tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44655762816614992952024-03-12T20:43:47.624-04:00Sleeping between SpreadsheetsI'm a 2013 MBA student studying at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon - and these are my experiences.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger101125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-64584896879356700222013-08-16T11:12:00.001-04:002013-08-16T11:12:17.295-04:00My final entryThis is it, folks, the end of the road. I accepted, at the beginning of the week, a job! I am now a Strategic Planning Manager for NCSoft West. If you're curious about the role and responsibilities, here is a handy dandy <a href="http://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=d55e4d274a5b00d1&q=mba+game&l=ca&tk=1823bkn5m06ag4ui&from=ja&alid=c30e956baf1bbcaf&utm_source=jobseeker_emails&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=job_alerts" target="_blank">link</a> to the posting. I'm very excited about the opportunity. I'm the first hire in a new department - this means there's a lot of opportunity for me to make an impact straight away (which is what I was looking for) and it's pretty entrepreneurial without the risk of a start-up, again, something important to me.<br />
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I'll be in Orange County, CA. Unfortunately, there isn't an active Tepper alumni chapter in that region, or in LA. CMU, yes. For all those readers who are incoming students/current students, I'll most likely try to attend the Alumni reunion weekend that's held in March next year.<br />
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Thus concludes my blog. If you're interested about a career in Video Games or the business of the gaming industry in general, I'm looking at the possibility of blogging about that (maybe through Gamasutra), otherwise I'm always open to questions.<br />
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However, an incoming student hopefully will take up my mantle and blog about his experiences. So go follow <a href="http://tepperfection.wordpress.com/">http://tepperfection.wordpress.com/</a> now!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-25506896421000189122013-07-24T12:28:00.000-04:002013-07-24T12:28:11.816-04:00For those who want to:As of late, I've been getting multiple social network friend requests. I don't mind, but I need to emphasize these guidelines:<br />
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<b>Please</b><u> please</u> <i>please</i> introduce yourself, tell me why you're adding me and that it was through the blog. I'm very very cautious about adding anyone I don't know (I have a brand to preserve) and it's just common courtesy. Facebook: It's unlikely I will add you as friend here unless you're an incoming student (and followed the above advice). This is a personal space. I'd much prefer if you added me on LinkedIn, again, with an introduction.<br />
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There's also my Twitter handle, @julianneharty but that will slowly transition to more video-game related postings than MBA things.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-29879950388542600932013-07-24T12:21:00.002-04:002013-07-24T12:21:30.983-04:00UpdateNo, this isn't retired yet because I am still on the job hunt! I think I'm one of about 20 people in my class currently unemployed. Not to say that I don't have opportunities, it just takes a lot of time.<br />
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Anyways, I stumbled upon the Tepper website earlier today and noticed a new video talking about the Operations capstone project. It got me thinking about two things:<br />
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1. Tepper really likes to downplay their technology opportunities and connections with the CMU brand. It's a little disappointing because that was one of the primary reasons that I chose Tepper, but I guess it's something I've known for a while. I start my cover letters introducing me as an MBA graduate from CMU; I develop rapport with interviewers because I come from CMU, not GSIA/Tepper. I guess in the tech industry, CMU is valued significantly enough.<br />
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2. New opportunities for Capstones: I heard discussion about the Entrepreneurship track (and possible Tech Leadership since it's essentially the same capstone) capstone having an option to be in Silicon Valley. One of the limitations of the Tech Leadership track is that is just pushed you to do something entrepreneurial with a product or business idea. What if a student just wanted to do business stuff in a tech company? I know for the previous year's capstone, there was a project on offer from LG. This year, the projects were all internally generated from the school of CS, and I imagine the same situation is happening for next year's capstone. Does Tepper's desire to distance themselves from tech limit the real world opportunities available in other capstones, like the Ops one in the video? As it stands, I think the tech company has to approach Sadeh, the head of the track, with the project; I don't think he goes out and tries to solicit projects.<br />
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I made mention in a prior post that I wished there were more opportunities for hands-on projects. It would be really neat to have a greater experience available for those looking to specialize in the things that CMU is good at.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-5811460912858966302013-05-21T10:29:00.002-04:002013-05-21T10:29:59.408-04:00GraduationWell, this is it. It happened. I have now officially graduated from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon, with a Masters of Business Administration and a specialization in Technology Leadership.<br />
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I'll call adieu to the blog when I take the last step - getting a job. But for now, allow me to talk about the graduation ceremony.<br />
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A couple of months ago, it was announced that our commencement speaker was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratan_Tata" target="_blank">Ratan Tata</a> - except, that he wasn't going to be with us for the ceremony but Friday, the day before, with a Q&A session. He couldn't fit us in to his schedule. A couple of classmates were very upset with this - that we didn't really have a commencement speaker. I personally couldn't care. This would've been a person that would've provided the same spiel about having our lives ahead of us yada yada but didn't have any personal connection. Therefore, I was actually glad our Dean Dammon was speaking.<br />
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Now, Tepper has their graduation ceremony the day before the main CMU ceremony. We can attend both if we decide, but the diplomas get handed out on the Saturday. Turns out the commencement speaker for the main ceremony was going to be the out-going president of CMU ... and the guy whom 128 Days is based on.<br />
