It’s hard to believe that 7 weeks have already passed since the semester began. It’s been quite busy as evidenced by my lack of writing. What has taken up most of my time?
I’ve got the work of about 5 classes right now, although two will be done as of tomorrow night. I have a paper for my fundraising class and a paper for my team building class. I also have a problem set due Wednesday, which I’ve mostly written, but also needs polish.
So far, courses are all pretty good. I’m a little disappointed with fundraising, but the book is excellent and I have enjoyed the assignments. I do with Hands On Gulf Coast had gotten back to me so I could have done some analysis on them, but ah well.
My favorite course to date is the International Economic Development course taught by Jonathan Morduch. He’s an engaging lecturer and the material, focusing mostly on microfinance, is very interesting. Contrasting with the laser focus of microfinance is Paul Smoke’s and Leonardo Romeo’s Decentralized Development Planning course. I enjoy it because we talk about high level planning systems and processes in developing countries. Currently, the focus is just on learning about those systems, but we will eventually get into case studies to transform the abstract into something concrete. I’m looking forward to that.
Outside of class, I work 20 hours a week building a budget spreadsheet. I’m in the Finance and HR department of the school, so I’m working on a school-wide tool to track expenses and build budgets. It’s kinda cool and I’m learning a ton about pivot tables. Who knew they were so powerful? Just about every developer and spreadsheet junkie out there making a living playing with Excel. I’m slowly joining the ranks.
Anyway, I’ll write a more detailed post when I’m not about ready to pass out.
Class started three weeks ago today. So far, so good. I’m happy with all my courses so far – Strategic Management, Decentralized Development Planning, International Economic Development, Fundraising, and Building Effective Teams. The last two classes are shorter courses – worth 2 credits each, but that only means I’m not in class every waking minute for the rest of the semester. Until they’re done in about four weeks, it’s lots of work!
September 22nd, 2009 in
New York | tags:
courses,
wagner |
No Comments
Well, I finished my exams last week on Thursday. Classes in general are DONE! I turned in my last paper late Monday night. To celebrate on Tuesday, I worked on El Pueblo’s website. Yeah!
Actually, I didn’t turn in the paper. Beth, a group member on the Afghanistan Project, submitted the final document to the Professors. You want to read the paper? Well, it lives on the Afghanistan site I set up for class. You can read the final paper here.
We scrambled to finish and compile the Afghanistan paper over the weekend – it pretty much consumed Friday morning through Monday night – but I’m very happy with the final product. I think we have a well thought out set of ideas based on a broad survey of historical and current readings. Because Afghanistan policy and activity unfolded while we did our research, we were able to capture sources from about a week ago. One article about opium addiction published on May 6, 2009, formed the basis for our concluding thoughts and remarks.
Now, I just wait for the grades to roll in. The Financial Management exam was tough but fair. I know I made careless and not so careless errors, but I was happy my balance sheet, activities statement, and cash flow statement all balanced the way they ought to. Even if the answers were wrong, they were at least consistent!
I thought the microeconomics exam was tougher than previous practice exams and was tougher than I was expecting. I struggled through a couple problems, but I think I arrived a solid solutions and conclusions for each.
All grades will be posted by the 18th. More news on academics then.
Already I’ve run into a bit of a problem with earning my degree in one year. Apparently, if you start in the Spring of 2009 and you want to focus on international development, there is no way to complete your one year masters degree in one year. Why? Because two required classes – one required for the degree and one required as a prerequisite for higher-level development courses – are offered at the same time on Monday. Ugh.
That’s fine. It costs a little more money, but perhaps it’s not so bad to have a little more time to learn something about the field. The other unfortunate situation I’ve run into is finding the courses I want to take already full. This happened with two courses, so one more year might give me the opportunity to take it again.
So far, I’ve registered for the following:
The Ecoleadership course’s syllabus looks absolutely fascinating and everything I want to study. Ah well, perhaps the five people ahead of me on the waitlist will drop or, or some other five people signed up to take the class. We’ll see.
The alternative – Organizational & Managerial Development – does also interest me. This course – taught by the same instructor as Ecoleadership – will look at organizational development theory and require us, the students, to apply the theory to real life situations in building a more efficient organization. This process always fascinates me – the mechanics behind making an organization tick – and it’s something I had to spend a lot of time doing with Hands On Gulf Coast. It would be interesting to learn what the ‘pros’ see and how they might navigate tricky waters.
All in all, I am excited about my course load for next semester and being in school. Next step – financing the investment in higher learning.
