Looking back over the past year: Winter Quarter 2008

Tom Mackey, TMMBA Student

The TMMBA class 09 has begun their journey, and our class is into our 5th of the six quarters in the program.

I’d like to share some thoughts, some memorable moments, and some tips.

The Residential was both intense and enjoyable. We left with a draft team charter, and the start of a good team working relationship. I understand that this year’s residential lasted an extra day and took place right before classes started. Our’s was the first week of December, then we had the stats workshop sessions, Christmas break, and then our classes started. I’m not sure which I like better.

Stats Workshop:

Speaking of the stats workshop, ours was given by Russ Fish, and he gave me permission to share the web site he maintains.

Russ Fish home page: http://faculty.washington.edu/rfish/
Stats workshop: http://faculty.washington.edu/rfish/tmmba_stats/

In the tmmba_stats page, near the top, you will find a tips and tricks link, and a keyboard shortcut link. There is a lot of good info there and I thank Russ for making my everyday computer work much easier. If you haven’t loaded and started using stat pad yet, do so now. I find that I use it regularly in my job, and even for personal use such as tracking and graphing blood pressure readings (More on that in my next post).

Statistics:

Martha is a great stats instructor and I am grateful for her efforts and help. I downloaded all her notes from blackboard and refer to them fairly often.

In general, take advantage of everything that the instructors post on blackboard. Some of the text books come with a CD or a web site where you can download extra information. Again, if you load the info on your laptop, you can appear a lot smarter than you are in meetings and so forth… Ask me how I know

Hint: In both Stats and Micro Econ you might find yourself needing to write complex equations in MSWord. Here is a link that explains how to add the Equation Editor toolbar into MSWord, and use it to make techie looking output. Sweet!!

http://www.ele.uri.edu/Courses/ele343/tutorials/word.equations/wordequations.html

Micro Econ (and Strategy)

Micro Econ is an interesting class, and much more math-intensive than I had expected. Since I like math, that was a good thing. But since I was a bit rusty on derivatives, especially partial derivatives, I made sure I attended all the Thursday study sessions. Hint: Micro Econ concepts form the basis of Business Strategy — but we didn’t hear that directly until this quarter in Global Strategy. It makes sense, and I think it would have helped in both classes if I had started to make that connection earlier.

Memorable moment with Ali: The morning he came in after taking his wife out for their anniversary dinner, and then going out for a night cap after — he made some mention of his indifference curve going higher and higher — until they decided to take a taxi home!
More fun with Ali: try counting how many times he uses pizzas as examples in class

Financial Accounting:

I’m not an accountant, nor based on my grades in this and the later Managerial Accounting class, will I ever be one! That said, I really enjoyed the class. Frank does a great job of trying to cram his vast experience into our heads in a short amount of time. The course is a lot of work. It is the first time that many of us experienced the time warp that occurs while taking an accounting exam. What warp is that you ask? Well, when Frank and his TA say that the exam should take you 6 hours, plan on a lot longer than that in real time. A lot longer. It will be interesting to hear what Frank has to say about the planned demise of GAAP in light of the recent scandals here and abroad. I know he has championed GAAP, and according to what I read last fall, IFRS is the coming thing. Web search GAAP vs. IFRS if you are interested in seeing lots of people argue about the differences. Hint: Pay special attention to the discussion on WIP. I came away not really understanding how to handle WIP and paid dearly on my exam…

Well, except for Teamwork, which I more or less covered in an earlier post, that wraps up my first quarter of the program.