And…we're back!

Well, some of us are anyway! The elective classes began on Saturday for 2nd and 3rd year weekend students – they begin tonight for the evening students. This means the first-years don’t have the campus to themselves anymore (have fun parking!) and it means you’ll be hearing more from us bloggers!

Personally, I spent the summer working and on vacation (no school!) but I am actually looking forward to getting back to class. Now that the core is done, we have almost 100% free-choice on our courses. This semester, I’m taking 7 units (a full-load is 6):

• Problem Finding / Problem Solving – This 1-unit course is a new requirement for the program, and you should definitely go back and read Tim’s post on it from last year. Though I’m taking most of my courses on evenings, this one class is for five weeks on Saturday mornings, so I started it this weekend. I’m super psyched – it’s held in the architecture studio, not in Haas, so it’s a completely different feeling. We began by learning about the results of our Learning Styles inventory we took – I found out I’m “Accommodating” – which means I tend towards requiring concrete rather than abstract delivery methods to learn. I want to dig in and just try stuff, rather than observe and analyze. Interestingly, most MBA students tend to fall into the “abstract” half of the quadrant. We also got to go through a whole cycle of design thinking, including post-it note brainstorming and rapid prototyping using duct-tape and construction paper. Quite the shift from the high-tech Koret classroom where we spent every class last year!
• Strategic Brand Marketing – This 3-unit course meets Tuesdays, so you’ll have to wait to hear more about it. But we do have homework going in (What do you think the most powerful brand is?), so while it’s more qualitative than quantitative, I’m going to have plenty to do.
• Negotiations – This 3-unit course on Thursdays is very highly-rated with Professor Holly Schroth at the helm. Evidently we practice negotiating every single class. Amusingly, I also learned that our text book is Getting Past No and the textbook for the weekend version of Negotiations is Getting To Yes. Ha!

Well, more to come as we get into the year. And I’m looking forward to hearing what my fellow bloggers are taking! It’s shocking to realize, but even though I have 2 years more in the program, there are really only about 8 courses total to take once the core is done!

-Jennifer

And…we’re back!

Well, some of us are anyway! The elective classes began on Saturday for 2nd and 3rd year weekend students – they begin tonight for the evening students. This means the first-years don’t have the campus to themselves anymore (have fun parking!) and it means you’ll be hearing more from us bloggers!

Personally, I spent the summer working and on vacation (no school!) but I am actually looking forward to getting back to class. Now that the core is done, we have almost 100% free-choice on our courses. This semester, I’m taking 7 units (a full-load is 6):

• Problem Finding / Problem Solving – This 1-unit course is a new requirement for the program, and you should definitely go back and read Tim’s post on it from last year. Though I’m taking most of my courses on evenings, this one class is for five weeks on Saturday mornings, so I started it this weekend. I’m super psyched – it’s held in the architecture studio, not in Haas, so it’s a completely different feeling. We began by learning about the results of our Learning Styles inventory we took – I found out I’m “Accommodating” – which means I tend towards requiring concrete rather than abstract delivery methods to learn. I want to dig in and just try stuff, rather than observe and analyze. Interestingly, most MBA students tend to fall into the “abstract” half of the quadrant. We also got to go through a whole cycle of design thinking, including post-it note brainstorming and rapid prototyping using duct-tape and construction paper. Quite the shift from the high-tech Koret classroom where we spent every class last year!
• Strategic Brand Marketing – This 3-unit course meets Tuesdays, so you’ll have to wait to hear more about it. But we do have homework going in (What do you think the most powerful brand is?), so while it’s more qualitative than quantitative, I’m going to have plenty to do.
• Negotiations – This 3-unit course on Thursdays is very highly-rated with Professor Holly Schroth at the helm. Evidently we practice negotiating every single class. Amusingly, I also learned that our text book is Getting Past No and the textbook for the weekend version of Negotiations is Getting To Yes. Ha!

Well, more to come as we get into the year. And I’m looking forward to hearing what my fellow bloggers are taking! It’s shocking to realize, but even though I have 2 years more in the program, there are really only about 8 courses total to take once the core is done!

-Jennifer