Week 10: Time Flies....

Image from blavish.com

Preparation:
Spring break....what spring break?  Actually, spring break couldn't have come at a better time.  While most undergrads were probably speeding off to home or vacation, our learning team was using the time to finish our marketing class project paper, presentation, Facebook project paper, and economics paper.  All were due on our return from spring break.
I don't want to sound like we worked the whole time on the project, but we all did spend a lot of time on our projects.  We each found some time to "detox" for a few days during the "break".  Some went to SXSW, one went away to Houston, and my wife and I went to Dallas for a few days.  But, the break was needed for the rest and to catch up.

Reflections and Expectations:

Image from xvmercy.wordpress.com

It's hard to imagine that our first class is coming to an end.  Preparation for tonight brought our team closer than we've been yet.  We're now working with much more understanding of each other's strengths (and weaknesses) as well as digging deeper on getting to know each other.  One evening we all met at Maudie's on 360 to have dinner together before we went to work on our projects.  Had a great time having each person share with the group one thing that no one would know about them.
In our last meeting together on Sunday, we met for 6 hours to finish our projects.  We experienced the whole roller coaster ride downward, feeling the pressure to finish the projects, and peaking with multiple times of laughing at one another.  I'm really enjoying our team.....each and every one of them.  I believe this time together has helped put our team puzzle together.  (Ramon, that picture is for you....since you love puzzle pics so much)  :-)


Class Time:

Tonight was the last night for our Managerial Marketing class.  Since the class time ran out last week, four people had to do their individual presentations this week.  Once they finished, we went right into each group's presentations.  The four group projects involved: San Disk, Best Buy, NFL, and the State of Texas.  It was obvious that each team had put a lot of work into their presentations and I enjoyed seeing their team dynamics, style, and creativity.  All the teams did well with their presentations and I was equally proud of the performance of our team's presentation.  We then reviewed our Facebook projects and I'm happy to say our team won the "Likes" contest this go round.  We created a page for people to share their top 3 things they'd like to do before kicking the bucket.  Even today, another person joined the page and shared their bucket list.  We are going to leave the page up so visitors can continue to enjoy reading and even be inspired by others' bucket lists.   And with that....Managerial Marketing has come to a close.

Economics:  Similar to the marketing class, we had our economics project paper due tonight.  Each team's paper will then be critiqued by a different learning team and then we will be given an opportunity to address that critique.  So, this should be an interesting few weeks ahead.  Tonight, we continued to cover the structure/characteristics of monopolies, monopolistic competitive, and oligopolies.  The highlight of the evening for me was when we got Dr. Estrada laughing so hard he couldn't continue explaining the concept of the Sweezy Oligopoly for  a couple of minutes.  It's always good to see your instructor laugh heartily!  The laughing was good, because the tension in the room was high as most seemed anxious about the test next week.  This test will primarily be on theory, so there's no problem sets to work through like we had for the last test.


Personal Thoughts:
During our two weeks between classes, I decided to invite a guy from one of the other learning teams to lunch.  I figure, if I'm going to be spending the next two years with these folks, I'd like to eventually know everyone's stories.  And wow, what a story he has.  We spent about 3 hours talking and I appreciate his transparency.
After our economics class, three of us stayed behind to ask Dr. Estrada a few questions about the test.  On our way out, I had a good conversation with another member of the class and I've asked him if he'd share his story in a couple of weeks over lunch.

My wife, Antoinette, and our dog, Dudley, for his 15th b'day.

 

While I am proudly biased towards our learning team, I am still reminded that our cohort has a lot of bright and talented people that I look forward to getting to know in our remaining time together.  Each person not only has a story, but a different perspective they bring to the cohort - perspectives that are valuable.
Most importantly, I am so thankful for my wife being so supportive in this journey.  I've spent a lot of time in books, researching on the internet, and writing - even during our time in Dallas - and she has been nothing but understanding.  I can't convey how important that has been.
Lastly, for the benefit of my learning team.  Here's the reason I was a little late for our last prep meeting together.  This is our dog, Dudley, and it was his 15th birthday and YES, we did give him cake (specially made for dogs) and ice cream.