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Ultimately, the Tepper ceremony was pretty painless. I dislike ceremony anyway, but the whole thing took less than 2 hours, thankfully.<br />
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They hand out awards at the ceremony too - only the recipients are unaware they're receiving an award, unlike the awards granted after the first year. They were, if I remember correctly, Community Service, Outstanding TA, Highest Student Honors (for the top grades) and Best All Around Student. Some students wore a gold cord to signify that they were in the top 10%; others were noted for their distinguished service to the Tepper School (the majority of these were either prominent club leaders or GBA representatives). And.. that was pretty much it. Very short and sweet. I had to pick up a certificate stating that I completed the Tech Leadership Track.<br />
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Now, just the waiting game regarding jobs...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-20284954169285438102013-05-11T11:51:00.000-04:002013-05-11T11:51:13.418-04:00Lucky # 100How apt that my 100th post is possibly my last. Nah.<br />
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Anyhoos, for the cool news: I got nominated for Clear Admit's Best of Blogging awards. If you think that I've been helpful or interesting in any way, please mosey on over and <a href="http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/B3CL2ZK" target="_blank">vote for me</a>.<br />
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I've been off the radar for the last two weeks for two major reasons. 1 - Final exams. These occurred over last weekend, and was really the only time in which I didn't do any "company research" (i.e. playing video games). I do have the results back from three of my 5 classes - A's all around, which makes me happy.<br />
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Second reason was a plethora of interviews. I was flown out for an onsite interview directly after my finals, and any travel to the West Coast is a good 48-hour trip. On top of that, I was doing my final exam grading as a TA, so it was a busy time. <br />
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I still have one final project left to go, but it's not a Tepper class (it's Game Design), and that's due on Monday.<br />
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One of my group members for this class asked me yesterday what Tepper courses I should recommend he take. This was not an unfamiliar question - I had been asked this about three times already by other students in this program. I had spent some time thinking on the answer for this also. How does one boil down the experience into the essence of a couple of classes?<br />
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The first answer was easy - entrepreneurship classes. These classes show businesses on the small scale, AND how to sell yourself. While I know some people scoff at the idea of going to school to learn small business, it's pretty valuable in terms of how, holistically, everything fits together. Small businesses and startups don't have the luxury of specialized functions like larger corporations do; therefore, a class on finance or marketing doesn't provide the most bang for the buck like entrepreneurship classes do.<br />
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The second class I recommended was the introductory OB class, I believe we call it "Managing Teams and People" or something like that. The simple fact for this recommendation: no matter what someone does, they're always going to be working in an organization. Work takes up more of our time than any other activity. Especially for graduate-level students, there is also going to be a heavy chance that one will be in charge of people. So, what is the best way to get them to do what you want them to do? People management is almost always overlooked in terms of competencies and education - there's this feeling that it's a natural thing because we interact with people all our lives. But, the thing is, interacting with people is easy; managing and motivating people is something that needs to be learned. And since the U.S is moving to a intellectual capital-based marketplace, it's no longer about the product but about the people creating the product.<br />
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Coming into my MBA, I've had alumni all tell me that their biggest regret was not taking all the OB courses. With the interview I just had, there was a huge emphasis on getting along with people - there was no mention at all on my technical skills and capabilities. (the presumption was that I am a graduate of CMU, therefore that in itself tells people how smart I am). I've always seen the value in this area. I know that some people think the MBA is pretty worthless; frankly, some of them are. But I feel the value is in the education I received about working with people, both in the classroom and out. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-10277041066102825752013-04-30T22:29:00.001-04:002013-04-30T22:29:46.726-04:00Holy avocado student debtI'm writing this on a Tuesday evening, having just realised that I took my last class in my graduate program today. But now is not the time to reminisce - that's in a few weeks.<br />
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Instead, I'm going to talk about the heart attack I had earlier this week.<br />
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Since I'm close to graduation, the school sent me a reminder that I had to undergo Federal Student Loan Exit counselling. Oh, whatever, thinks I. I started doing it on Sunday.<br />
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Even though I had paid for one semester out of pocket and received two scholarships (of small amounts, but better than a kick in the rear), I'm looking at a debt burden of about $117K!<br />
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I personally hate debt. Some debt is good - mortgage debt, for example, because I get tax deductions on the interest payments. Technically student debt also gets some interest deducted, but I believe it's limited to $1500 a year. I had read a blog a while ago about a Harvard MBA who had paid off his $100K debt in 9 months - but he cashed out his savings, and didn't have anyone to rely on him. Unfortunately, when I graduate, I'm going to have to help maintain two households (my partner is enrolled at CMU also, but I'm probably going to be in California).<br />
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Immediately, I broke open a spreadsheet and started plugging in numbers about how much interest I'll end up paying in total if I just pay minimum, if I paid off early, etc. I also calculated what my monthly income would potentially be if I was on a $115K salary in California (holy 38% tax rate!) and what I could afford to dedicate to paying off loans, taking into account the ridiculous cost of living in the Bay Area.<br />
