday signals the turning of the final corner of each week we spend here; tonight, though, it signals the rounding of the final corner of the entire four years. After tomorrow morning’s exam we really will be in the home stretch…provided we don’t stumble in that final turn.
Wish me luck.
*I have a javascript that tells me these numbers, obviously, lest you think I’m sitting down and calculating it each time I post something. That’d be silly.
[tags]meet the spartans, afghanistan, mba[/tags]
For the first time in ages (seriously, it’s probably been a couple of years), I got to play basketball in the gym. It was good to empty my head of everything but my foul shot for half an hour. A quick trip to Subway and I had sustenance for the evening…all set for studying.
I was a little worried about the course earlier in the week but I think it’s under control. I still don’t think I’ll be spending much time in the bar this week, but I’m feeling okay about Friday. We’ll see if I’m still of the same mind tomorrow.
[tags]mba, basketball, subway[/tags]
Canada’s oldest bookstore, The Book Room in Halifax, is closing. I don’t have any particular problem with it closing, I just thought it was cool that the oldest bookstore in Canada was in Halifax.
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Today was challenging at times but things started to gel a bit toward the end. I’m going to have to do some work tonight; need to catch up and prepare some study materials. I still have some work work that I want to do but I don’t think I can spare the time. I don’t want to mess up this exam; it’s much too late in the game to mess up now.
.:.
I finally finished the Naomi Klein book this week. It drifted toward the end — I think the entire section on Israel was a little too micro to carry the same weight as earlier sections — but it was still a very interesting companion piece to this MBA I’m doing. It’s not as if Friedman worship flares up often, but there’ve been some discussions that in class that’ve sounded eerily similar to some neo-liberal scripture.
I think next I might read Incendiary by Chris Cleave (amazon | indigo). I didn’t realize it’d been made into a movie, so I’d like to read it before that comes out.
[tags]halifax, the book room, mba, naomi klein, shock doctrine, incendiary, chris cleave[/tags]
Thank god for Hero Burger. I couldn’t stomach the dinner tonight (veal, chicken something or other, snapper…not good) so a friend drove us to HB where I could get a veggie burger. I feel much better now.
I’m not sure how to feel about this course yet. I have no problem with the math and the logic needed to solve each question. I just don’t always know which logic and math is needed for each particular question. So that’s an issue.
[tags]hero burger, mba[/tags]
Granted, the competition was Rambo, but what does it say about our society that Meet The Spartans won the weekend at the box office? The movie has a 5% rating, fer chrissakes.
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Today wasn’t so bad. The prof is pretty good at explaining things and I haven’t gotten lost yet, but I think it’s only gonna get tougher and I have to be careful not to drift off for a few minutes or I’ll be lost. I’ll have to stay on my toes this week.
[tags]meet the spartans, rambo, mba[/tags]
Despite not having nasal passages clear enough to support running, the no-chocolate thing seems to be doing some good. Lost 1.5 pounds last week.
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I’m just getting ready to start the intensive session of my course. Just finished unpacking and having a snack, building up some energy before class begins at 1:00. This week won’t be pleasant — the topic is corporate finance — but I believe it’s the last tough course, and the third last overall.
[tags]fatblogging, mba[/tags]
My assignment, the last for this course, is done. I finished it off around 10:00 and practically skipped — pranced, even — to the couch to watch the Canadiens-Bruins game on the PVR.
That’s the last schoolwork I have to do for a couple of weeks. Weeks, internet, weeks! On an unrelated note, there’s a bluebird on my shoulder and everything is satisfactual.
[tags]mba, canadiens, bruins[/tags]
People occasionally ask me why I’m doing an MBA. Recently I’ve found it difficult to answer that; I’ve been down in the weeds of it for so long that it’s sometimes hard to remember why I signed up in the first place. So today I decided to write this, partly to explain it to people, and partly to remind myself. The major reasons:
Colleagues and managers told me I should. This wasn’t a reason so much as a driver. I actually wouldn’t have even considered it if a colleague, one of the first people I worked with when I returned to my company, hadn’t suggested I get into the program (my company has a special MBA program set up through a particular university). She was just about to finish hers and suggested I look into it. A couple of years later my new manager suggested I apply, and this time I did.
To assuage a bit of guilt. Yes, I have a business degree, and yes it’s from the same university from which I’m now seeking an MBA. However, my brain just wasn’t geared for learning in those four years, and what little sank in atrophied in the following five years as I took on a series of technical jobs. Around the time I signed up for the MBA I was back on the business side of things and starting to use those parts of my brain again, but I always felt like I hadn’t used those years as well as I could have. Signing up for the MBA helped me make up for that.
To create a good network of colleagues. Networking isn’t something I do well, or easily. It’s anathema to an introvert. My afore-mentioned colleague (and other people I’d since met who’d gone through the program) talked about the benefits of being thrown into a group of 30 people from all over the company and the networks that develop just by dint of being locked in a room with them. So far it’s worked pretty well; I know more people in different parts of my company (and country) now, and I’ve developed some pretty good friendships too.
I just always feel the need to learn something. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, Dan’s gotta learn something new. I’m not happy unless I’m learning something on a semi-regular basis. As much as I’m looking forward to finishing this thing, I know that two months after I graduate I’ll take for German lessons or teach myself Python or sign up for digital photography classes. Actually, maybe I should delay the education for a little longer and sign myself up for a 10k…
Any of those strike you as weird? I’ve had people tell me they wouldn’t have signed up for four years of lost evenings and weekends for any of those reasons.
[tags]mba[/tags]
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 