Today was a good day. I took my fist final of the semester, which means that I’m no longer juggling SIX classes. There are now just five courses standing between me and winter beak.
But it’s not just a good day because I’m crossing a class off of my list, it’s a good day because it feels exhilarating to finish an exam that I was 100% prepared to take. The times I’ve flipped out over an exam (usually a law school exam) were when I hadn’t finished all of the reading or still didn’t understand all of the concepts. I hope I can keep up this level of preparation throughout the exam period.
Now, to continue last year’s tradition of reviewing each of my classes, I present the next installment of my “Final Thoughts” series:
- Getting into the Class. There was only one section of this course offered during the fall semester. I registered outside of the bidding process with no problems. Seats were filled with MBA and MPA students. I took this class to fulfill the managing people flexible core graduation requirement: the Class of 2010 is required to choose one of a list of three 3 hour courses to fulfill this requirement, which has changed for the Class of 2011. For information about the new full-time Texas MBA curriculum, visit this page.
- Deliverables. Grading in this course is evenly spread over a number of deliverables, which lent a helpful balance to my otherwise back-loaded schedule at the law school. The deliverables included thee exams (weighted 25% each), a team case presentation (15%), and a paper (10%). Exams tested knowledge of the course readings–Harvard Business Review articles and a handful of cases–and lectures. The subject matter is inherently soft, so some students (the quantitatively inclined, in particular) feel that there is a lot of b.s. in the course material.
- The Professor. I took this course with Professor Dierking, who I found to be fair, approachable, and genuinely interested in his students.
- Grading. Based on my grades up until the exam I took today, I expect an “A” in this class. This is a class where doing the assigned work, and doing it well, will lead to success. There were no tricks. The exams fairly measured knowledge of the concepts introduced in the course.
Read the full article: Final Thoughts: Leading People & Organizations