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Needless to say, it almost behooves me to draw up another blog to discuss my progress on paying that down, because it doesn't look promising.<br />
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There is a lot of chatter around in the media about the student loan bubble. Tepper increases their student fees by 3% or so each year, which is rather ridiculous. Someone told me that a lot of our fees go to pay for the PhD program, since it's one of the largest in the nation. I've already complained a lot about how I think Tepper is too expensive, so I won't jump back on that horse. Students aren't able to benefit from the record low interest rates - 6.8% flat is the government rate, and I believe 5% is the lowest private loan that anyone I've talked to has been able to get, and that was a variable rate loan pegged to the LIBOR. One of the scenarios I looked at for myself, I think was to pay back in 25 years, I ended up paying 150% of the loan in interest!<br />
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I did a calculation a while ago and came to the conclusion that the ROI timeframe for going to B-school was about 4 years. I neglected to take into account this crippling debt burden. If I was going to live in a reasonable city - let's say Pittsburgh - on that income, I would be able to pay it off rather quickly. Bay Area... not so much. But it's very difficult to find a job in the video game industry that isn't in California. The Tech Startup Boom is making things difficult for those who aren't making millions in stock options :). <br />
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The last comment that I'm going to make is going to resemble something thankful. I lived quite frugally over these last couple of years. I didn't go on any international trips, I kept my socializing and travel to a minimum, I lived in a cheaper part of town. A good number of my classmates went on every trip, went out every weekend, and engaged in other activities that would've cost a pretty penny. I can only imagine what their debt burden is. If they took out what Tepper had recommended each year, that's at least $140K. That recommendation didn't take into account all the trips and such, so there is a possibility that some students are looking at $150K or more.<br />
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Do I have regrets? A couple. But I think about it - that $3K trip to Peru for a week and a half ends up being a $7.5K trip if interest is factored in (at least). And all for what? Some memories and a couple of photos? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for travelling and experiences and such... but is it really worth having to keep paying off my student debt when I'm 53? It is too much - I'd rather do my travelling spending cash rather than credit.<br />
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Perhaps I'm just too boring, or didn't get to fully experience b-school. B-school is just 2 years of your life - that debt is going to linger for much much longer, and I'd rather not be in a situation where it could bite me in the butt.<br />
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Besides, I spent 3.5 weeks in Australia with my family and my partner and snorkelled the Great Barrier Reef. For everyone else, THAT would be the holiday of a lifetime.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-5907561541005887512013-04-17T19:47:00.001-04:002013-04-17T19:47:46.487-04:00Final Tepper ExperiencesAs I was writing the last post, I discovered a topic I probably should talk about.<br />
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So I'm well into my job recruitment phase, much much later than the rest of my class. Last set of statistics said that about 80% had job offers. I'm in that lowly 20% :).<br />
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I had my first interview in a while last week, and so I dredged up my old interviewing notes and revised over my STAR stories. I needed to desperately update them to include the stuff I did in my internship. Interestingly, I also found myself talking about the two big projects I'm working on right now - my Capstone and my Mobile App. In fact, my Mobile App project has become a staple mention in nearly every cover letter I write.<br />
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Even though we've been told it's OK, I didn't really like talking about my assignments at school. The Mini mester is not set up to be an immersive experience, so all assignments I do tend to be quite shallow. The Teamwork STAR stories I could generate wouldn't be very insightful, as we all tended to divide and conquer. While there have been some good assignments for personal insight, that's all they were - assignments. Things we had to do because we were assigned them, with a narrow band of requirements.<br />
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My pro-bono consulting experience at the end of Year 1 gave me some good stories, although I'm not too sure I would go through that again. Then, at the end of last year, I was part of a group who had to develop a Brand Strategy for an existing company. It was a local burger joint called Stack'd. At the end of it, we presented out findings in a presentation and report that the owners <i>actually</i> used. Look, ma, verifiable proof that I can do stuff!<br />
Now, I'm wrapping up my Capstone project, and amazed at some of the things I've been able to do during this time. But more importantly, I feel that my Mobile project is a truly shining example of my education. If we get this published in June, I can now actually point to it and say - "I ran the team that developed that. I identified the features, the target market, and user testing." It is a physical (ahem) showcase of my work, that is very relevant to my career goals.<br />
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So many of my classmates haven't had this experience, or have been able to relay this experience in interviews. There is a lack of opportunity to do real projects that people can point to as evidence of their skills.<br />
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It makes me wish that there were more project opportunities (outside of tech and/or entrepreneurship).Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-75710689562592892222013-04-17T19:36:00.002-04:002013-04-17T19:36:42.221-04:00Inter-campus teamsI just finished an assignment where I was working with a teammember from another school at CMU (ETC). We had to design a game together, playtest it, then write up the analysis of the game. It was due yesterday, and we got it in all well.<br />
