Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Sea Salt and the Professional UF MBA Workload

UF MBA, Working Professional UF MBA, University of Florida MBA
The Working Professional UF MBA Program goes in rhythms of demand. One week, I'm takin' it easy - I get home from work each night, pop open a Jai Alai IPA, go through the motions of my daughter not eating her peas, and search for a respectable movie to watch on Netflix Online (only to find that after an hour, there are no respectable movies on Netflix, and re-runs of Arrested Development or weird, low-budget documentaries would have to suffice).

The next week, I'm going to the Hyppo Cafe every night, sucking down espresso and working on cases, studying for tests or preparing for presentations. Of course, every time there's a busy week at school, it never fails - it is a more demanding week at work.

The combination of these two stresses, and the associated neglect of your family, real social relationships, and fake social relationships (Facebook) that come with it, makes life tricky for a while, especially for us diligent, really-want-to-learn-stuff types.

But you figure it out. For my little family, it was all about finding the breaking point, and going until going any more would result in divorce, a teenage girl that has no self-esteem or Tombstone frozen pizzas (Freschetta pies do not constitute the breaking point - I mean, the sauce is made with sea salt and olive oil). After just barely avoiding a nasty divorce every month, I'm back to playing throw-my-daughter-up-in-the-air-until-my-wife-tells-me-it's-too-high, and other fun games of that nature.

Of course, each professor's workload is different. Most have quizzes every class session, most have various case studies you need to report on, and most have an end-the-term presentation required (in addition to, or replacement of, a final).

In the Working Professional program, you take three classes per term - two, three-credit courses, and one, one-credit course, like Professional Writing or Personal Finance. There's also two weeks when you have to be on campus - the first week, for orientation/foundations review, and the elective week. Alternatively, instead of spending an elective week in Gainesville learning about negotiation tactics or how to construct a business plan, you could do a global immersion. This is where you pay a good amount of cash to spend the week someplace much more glorious and businessy than Gainesville, FL.

Working Professional UF MBA, University of Florida MBANo offense to the beautiful town of Gainesville, with its quaint downtown, its hipster restaurants and eccentric homeless people, but when I think of an epicenter of industry or a business capital of a market, Gainesville, FL just doesn't cry Silicon Valley. But maybe it's just me.

I wanted to go on one of these trips, but at an estimated $5,000ish, I couldn't afford it (I don't work for Lockheed Martin. Aww snap!). Although a trip to Dubai or Buenos Aires sounded like a blast (oh yah - and a great opportunity for learning), my wife convinced me - through the negotiation tactics that I had yet to learn - that we should use the money instead to go on a family trip to Yosemite or Acadia NP after graduation. She had me at Yos..., and I quickly signed up for negotiation class. At least in the negotiation elective, I thought, I'd be able to defend against my wife's unprecedented ability to convince me of just about anything.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Precious Moments with Dr. Jane Douglas

One of the first assignments I completed for Dr. Jane Douglas' Professional Writing class was a personality test. I love those dang tests. I've probably taken 800 of them in my lifetime, and they continue to surprise me with accuracy. I remember one of the questions, "Do you prefer being alone or being with a group?" I picked the group answer, and shortly after, Myers-Briggs told me I was an extrovert. Well I'll be.

Dr. Jane Douglas laughs in the face of your stereotypical professor. She cusses, talks about Jesus and nuns, and wears fitted clothing my grandmother probably wouldn't appreciate, all in the name of tenure. I liked her style - Jane told you how it is. If your writing was crap, she'd let you know through "track changes" notes that read longer than your submission. If your writing was good, she'd tell you why your writing was good.

UF MBA, University of Florida MBA, Grades in MBA
I was torn apart by her grading, which I liked. I'm not talking about 50-Shades-of-Grey-Torture-Weird-Stuff liked. I'm talking Mr-Miyagi-Teaching-Daniel-Son-Wax-On-Wax-off liked. I much prefer and benefit from a class where I get a B and learn a ton rather than a class where I get an A and felt like my time would have been more fruitful had I been cross-stitching Precious Moments scenes.

I write using "it" and "that" way too often, and Jane let me know those words are the devil. Of course, I would have known this if I had nuns for teachers in grade-school, but alas, my only editorial corrections over the last several years have come from Words with Friends.

Jane had us pick writing assignments that are of personal and professional interest - I picked the blog post assignments and the executive summary. The final is a group final, which sounds better than it is. Our assigned group was responsible for putting together one page of writing. We were writing an announcement to employees. Easy enough.

Jane gave some priceless advice before the final, "If this assignment collectively takes you longer than two hours, your paper is probably going to make me want to stab my eye with a sharp object." She was right - if your group didn't connect with the assignment right away, it would promise to be a long project that progressively loses quality from over-thinking. Our paper took five hours, and Jane now sports an eye-patch.

The night of the finals, Derrick, in his amazing event planning wisdom, got the class a stretch limo and a night at 101 Downtown, an urban, music-so-loud-you-have-to-yell type of place. Yah - the bottles of vodka came out with little sparklers attached to them. The bends from my final slowly and melodically turned into awkward dance moves and injured vocal chords. Our first term was officially over. And the next day, at 7:30am sharp, we'd be at it again, save for those who were a little too excited about those pretty sparklers.