Unfamiliar Waters

Image from pixdaus.com

The new semester is already three weeks old!  Marketing and Economics are behind us.  The new semester includes Critical Thinking and Managerial Accounting for the first 10 weeks, then we'll have five weeks of Organizational Behavior and Change (four hours each session).

Critical Thinking is taught by Dr. Werner.  I thought the Leadership Series was a good catalyst to help me get back to introspection, but Critical Thinking is causing more introspection.  The class requires a lot of reading during the week, but this reading is difficult for me to just gloss over.  It is rich with meaty information that I'm constantly asking myself, "What do I do with this?  How can I apply this?"  Dr. Werner does a great job of facilitating the class discussion and is very intentional about bringing everyone into the conversation.  It has only felt like we've been sitting a few minutes when we realize that the two hours have passed.

Accounting has been very fast paced as well.  Dr. Peoples definitely loves to teach and brings a sense of excitement to the classroom - which is hard to do with this subject.  The problem sets have been moderately challenging so far, but I can tell they will be getting more difficult very quickly.

At this point, I'm realizing that I'm drawn more to the subjects that help me to not only understand others better, but also myself.  This is truly unfamiliar waters.  I've always been a people-watcher and have always been fascinated by what made "others" tick, but now the focus is also on what makes me tick - how I think.  As I dive deeper into the critical thinking literature, I'm starting to see the areas that need to be tweaked or even overhauled.  I'm once again at the metaphorical crossroads, but this time it's in the form of a shore or pier, as seen in the picture above.

I've got a choice.  I can sit on the shore and continue to watch the sun rise and set, see incredible reflections off the peaceful still waters, and enjoy the calm.  Or, I can step off the pier into the boat and row out to deeper waters away from the illusive security and stability that the pier may bring.  To stay on the pier means to accept status quo and try to be satisfied that I've already learned and grown so much.  But, that's impossible!  As I continue to visit my manifesto, I know that the only way to do what I've felt compelled to do with my life is to jump right in and face whatever the deep waters may bring.  Every day there is a choice - create some internal ripples by rowing out a little deeper or turn around and head for the shore.  I choose to go deeper!

It reminds me of some of the lyrics from the Steven Curtis Chapman song, "Dive":
...

And like the rain
I have been carried here to where the river flows, yeah
My heart is racing and my knees are weak
As I walk to the edge
I know there is no turning back
Once my feet have left the edge
And in the rush I hear a voice
That's telling me it's time to take the leap of faith
So here I go

Chorus:
I'm diving in, I'm going deep, in over my head I want to be
Caught in the rush, tossed in the flow, in over my head I want to go
The river's deep, the river's wide, the river's water is alive
So sink or swim, I'm diving in

In case you're interested, here's his video:

Week 2: Cobwebs, Schedules, and Personalities

Preparation:
This week proved to be a good week to clean off the cobwebs of my learning and study habits.

The writing assignments for both economics and marketing we not too terribly labor intensive, but adding in all the reading requires looking for every opportunity in your schedule to read a few pages.  As with any group of five individuals thrown into a team, there are schedules and personalities.  For my learning team, we are working well together as a team.  Our biggest challenge will be our schedules.  Three of us travel with our work, so it will just be a matter of over-communicating our schedules to one another.

Reflections and Expectations:
I am quickly learning that one habit I need to change is to go to bed earlier and get up earlier as reading early morning is proving to be better for me with respect to comprehension and retention.   The combined reading and writing assignments are forcing me to be more disciplined with my schedule and plan out more.
As I am preparing to go over to the campus to meet with my learning team before class, I am excited to continue to get to know my team members as we learn how to best utilize each others strengths for the good of the team.  I am hoping that evening's classes will include lively discussion and debate as we clarify and validate what we've read this week.  Will be interesting to watch the group dynamics of the class as each learning team starts to form their individual group synergies.

Class Time:
I had met with some of the learning team earlier that afternoon, so we walked up to class just a few minutes before it started.  Room was extra warm tonight which made it a little difficult to concentrate.  The learning teams seemed a lot tighter tonight as we all seemed to stay in our little groups throughout the night instead of engaging others from the different teams.  Professor Warren had some people share their ad/article analysis that they had done for our weekly assignment.  Good discussion and always enlightening to see how others approach their assignments.  We learned more about the group and individual projects that will be due during the class and I'm officially in schedule mode.  This is going to take some sorting out and rearranging my schedule to squeeze in more time to work on this.
During Economics, Dr Estrada took the time tonight to take us all through a few of the basic concepts from Chapter 1&2 in response to our questions.  He provides many real world examples that help put the "book knowledge" in a different light.  Similar to the marketing class tonight, we also learned about our group project that will be due at the end of the semester.  This is really going to get busy!

Personal Thoughts:
Well.....2 weeks down and the work is starting to pile up.  I can't get too overwhelmed since I've not yet experienced the full load of work these projects are going to require.  Worrying about it at this point, will just waste brain cells and time.  Our learning team is quickly unifying and planning some time to meet this week to work on some economics problems that should hopefully help us all to feel more confident in the material.  I had recommended, and the team agreed, that we rotate an assigned leader for the team each week.  That person will be responsible for coordinating our meeting times, our project work, and basically managing us as a team for the week.  Each week a different person will assume that position giving each person multiple times to lead throughout this and next semester.  So, at week 2, I'm liking marketing much more than I thought and not disliking economics as much as I thought that I would. 
In case you want others' perspectives on this journey, the following are others that are currently blogging:
David Pfahler
Christine Herrera  
Amanda Keeter

And so it begins...... Week 1

Format Note:

I've decided to add a couple of sections to the weekly blog.