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I recounted the experience to my boyfriend Chris - I wrote up the game rules and ensured the prototype was ready for submission a week ago, I wrote up the playtests and analyzed them, I rewrote the rules and the cards that went with the game, and created the Marketing document that we were also to submit. My teammate - he organized the playtests and put a rather half-hearted effort in with one of the card set designs. Chris said that I should've expected this. I gave him a quizzical look. He explained that Softs (a term meaning a mid-term presentation of sorts) are due next week, with Hards (the final presentation, I guess) due two weeks later, and everyone is on crunch time to get it done. The reason my teammate had teamed up with me is that he was hoping I would do all the work.<br />
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Looking back on it, yes, it did seem like I did all the work. I wasn't complaining about that when I was relaying the story to Chris. I was making a statement about how <i>easily</i> my teammate let me do all that. Normally, in my business teams, we'd all be chomping at the bit to get things done. There's a level of work output expectation that we all seem to have. It was rather different - I won't go so far as to say novel - experience to work with someone who wasn't so driven by such a high work ethic. While I've had my issues with <a href="http://julianneharty.blogspot.com/2012/10/teamworkyear-2.html" target="_blank">teams</a> in the past in this program, in general they've been very good to work with. I'm usually the <a href="http://julianneharty.blogspot.com/2012/03/group-work.html" target="_blank">organizer</a>, getting people together like herding sheep. I didn't really enjoy it - so I was very glad when my teammate took that duty upon himself to be the coordinator of the playtests. Therefore, I felt it appropriate to continue to do the other aspects of the project - i.e. the deliverables.<br />
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Now, looking back on it, I can kinda see how I was taken advantage of, but we had the option of doing this project by ourselves and by the fact I avoided having to organize playtests was worth the team setup.<br />
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The next assignment is going to be interesting. I'm with a group of students from ETC, and we are required to make a pitch of a game to a publisher. We're to have an organization, roles and titles, and a budget. I'm a little afraid that my teammembers are just going to "let" me do all the business-work while they work on the creative side of things. I'd much rather it the other way around, since I already know how to draw up a budget; they may not. Learning experiences all around is necessary. We shall see.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-16420854511131942692013-03-31T16:51:00.001-04:002013-03-31T16:51:26.433-04:00GDC WeekI've just spent the last week in sunny, warm San Francisco at the Game Developers Conference. While this post is not going to be exactly Tepper-experience-related, it is related to my own ambitions post-MBA.<br />
GDC, as it's known, is a week-long conference for people in the video game industry. They had a Free-To-Play summit at the beginning of the week, which confirmed my attendance for the entire conference. There was also a Career Expo in the latter half of the week, which is what I've been waiting for all second-year to truly kick start my fulltime job recruitment experience.<br />
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Last year, I only attended the Friday Student day, as GDC coincided with Mini 1 finals. This year, it only fell in with week 2 of Mini 4, so I figured it would be all ok.<br />
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I learned a lot about the industry and the state it's in currently. I found that to be very useful, as I'm finding myself leaning towards mobile and social games in terms of career - where my MBA will be the most useful - as opposed to big studios where MBA is usually concurrent with either Finance or Marketing. The Free-to-Play (F2P) business model is also fascinating to me - I don't think I've encountered anything like it in any other environment, so it seems unique to video games. Being involved in the early stages of a successful business model is very enticing, I'll admit. I also discovered that a lot of Product Managers in this space assist in the actual game design - to try and integrate monetization methods primarily - which is also just as exciting. To be able to help design a game would be very very cool and tap into that creative side of me that rarely gets any light of day under normal working conditions.<br />
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On the other hand, I was a little disappointed with the Career Expo. I was there primarily to network and get a lot of opportunities for fulltime positions. My experience last year looking for internship was tepid - very few people had opportunities for MBA interns; the majority was full-time hire. And there were a lot of companies at the Expo. This time, it seemed that there weren't very many opportunities at all because the number of companies there were fewer! Casino games have become the Next Big Thing, and I really really don't like casino games.<br />
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Overall, it was a fun but exhausting week. I reconnected with a <a href="http://julianneharty.blogspot.com/2012/02/gdc.html" target="_blank">contact I made on LinkedIn last year</a>, who I've been in regular email discussions with, and he's taken it upon himself to be a champion of me of sorts - absolutely amazing! I met a good number of people too, of which I have to follow up on.<br />
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It was rather sad to have to come back to school and this learning environment after having been immersed in the industry. I wanted to go back to work to apply the things that I knew, not just sit on them to be later forgotten.<br />
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As an aside - I am one of the 8000 Google Glass Explorers!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-18090142710680190282013-03-20T10:13:00.000-04:002013-03-20T10:13:59.950-04:00Last Mini Evah!Well, folks, it's nearly it. This is the very last mini I need to take and then I've completed my degree. What a crazy, wild, exhilarating two years it's been.<br />
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A number of my classmates are in Germany for the study-abroad mini. I've been inundated with pictures of Europe on my Facebook account, making me extremely jealous. Spring Break is traditionally when most of the international treks happen, so I got Israel and Japan pictures as well, although those lucky people have come back by now.<br />
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Typically, this last mini is usually the easiest for second years. The majority have jobs, have completed all the degree requirements, and are just taking it easy waiting for graduation and the Real World. I'm not in the majority - my recruiting kicks in seriously next week with GDC, I registered for 7 (!) classes, and I'm contemplating making my app project into a side business.<br />
