My last exam of my first year was completed a few hours ago and I am now officially done with my first year of my MBA. As you may have noticed, the frequency of my posts have diminished over the past month as the workload peaked. For those of you keeping score my first year at Merage consisted of:
Pre-Quarter Residential
-Intro to Strategy
-Team Dynamics
Quarter 1:
-Corporate Accounting
-IT Strategy
-Statistics
-Project Management
Quarter 2:
-Corporate Finance
-Managerial Accounting
-Marketing
-Organizational Behavior
Quarter 3:
-Management Science
-Strategy
-Operational Management
-Investments
-New Product Development
In my opinion, the course load is incredibly diverse. I feel like I have just a pile of information crammed into my head and it is ready to explode. It is hard to take stock and realize how much I have learned because it is going to take a long time for all this information to settle in my head.
For those curious, there are dramatic differences between law and business school. Law school teaches you more of a methodology of analyzing problems, critical analysis skills, than topical information. There is very little practical learning at law school. Classes generally consisted of a mid-term and final or the lovely 100% final; absolutely no real world application of the lessons. I have no clue why law school takes 3 years. You really learn all you need to know in your first year and the actual understanding about specific laws is gained from practical experience (I was shocked after three years of law school that I really did not know the steps involved in incorporating a company - but I learned pretty quickly in the real world).
Business school gives you a diverse set of tools to tackle a wide variety of business problems from the very specific (techniques to optimize a call center) to the very general (developing corporate strategy and leading teams). Business school forces you to learn about working in teams and applying your knowledge in numerous projects for actual businesses and case studies. Exams generally represent less than 50% of your final mark. The fact that business school can cram this breadth of learning into 2 years in impressive; probably their focus on efficiency - not a law strong point.
I think my preference of learning environments is showing. Anyways, over the next couple days I hope to catch up on my posts.
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1 comment:
Well congratulations! We're most impressed with how you've tackled the workload and seemed to enjoy all the challenges. Now you have an opportunity to apply what you have learned in the larger corporate environment. This will be another learning experience as well as challenging for you. This is a great learning opportunity; so learn all that you can.
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