A Moment of Relief

With the conclusion of the 10th group presentation today, IT class has come to an end. My response in these situations (i.e., post-exam or post-class) is typically the same: way too much internal panic and thoughts of desperation leading up to the event, excitement and high energy on the date the assignment is actually delivered, and a huge sense of relief immediately afterward. Like we all survived some shared horrible experience. Such is my feeling as I type this post-- class is over, my suit jacket is off, I've eaten lunch, and I've settled into one of the conference rooms to wrap up my few remaining assignments for the remainder of the half-semester. We're back again next week for the start of our second half of the semester, and we already met about our first assignment from that class (due on November 1), so the rosy feeling won't last for long I'm sure, but for now I'm going to savor it.

Level of Effort

Now that we're deep into Second Year, the topic is coming up more and more frequently of: just how much effort do we need to put into "X" anyway? ("X" here could be a group paper, final, or PowerPoint presentation). Not that we're thinking about skipping the work entirely, just that we're questioning how much we really need to put into every little thing that comes up. Honestly, it seems we were all a lot more eager last year to go above and beyond; now it seems like we just want to keep our heads down in the foxhole and not get our heads blown off.

In an instant messaging conversation with one of my teammates tonight, we were discussing the group presentation we have coming up on Friday for IT class. We've had a couple of weeks to size up the professor and feel we have a fairly good idea of how he grades assignments. Plus many of us have memories of busting the midnight oil last year (remember those teams who met two or more times each week for Markstrat?) only to receive.....pretty much the same grade we would have received if we didn't have the 3D animations in our PowerPoints (or the plumber's outfits, the dancing elves, or video montage).

Truth be told, it's a good thing this program is only two years long-- any more and we'd really be phoning it in!

No Surprises

As we continue into the second year of this program, it's become clear to me that one of the most important factors in a program like this (targeting working professionals) is consistency. We expect to get our marching orders in the form of a syllabus at the start of the semester, and we build our weekly working plans from that. After that initial plan is set, even the smallest change (like adding a new case to read) is a huge issue. Almost no professor we've had seems to fully comprehend this. During first year, it was common for us to receive notes mid-week before a class weekend changing an assignment, adding an assignment, or extending the due date on an assignment (which of course only penalizes those of us who actually stuck to the original schedule).

Even in second year, and especially with our IT class, things are still much less predictable than I'd like. The professor has frequently added work, changed work, and created distractions in the form of optional exercises to the point that it's very difficult keeping up. I think many of us have just checked out-- I know I've come close. As results-oriented professionals who seek clarity in other areas of our lives, it is been extremely frustrating to deal with these distractions. E-mails from the professor announce new activities and we constantly have to re-assess these in the context of our other work for the class, in the context of our potential grades, and in the context of the rest of our busy lives. This may work for undergraduates (unmarried, no kids, no jobs, lots of time on their hands) but it's driving me absolutely batty.

Fact Check

So we continue to have issues with some of the facts being presented in our IT class. I don't think it's beyond reasonable to expect that our professors will have the latest and most accurate information. Sure, in our Strategy class last year, we may have had older information and cases (some dating back to the 1970s) but the information was included because it had retained its relevance over time.

Not so for our IT class. This is our third session and already the professor has based his lectures on information that is not only dated but also inaccurate:

1. He claimed the total sales at Wal-Mart were in the neighborhood of $175 billion. In fact it was $397.3 billion.
2. He claimed that Apple had the largest market capitalization of any technology company. In fact, Apple is #3 behind Microsoft and IBM.
3. He claimed you could only buy Dell computers online, using Dell's direct model. In fact, Dell now sells PCs through Best Buy stores as well.
4. He claimed you couldn't buy M&M's online. In fact the company has offered custom-printed M&M's on its website for years.
5. He asked, "Who ships anything via next-day shipping anymore?" Um, how about just about everyone in business?!?
6. He claimed, "everything Microsoft has, Apple had years ago." I'm not even going to touch that one, it's so uninformed.

It would be different if he were espousing items we couldn't easily check online, but this is pretty basic stuff.

Sigh.

Blogging Professors

As I've written before, we have all kinds of fancy new technology in our classroom this year (but only this morning did we get blinds on the windows-- a story for another time).

Further bringing us down the rabbit hole of technology, I found this morning that our IT professor has himself been blogging about us.

http://magicbazaar.blogspot.com/

Is it possible to create a blogging feedback loop? Or a blogging Hadron Collider?

Should be fun to find out.