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I registered for the 7 last year, and have held stubbornly onto the idea that I can take them all. I wanted to take them all. However, yesterday I came to the serious realization that it would probably be better if I put my focus on a smaller number of things than a larger number. Three courses can't be helped - they're semester-long and carried over from last mini (Game Design, Capstone, Mobile App Project). One course is a requirement of my degree - Data Mining. That left three courses up for the chopping block. Two of them are OB-related: Strategic Human Resources and Organizational Change. The last is Capitalism, and it's taught by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_H._Meltzer" target="_blank">Allan H. Meltzer</a> . I decided to drop SHRM after sitting in class on Monday. It's an interesting subject with a lot of good lessons to be learned, but the value I would gain from this class would be slim given the fact I will be so overwhelmed - and I'll just read the book instead. It is also heavy on teamwork - which isn't a problem normally, but I don't want to let my teammate down if I don't do any work. Organizational Change is up tonight, but I am also inclined to drop this one. It's a class I've been wanting to take for a year or so - when I last registered for it, the professor passed away during the break before the mini. Now his wife is teaching it. I'm also afraid it will be heavy on the teamwork<br />
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I'm not dropping Capitalism. It's a rare chance to be taught by someone so esteemed in the economic community, plus it looks like it would be a lot of fun.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-76540285187066123212013-03-15T17:41:00.001-04:002013-03-15T17:41:23.838-04:00Spring BreakSo I've been on Spring Break for the last week or so, and I'm looking at the conclusion of this break with mild trepidation and annoyance. Like I'm sure many have before me, I came into this break with a lot of intention to catch up on various school-related things - such as designing my mobile app UI, learning how to code for Android apps, applying to jobs, and reading a book or two. I haven't accomplished a single thing.<br />
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I did, however, get to level 18 on League of Legends.<br />
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My Spring Break wasn't completely unproductive. Not only do I have Monday and Tuesday next week to catch up on all that I didn't do (oops), I returned all the cases I marked for an undergraduate class I am a Teaching Assistant for.<br />
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I think that grading papers is a much better experience of learning than actually doing the paper itself, for myself. There is no "right" answer for cases, but there is a need to show thought and reasoning behind every argument. The answer key that the TAs are given can be specific in some areas but intentionally vague in others. It makes for some difficulty in being consistent in marking.<br />
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But I found that as I'm looking critically at other peoples' work, I'm finding myself come to conclusions that I should have considered in other aspect - for example, the very first case that my class did, we were accused of just restating the case facts. I'm seeing examples happen in the cases that I mark, and while I add comments to the cases about this, I'm noticing my own ability to critically analyze the case. I'm always writing "why is this important?" in the case when people restate the facts. I realize that the authors are restating it because they feel that there is a knowledge implied in the fact - but we want that assumption out in the open. I also found myself remembering a phrase that a senior manager at my pre-MBA job would always say - "so what?" He had coached us to always answer the "so what?" question... and I need to remember that for every aspect of communication, from capstone to an in-class discussion.<br />
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it's a lesson I will need to incorporate next mini I think.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-78319264905725498892013-03-05T21:57:00.001-05:002013-03-05T21:57:57.313-05:00End of Mini 3It has been a very long while since I last posted, but that is because a lot has happened over the past couple of weeks that has caused me to neglect my blog.<br />
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Everything people had been telling me was that year 2 was supposed to be a lot easier than Year 1. Ideally, one got a job early on, one didn't need to undertake as many classes, and there's a lot fewer extra curricular activities going on to be involved in (like case competitions). My experience has been dramatically different.<br />
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Firstly, I am still job-hunting. Granted, my industry doesn't start heavy recruiting until now, so most of my job efforts was reaching out to various people every once in a while to keep my network going.<br />
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Secondly, and most importantly, a lot of my classwork is project-based. When a class is homework-based, it's a lot easier to keep ontop of things because there is a clear, defined set of guidelines that one needs to accomplish - answer the questions! Likewise with exams - most of the work happens a couple of days before the exam. If it's individual assignments, that's even better since the only person who is relying on you is yourself! Not this mini for me, however.<br />
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My capstone is entirely self-directed. As such, my partner and I spent the better half of the mini floundering around trying to figure out what to do. My partner was a former project manager, so he fell back to habits that had worked with him in the past - schedule lots of meetings. I abhor meetings for the sake of meetings, so that didn't work out well with me either. It didn't help that I wasn't attending the "classes" set aside for us, since I had another class on at the same time that I was allowed to go to instead. I've worked with my partner before, and we've worked well together - but I think a lot of that is that I come up with the direction and the goals, and he performs the motions to get it going - this time I stepped back on this, my attention directed elsewhere, which made him feel like he needed to brainstorm ideas on how to monetize this technology. Needless to say, it didn't work out to well.. However, we did hit a turning point and jumped back on track. We just needed to define clearly the goals for the semester project, and now that we have it, it makes things easier to push forward.<br />