"Preparation" to give insight to what I had to do to prepare for the week - a general summary.

"Reflection and Expectations" to give thoughts on the challenges of the week while preparing and to provide any relevant expectations of the upcoming class.

This will require me to write these two sections BEFORE class.

I will then conclude the weekly update with "Class Summary" and "Personal Thoughts"

Preparation:
In preparation for classes this week, a couple of things had to be accomplished.  Since I had taken the Economics pre-assessment test and didn't do so well, I needed to take the Ivy Class on Economics.  So, finishing that this week while experiencing the wonderful world of cedar fever proved to be a challenge.  I studied most of the week and most of the day Saturday, then took the test Saturday night and ....passed!

Mid-week, we received our learning team assignments from Dr. Ford.  We are grouped into learning teams with four members each.  These four people will stay as a learning team for 2 semesters.

We also received a note from Professor Warren earlier this week stating that we should read the first two chapters in our textbook and be ready to discuss SWOT in class.  "Two chapters", I thought, "no big deal".  So, I had put off reading those chapters until after I finished the economics assessment.  Well, two chapters turned out to be a BIG deal for me.  This is a honking big book and the print is small, two chapters proved to be ALOT of reading!  But, I finished it Monday morning and am ready for class.

Commercial Break: Reflection and Expectations
While doing the required study / pretest for economics and the reading for marketing, I'm a little anxious about ramping up my study skills.  It's been 21 years since I've really had to engage studying habits this intense and at that time I was a full-time student.
Incidentally, the message in church yesterday was "What are you doing to prepare for Sunday".  The point being that corporate worship and hearing from God, requires preparation (basing it on the events leading up to Acts 10:44).  This hit me specifically because of the amount of "preparation" I had done this week for the 4 hours of class.  What if I had prepared with the same intensity for Sunday worship (this takes on different meaning for different folks)?  Just that thought has totally changed my morning quiet time, starting this morning.

I'm looking forward to this evening's class to get to know my learning team.  I'm excited to see what each of us will be able to contribute to the team.  I am a little anxious about economics, even though I made a 90 on the pre-assessment, I feel like I essentially crammed and am worried that a lot of it might not "stick".  I have no idea what to expect out of marketing tonight, but I think I will really enjoy diving into that class.

Class Time:
There was a much more relaxed atmosphere tonight as class started.  After the normal introductions with at the beginning of each class and going over each class syllabus, we were off to the races.  We immediately dove into a SWOT analysis for a scenario with Apple Computer's IPhone being offered on the Verizon network.  Great discussion and just gave us a taste for the type of discussion to follow.  Time flew by and we were done with Marketing class for the evening, had a 20 min break and Economics was to begin.

I have to hand it to Dr Estrada, he definitely knows how to use real life examples / stories that help you understand the principle of economics.  The evening was spent with lecture on the basics of economics and helped reinforce some of the assessment studies that we had to do.

One evening done.....lots of work ahead.

Personal Thoughts:
The evening met expectations of being engaging and sitting through this with our learning teams.  Going through the syllabus made me understand that our learning teams are really going to be working a lot together and leaning on each other to get all of this work done.  One interesting observation was watching each learning team start to plan together.  Since there is a project that we will actually compete with each other - that competitive component seemed to thrust each team into tight groups at the end of class this evening.  Each trying to figure out their best meeting options and likely how to get started asap on their project.
Wish I had more introspection that this, but this is just beginning........

Launch Workshop - Jan 3, 2011

So begins my 2 year journey to an MBA at Concordia University in Austin, TX. This blog is an attempt to help me capture the events, process and hopefully personal growth through this two year journey.  I decided to do this as one of the members of the first Cohort had done the same thing and it really helped me by reading her blog.  Not that this will help anyone else, but at least it will facilitate my own gathering of thoughts each week.
The journey began this past Monday night, January 3rd, with the Cohort 2 Launch Workshop. It was facilitated by Dr. Ford. Upon arrival, there was a sense of apprehension AND excitement in the air. The room was arranged into five table groups, four people per table. Dr. Ford and Dr. Christian were both moving throughout the room sitting with different table groups to get to know us and break the ice.
Our homework due for that evening was to each bring in a one page situation brief that focuses on one aspect of the the assigned problem. The problem we were to address was that given the current global economy, what can we do to capture, cultivate and retain a talented workforce. We could try to address this at as high a level or low a level or our own choosing.
As we began sharing our situation briefs with our individual table groups, my table discovered that we had all essentially written similar situation briefs focusing on workplace fulfillment. Each table group took notes on one large paper to summarize the approach to this big ambiguous problem. The discussion was great and gave great insight into the thought processes of the members of the cohort and what to expect in this two year journey together. Once we discussed as our table group, two members of the group had to rotate to another table to learn what that group had come up with, share relevant information that we could add, and discover commonality in our approaches. Each table group's paper was put up on one of the walls and we spent 10-15 minutes going over all of them to look at varying approaches.
We spent the rest of the evening discussing various introspective questions with our table groups and then would share with the whole room as facilitated by Dr. Ford.

Personal thoughts:
I came into the evening wondering how easy or difficult this journey would be. I shared that evening that I am terrified, but very excited. I came away from the evening with the utmost respect for my peers as I got to observe their transparency, as well as their thought process. The humbling thought for the evening came to mind as I was listening.....I thought to myself, "I'm not the brightest bulb in the box". This is a room of diversity of education and work backgrounds, ideals, and thought processes, but it's a diversity that will serve to complement and unify us as a "little family". I'm proud to be a part of this group and excited to watch us all grow through this together. I hope I can still feel this way at the end of this semester :-)