Week one of classes for this quarter are officially done. I’m going to reiterate my eariler statement—I’m surprised by the amount of work. I do think I’ve gotten a little better with time management this week and am starting to learn what I need and don’t need to read.
First (as promised) is my impression of the pre-courses. What everyone says is true: if you have a basic understanding of anything taught in the pre-courses, you don’t need to take them. The information is covered again in the actual course. That being said, I found that I did get some real value from the courses since they gave me a little bit of a leg up this week and allowed me to settle into the swing of things rather than to worry as much about learning totally new material.
Second, my thoughts on the courses:
- Statistics for Managers
This course seems more about learning how to convert management questions to stats questions and how to design an studies than stats courses I’ve taken in the past. I’m not quite sure where it’s going but it’s mostly new information to me. The ideas so far haven’t been that difficult. The project for the course is going to be a pain in the @$$ (more about it in a later post). - Managerial Economics
Having taken a 100 level econ course in my undergrad, this course has been a review so far. The one difference I have noticed is that there is a focus on maximizing firm profits (duh!) unlike the 100 level econ course I took. The one thing to note is that this is the only course that we don’t get lecture notes online. - Financial Accounting
There isn’t much to say about this course. We are just learning about the major financial statements: how things are categorized, recorded, and some of the rules we should be aware of when reading financial statements. One overriding theme has been been (as mentioned earlier) don’t cook the books. Another major theme (so far) is that a Balance sheet really isn’t worth the paper it’s written on if your trying to gain a real understanding of what a firm and its assets are worth—watch out for GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Practices) changes in a few years. - Foundations of Integrative thinking
This is mostly a psychology course so far and I’m really enjoying it despite its “soft” nature. It really shows you how people are manipulated and how we all make bad judgments all the time. The point is to try and keep us from making bad decisions by showing us how we make decisions and what external factors can inversely effect our thinking. I’ll admit it; I’ve fallen into a decision trap just about each time the professor has proposed a question with some sort of trick to it. SHAME!
- Managing People in Organizations
By far the “softest” course in my opinion. It does provide a lot of interesting information but coming from a quantitative background I’m having a little trouble making the adjustment to being all “touchy-feely.” This one has an exam. Eeep.
I’ve spent wayyy to much time on this post so I’ll skip the rest and post more thoughts at some other point. Enjoy your weekend, I’ll be reading. 