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The reason i had dropped my attention was because I was placing it in the project for my Mobile & Pervasive Development Class. While I had originally signed up for the 6-unit course, which was homework- and exam-based, I ended up enrolling into the full 12-unit course, which included getting a mobile app up and running. It's an app based on an idea I had - I went looking for this type of app or service and couldn't find it, and ended up in a team working on the project. I had taken ownership of it, so I took over the design role. It was ridiculously intensive, and I poured a lot of time and energy into determining the user roles, the use cases, and the UI. I need to continue doing this over the Spring Break - ideally, I can see a viable opportunity for this app to be somewhat successful. My work was rewarded somewhat - this is the only class I've had in which there was a $1000 prize for the best app, as considered by a panel of judges. My app was one of 3 finalists (as an aside, I screwed up the final round and wasted my 5 minutes pitching instead of showing off the app itself), and we received feedback both from other students and the judges saying they'd love to see something like this app become a viable product - they would use it! But this was a big concentrate of my time.<br />
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Another semester-long class is Game Design, which it too is rather work-intensive. It relies heavily on "playtesting" game ideas with a group of other people in the class. My playtest group have been only other ETC students, and they are in a campus by the river instead of the main campus. This hasn't proven to be an issue, since my partner is also at that campus, but they have little concept or grasp of the value of time to non-ETC students (especially MBA students). Getting the group together at one time is like herding cats. They work on semester long projects in designated rooms, and they determine their own schedule - so it's not unusual for me to turn up to a 4:30 scheduled play only to wait 2 hours while the others find their way in from other "just popped up" issues. This gets very tiring; I nearly lost it one time when I was taking time out to show them how to play a roleplaying game - I was the "expert" in the group - when I had other things that demanded my attention; and they pulled the same lackadaisical manner on me. Luckily I bring my computer and tell them that when they're ready, I'll join them, until then, I'm working.<br />
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Developing Star Performers and Market Research rounded out the classes I took for the mini, and neither was particularly intensive when it came to work requirements. That Mobile project just took all my energy, as did Capstone. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I still have to continue them into next Mini so there's not much of a reprieve. Regardless, I'm getting my money's worth from this degree!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-35122862023751250612013-02-13T10:07:00.001-05:002013-02-13T10:07:43.832-05:00InitiativeThis last week/two weeks have been pretty horrendous for me. When a lot of my classes are project-based, like they are now, I make sure to have my main involvement in the each project to occur at a different time than the others - I spread out the workload. It didn't happen this time, so things were very hectic.<br />
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Additionally, I was trying to set something up outside of school. In my Star Performers class, one of our assignments is to develop and launch an initiative - an activity above and beyond what my usual "responsibilities" as a student are. I chose to plan a networking event between Tepper students and the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) students.<br />
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ETC is essentially the video game design program that CMU offers. They are housed in a building away from Main campus by the river - it's quite nice. You walk in and are immediately greeted by a giant Hulk. There's a Batman section dedicated to all the films. Across the way from Anthony Daniels' office (yes, THAT Anthony Daniels) is a collection of Star Wars memorabilia. It's a geek paradise. I've been aware of the program since my first mini, where I joined an entrepreneurial team led by an ETC student looking to create a collaborative iPad game. I reached out to a professor there to ask about the value of the MBA in the industry in Mini 2. Currently I am taking a semester-long course in Game Design.<br />
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The Business & Technology club here at Tepper also wanted to set up some sort of networking night and had turned to me for help, so I figured I'd hit two birds with one stone. We faced a bit of a problem however: while it would be fun for Tepper students to stop by and see everyone's projects at ETC, we could offer nothing in return. Ideally, for these things to work, there needed to be a mutual exchange. We pondered over this - what could Business students provide that would be beneficial to Game Design students? I know from my own experiences that Business folks - or "suits" - are not held in too high a regard with Game Design folks. I believe it's the thought that we're only focused on money and not fun. So I wanted to offer something that wouldn't be considered boring or too suit-y.<br />
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Most of the suggestions revolved around being entrepreneurial. I wasn't satisfied with that. It still seemed boring.<br />
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The ETC professors referred me to the ETC student reps, who turned out to be the GSA representatives, to work with them instead. I actually felt more comfortable that way; a student-led initiative was much more interesting that something faculty-directed. However, getting everyone in the same room was like herding cats. When we finally got most of the folks together, it was this amazing synergy of enthusiasm, creativity, and wonder. The ETC reps were immediately onboard and excited! We threw ideas around until something stuck that satisfied me and them. We settled on a date, a place, a time - it was crazy productive. We still were in the air about alcohol service and how much we had to spend.. but that was for later.<br />
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Over the last week, those details have been ironed out, and we're ready to start advertising for the event. It's for Feb 23, and I can't wait!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-57694134885325176212013-01-26T18:21:00.000-05:002013-01-26T18:21:40.080-05:00Favor!I was just assigned a task to find what the average cost for an MBA is for the class of 2015 for both CMU and on average. I'm supposed to use human sources right now to get this information (so sending me to a calculator won't work).<br /><br />For those who have been accepted or are applying this year, could you please tell me how much you expect your MBA to cost and what you think your salary would be when you graduate? I'm good with multiple estimates, for example:<br /><br />- My MBA at Tepper will cost me $110,000<br />- My MBA at UT:Austin will cost me $70,000<br />- If I become a consultant at graduation, I expect my salary to be $115,000<br />- If I become a product manager at graduation, I expect my salary to be $80,000<br /><br />Please don't include opportunity costs in the estimation, but feel free to add non-salary compensation, like bonuses.<br /><br />This would be super helpful, thank you!<br />
