I am officially a graduate student. I started classes on Jan 26 at a smaller local university that offers a hybrid online MBA. What hybrid means is that you have part "on ground" and part online courses. So, that Friday, we had our first class - Successful Distance Learning, i.e., an excuse to add 2 extra credits to my degree. It's basically an extended orientation. Friday evening we had 3, count 'em, 3 intro/get to know you exercises where we did basically the same thing. Boring.
The way they have set up the curriculum is that if I continue on the calendar that they have set up for us, I can get my degree in 22 months. So the same 20 people I'm in class with now, will be my classmates for 22 months.
For our 4 hour class on Saturday we had to do some pair work and some random team work. They also told us we had to pick out our teams - these same teams that we will be stuck in for 22 months. I still don't have a good reason as to why we are stuck in the same team for 22 months. I was told it is because most people only work with the same team members for the span of their job. I think my professor made that up. Granted, that might be true if you work for a very small company. I work for a huge corporation. I work in different teams and with different people all the time. I don't like the idea of potentially getting stuck with some slack-ass loser for 22 months.
The professor also said the majority of teams "self-select" usually by how close they live to each other or where they sit in the classroom. Well, I couldn't stand either person who sat on each side of me. The woman, popped her gum the entire class - first of all, gross; second of all - annoying! The man on the other side of me was completely and utterly helpless in all tasks and just expected me to help him out. Nu uh, so NOT happening.
We had a pair assignment and the man on my right and I had to work together. We had to find the answers to 10 questions in a document about the university policies. We were all given laptops - he had brought his own, which is fine. But, he couldn't seem to get the document to "save" to his desktop - why he needed to save it is beyond me. So he says, I can't get it to save, so we have to use yours. I said, no, you're going to close the document and try to reopen it and I'm going to do the last 5 questions and you are going to do the first 5 questions. He just stared at me...I stared back until he opened the doc again. So, I find the answers to my 5 questions and when I'm done I ask him he is as well. He hasn't even found the first answer! I said, how are you looking for it...he says, the table of contents. Now, I did mention we have laptops, therefore we are searching through an electronic document. There is a nifty feature in any program, regardless of whether or not it is Word, Excel, Powerpoint or even Acrobat - it's called SEARCH or FIND. So as you can imagine as we are on a time crunch, I end up doing 8 out of the 10 questions because even once I explain the feature to him, he is not searching under the most obvious words. For example: the question is if you drop a course after the second class how much in tuition will you be refunded? Instead of searching under "tuition" or "refund", he's searching under class. You may as well search the word "the". Since this example typifies his attitude, I thought oh hell to the no if you are on my team.
We then had to do another exercise, but this time as a random team. In this exercise we had to create a presentation in 15 minutes on what we would do if there was a slacker on our team. My idea was to designate one person to speak with the slacker to find out what was going on to see if there could be a resolution. One guy on our team said, no, we should confront the person as a team and explain that they better step up and do their work. There again, I thought oh hell to the no if you are on my team. Yes, let's confront the lazy bastard as a group to intimidate and make the person defensive. Way to alienate even further. Go Team.
My team consists of 2 other women and 1 man. C & H are the women and J is the man. They are all married with kids. We are still in the process of playing the getting to know you in terms of style. I was voted as team leader. I'm not sure how I feel about this as it clearly means more work for me. Was it because they think I'm potentially a good leader or because they know I'm single and assume I have no life. A true assumption, but they don't know that yet!
Our assignments for the Successful Distance Learning course are quite hokey. In undergrad, I was a fashion major. We didn't write papers and we didn't have team projects. We had individual projects such as make a sweatshirt by the end of the quarter. I have now had to write 2 papers: 1. Path to Success and 2. Learning Styles. I think both assignments are fluffy and boring. The first one, I am to write about how I plan to succeed at achieving my MBA...I'm thinking by flying by the seat of my pants. The second one, I have to write about what type of learner I am and the pitfalls of being that type and how I plan to overcome it. Again, fluffy and boring.
I've now seen the syllabus for the second course which starts next Saturday and frankly I'm underwhelmed. I had heard from my friends who've gotten their MBAs that it is all team projects. This next course is on organization management and consists of 6, count 'em, 6 modules that require many chapters of reading, essay questions on that reading and 6 papers - 5 individual and 1 team. So not what I was expecting for an MBA course.
Have I mentioned that this will go on for 22 months?
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I was out of town last week recruiting on at a large university in the Midwest. It was freezing. To get to this university I had to fly through Indianapolis - which was a nightmare thanks to Mr. Manning et al landing them in the Superbowl. It's so cold at this school that they actually have tunnels to get across campus so you don't have to go outside and freeze your ass off. But, in the middle of our career fair, the entire campus loses power - for a freaking HOUR I had to stand outside in 7 degree weather (I'm not even sure what the windchill factor was). Then, once the firemen gave us the all clear to go back in, there was no heat for another two hours in the school because it turns out the fire was in the steam room/boiler room of the school. So needless to say, I'm not a fan of this particular university and also am eternally grateful that I went to school in the south and therefore never had to walk through scary tunnels to get to my classes.
The best part of the trip was hanging out with my two colleagues. One of them is on the leadership program that I manage. I love this kid. He is such a star. He turned me on to this band - as it is pretty clear that I am officially OLD and had never heard of them - called O.A.R., which apparently stands for Of A Revolution. I'm sure everyone else has heard of them, but I hadn't. I like their latest album - check it out.
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