This class enhanced a lot of ideas and concepts that were never really taught in a classroom setting. Through the blogs, I was able to reflect on a lot of internship and RSO experiences in a way that I never have before. The various different models for the way people inherently act in organizations or group settings taught me a lot about the structure on how to potentially resolve these issues. It put a lot of these very simple and day to day conflicts and situations in a more methodical light and allowed me to reflect on experiences I once just looked over as failures in projects or bad team members or even bad leadership. This class really allowed me to use a lot of economic principles we learn in other classes as well such as game theory concepts and macroeconomic mathematical concepts. A lot of things learned in previous classes were put into more real life scenarios and situations.
My process for doing the blogs and excel homework was pretty consistent after the first week of understanding the types of assignments we would be having in this class. With the blogs, I would copy and paste the prompt onto a word document a couple days before the due date and read it and keep it in the back of my mind. I realized early on that a lot of these posts required reflection on personal experiences and I did not want to come up with a last minute story or have to rush in thinking about what to write about. Reading the prompt early gave me time to think about it and usually when I found a situation that aligned with what the prompt was looking for, I would write my blog post that day. This was a nice system for me given the flexibility of soft deadlines for weeks of job recruiting and midterms to spend a little extra time finding the right focus for my post. For the excel homework, I usually did them earlier because of my class schedule on Wednesdays, the day that they are always due. I also often had a hard time with some of the problems and would need the extra time to use the resources provided to learn the concepts and apply them. Starting early and using all the slide decks and videos as a reference really helped me complete these assignments ahead of time and also understand them.
Going a little into the second prompt, I feel as though having the lenient attendance policy as well as an earlier class time made it really hard during recruiting season and senior year to attend. To have complete transparency, the classes I did attend, I enjoyed a lot because it was mostly participation and very interactive. I wish that class could be scheduled at a later time in the day so that the attendance and the level of participation could go up and increase the overall quality of the class apart from it already being a great course.
My process for doing the blogs and excel homework was pretty consistent after the first week of understanding the types of assignments we would be having in this class. With the blogs, I would copy and paste the prompt onto a word document a couple days before the due date and read it and keep it in the back of my mind. I realized early on that a lot of these posts required reflection on personal experiences and I did not want to come up with a last minute story or have to rush in thinking about what to write about. Reading the prompt early gave me time to think about it and usually when I found a situation that aligned with what the prompt was looking for, I would write my blog post that day. This was a nice system for me given the flexibility of soft deadlines for weeks of job recruiting and midterms to spend a little extra time finding the right focus for my post. For the excel homework, I usually did them earlier because of my class schedule on Wednesdays, the day that they are always due. I also often had a hard time with some of the problems and would need the extra time to use the resources provided to learn the concepts and apply them. Starting early and using all the slide decks and videos as a reference really helped me complete these assignments ahead of time and also understand them.
Going a little into the second prompt, I feel as though having the lenient attendance policy as well as an earlier class time made it really hard during recruiting season and senior year to attend. To have complete transparency, the classes I did attend, I enjoyed a lot because it was mostly participation and very interactive. I wish that class could be scheduled at a later time in the day so that the attendance and the level of participation could go up and increase the overall quality of the class apart from it already being a great course.
Regarding time of day of the offering, in previous years the class started at 11 AM. This time around it was earlier, because the Econ Department wanted that. I will say that in the prior offering in 2017, some students said even 11 AM was too early. But attendance wasn't quite as bad as it was this semester. On the other hand, I did have some incentive for students to come to class.
ReplyDeleteIt seems odd to me that recruiters care about your GPA and how much you've learned in college, yet are quite willing to have you miss class to make an interview. There is something not right with that. I'm not sure what the solution should be, but the university has rules about when students have a legitimate reason to skip class. I don't think this falls within the rules. So, conceivably, you could be punished for missing class. Suppose an in-class quiz were scheduled on the same day that you had an important interview, and the instructor was unwilling to offer you a makeup quiz.
Regarding what else you wrote, I wonder if there is some general lesson for you in initiating early but then letting things simmer for a while before you really work on them. Of course, if what you need to do is very easy, there is no reason to wait. But with something that might be more difficult, there may be a benefit for your subconscious to get at the problem (while you are dreaming or perhaps daydreaming). Sometimes things are clearer after you wake up. We didn't talk about this in the course at all, but not everything can be solved immediately, especially when real learning is involved. So it seems that practice of starting early is a good one to keep later in life.