<br />
(This is an exercise in networking, so feel free to contact me via email at jharty (at) tepper (dot) cmu (dot) edu if you don't want to post a comment or just want to generally email me for requests - I also have a segment about keeping track of any time someone asks me for information :))Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-29464896494568995322013-01-26T15:55:00.000-05:002013-01-26T15:55:51.149-05:00Scale ratings aka how I can't be impressed.About a year before I left my organization for my MBA program, a new directive passed down from the C-Suite: performance ratings had to be toned down. It seems like nearly everyone had super star employees; but the company wasn't performing like a superstar, so there must have been some sort of disconnect.<br />
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It turns out that the problem lay in the system. Like nearly every performance rating system out there, an employee was evaluated on a 5-point scale, with 3 being "performs as expected" and 5 being "performs extremely well" and 1 being "company is better off buying energy-saving lightbulbs than paying for this person to sit on FB all day." It turns out that nearly every department was rating their employees as 5s. The next round of evaluations, after this directive (plus other incentives - I think there was a limit on how many 4s & 5s a manager could give out, and he/she had to justify it), showed just how average everyone truly was since there were a lot of 3s.<br />
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This behavior always puzzled me because 3 is pretty self-explanatory - you did what your job requires you to do. A 5 should be a very rare occurrence. <br />
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Now, in some of my classes, we have to provide feedback to our teammembers in the form of an evaluation like this. To my surprise, the first time I did this, teammembers decided to give everyone 5s, regardless of the work. Again, a 5 indicates superstar performance, while 3 says "performs as expected." Second time around, I learned, and told everyone that I use the 3 as my baseline number - i.e. you do as expected, you get a 3. Go above and beyond my expectations, and that's when we get into the higher numbers. Thankfully, other people ascribed to this schema and also rated people with 3 as the baseline.<br />
Now I'm in a class where we're constantly evaluated by our team members. I just had to provide a feedback form where there was a scale of 1-9 indicating our impression of a teammate: 1 is very negative, 5 no impression, 9 very positive. I rated people around the 5-7 mark; I can't say I had an immensely positive impression on people in my group. I went to check my own feedback report, and my average score was 8.53! Immediately I felt bad for the people I reviewed: they would walk away with my scores with a different impression than what I had intended.<br />
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Why do people think the baseline number for an evaluation is always the highest number? Especially when, in this case, our scores are aggregated and therefore anonymized?<br />
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My theory on this stems from the American education and grading system. I was a TA for an OB class in my undergraduate degree from the U.S. I was tasked to write up a quiz, so I did - according to how my degree program in Australia would do it. The Professor thanked me for the good job and said that the A students would get this, the B students would pass, but the C students would not do so well. I needed to simplify it so that the C students would easily pass the quiz.<br />
In a conversation with another student this year, he remarked that the Australian university grading system was more flattering than the American system. In order of increasing magnitude, we have: 3- Low Pass, 4 - Pass, 5 - Credit, 6 - Distinction, 7 - High Distinction. Most students in the bellcurve fell in the 4/5 bracket; I had only ever seen less than 10 HDs per class I've been in, which weren't small by any means. He pointed out that a 4 seems less like a failure; whereas getting a B or a C seemed like a failure in the U.S. system.<br />
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So it seems like everyone is on the A basis and then gets dropped down, rather than starting from a C basis and working their way up (which is what I'm used to). I think this mentality of assessment (since school is the first and most frequent place we've ever had this kind of feedback) is what drives people to rate other people very highly without true consideration of what that 5 really means.<br />
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(Speaking of which, Tepper's grade basis is an A-; the CMU graduate schools all use B as the level of acceptable work for a graduate student with an A as the measurement of outstanding performance above and beyond what was expected.)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-28195072372444939122013-01-21T12:10:00.001-05:002013-01-21T12:10:56.934-05:00CMU CultureI opened up my inbox today to receive a campus-wide email inviting CMU students to discuss the "culture" of CMU in response to an article that was posted in the (undergraduate) newspaper, The Tartan.<br />
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It turned out that a student committed suicide in December which triggered<a href="https://thetartan.org/2012/12/3/forum/mentalhealth" target="_blank"> this particular article</a> and subsequent discussion on the culture of CMU.<br />
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The author felt that CMU has a culture of stress and hard times, that the heavy workload on the student has caused many to feel depressed to that point of suicide. A number of people called out in support of that, feeling that the workload is too much for one person to bear. Tepper also has adopted this culture.<br />
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I'll admit, when I first read it, I was scornful. These kids came to CMU knowing it was an academic environment, not a "party" school, and yet complain because they can't "switch off". <br />
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But it was after a second read that I realised that the article was not blasting the culture, but rather the lack of support services available for students who are overwhelmed by this paradigm shift. It made me wonder why some people would be so distressed over the workload. We have had, in my year at least, a couple of people drop out mid-program because the stress was too hard to bear.<br />
