Semester Recap

Finals are finally finished! I had about 6 different papers or project deliverables to complete by Thursday of this week and turned in my last one with about 30 seconds to spare. How's that for cutting it close? I keep thinking of those first-year students and the insanity they just passed through- it's so easy to forget how challenging the first year was. I'm looking forward to interacting more with the first years with their schedules opening a bit this next semester.

I had some great classes this semester: Group Dynamics, Creating & Managing New Ventures, Strategy Implementation, Management & Information Technology, Leadership, and Creative Strategic Thinking. I really enjoyed all of my classes, each one contributing such different dimensions to my educational experience. In group dynamics we did a lot of fishbowl exercises and worked with our teams to provide coaching and feedback for one another regarding an area of our choice (related to our group interactions). In my strategy classes, we did a lot of presentations and projects to develop new business ideas and assess existing organizations using the models and concepts we learned in our classes. I worked with a team in Creating and Managing New Ventures to develop a business plan that we will be entering in the school's business plan competition.

My favorite two classes this semester were Leadership, taught by Dr. Curtis LeBaron, and Creative Strategic Thinking, taught by Dr. Jeff Dyer. I admire both of these teachers very much and especially enjoyed the lectures, projects, and topics we explored in these classes. I believe that the "soft" skills we developed in these classes will have the largest impact on my future success in the corporate world and life in general. It was a great semester- it's hard to believe that I've only got one semester left. I almost wish the program was 2 1/2 years long just so I could cram more classes into my schedule because there are more classes I want to take than slots I have available. Anyway, one more semester to go in an incredible MBA experience!