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I mentioned in a post much earlier on that I had developed a level of humility by being in this class of highly intelligent people - I had these expectations built of myself that I would follow what I did in undergraduate: be the top of the class and get straight A's in everything. The first couple of weeks showed me that that probably wasn't going to happen, since grades are assigned on a curve. It devastated me, leading me to believe that I wasn't good enough, but I was so determined to prove I was that I spent every waking moment working on this stuff. Eventually, I realised that I didn't need to prove myself in this regard and I became a lot happier. I still worked, but I didn't despair on my (supposed) lack of ability. I no longer needed to be "perfect". This mindset later became really essential in the internship recruiting season because my value was held up against other people. I took rejection as a positive thing - "there were others who were a better fit" - than as a negative - "I wasn't good enough."<br />
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Just over the weekend, I was given an article to read which outlined a woman's research into people's mindsets: some people have the mindset that ability in inborn (you're either have it or don't), and others believe that an ability can be learned. Those students who have the former mindset despair in the face of failure, because they believe it's a reflection on their lack of an ability. Those students in the latter - it's best summed up in a quote that I wrote down and posted on my wall:<br />
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<i> "Those with learning goals take necessary risks and don't worry about failure because each mistake becomes a chance to learn."</i><br />
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To me, everyone who comes to Tepper has to adopt this mindset. I know a few people who still have the fixed ability mindset, and they've managed to alienate people with some of their coping strategies (like overwhelming arrogance). A couple of others, like I said, dropped out. But <b><i>you can't fail</i></b> at any subject at Tepper unless you really try, and even then I think it's very very difficult, and so a large majority of us have now embraced the mantra "grades don't matter" and subsequently take classes for the joy of learning. Putting the expectation of being the top of the class will lead to the dismay and depression - and, as it turns out, CMU doesn't have very good resources available if a student does go down that path.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-10742454311532301842013-01-19T18:11:00.000-05:002013-01-19T18:11:16.263-05:00Week 1: CapstoneOver the Winter Break, I went back home to Australia to visit my family, introduce my partner to both family and country, and took a small trip to the Whitsundays to snorkel the Great Barrier Reef. During that time, I (purposefully) turned off my phone and email and rarely bothered to check my social networks. It was a switch-off from the last 1.5 years - no internship to worry about, no interview preparation, no networking, no worrying about loans.<br />
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It was thus I came back to my penultimate mini, relaxed, refreshed, and a tad disappointed*.<br />
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I'll post another entry in a couple of days for my usual end-of-mini elective summary, since obviously I had neglected to do so during the break. But my mini 3 is pretty easy. The only difference is is that I have a semester-long class that covers both minis and my capstone course (which also covers the two minis).<br />
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The Capstone course is meant to be the final jewel in your MBA crown, the summation of all you've learned in your degree program put to good work. Since I'm in a Track, my capstone is significantly different from what the "regular" students study (coincidentally, it also made me ineligible for the Germany-based capstone, where you spend 5 weeks travelling around Germany). It's called "Designing and Leading a Business" and it's with those in the Entrepreneurship track. Ideally, you take a product and make a business out of it. For those in the Technology Leadership track, the expectation is to be something that is technical, like hardware, software, whatever. We are also supposed to work in small groups.<br />
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The groups and the projects were already decided on by us at the end of last mini before the break. I was going to continue working on an entrepreneurial venture that I had tackled in a class in Mini 1: the facial-tracking software that was used in Avatar was a product of a CMU-faculty member who works for Disney, and we had decided that a good application of this technology would be in the video game industry (Disclaimer: this actually wasn't my idea! My team decided this). Ultimately, we decided that the inventor should open up his own studio and provide the motion capture services, similar to how Weta does. I had to leave the project after 1 mini, and two teammembers continued it through. However, when it came time to revisit the project to take it back up again for Capstone, the previous team said that the inventor had lost interest in the project and was unwilling to take it anywhere.<br />
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My team - consisting of a good friend and I - went to speak to our Track advisor about our predicament, since neither of us were willing to continue with a project that would go nowhere. A few ideas were thrown around, all of them based on one or both of us joining an existing team with their business idea/product. Then the professor mentioned a project of his called <a href="http://livehoods.org/" target="_blank">Livehoods</a>. This technology had already been investigated as a business idea by another team in the Mini 1 class, and I remembered their presentation - they had concluded it was good for urban development. The concept seemed boring to me, and I wasn't too enthused, until I had heard that that team had pulled it together somewhat last minute for the class. The professor proceeded to show us emails from parties who were interested in using the technology and talked enthusiastically about the possibilities beyond basic marketing. I started to get a lot more interested. To cut a long story short, determining the business possibilities for Livehoods is now my capstone business project! Ideally, we want to go beyond targeted advertising (which is the easy answer) to something more exciting and useful.<br />
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It should be an interesting challenge in the weeks to come! We'll be working with students from the school of Computer Science, so this should be fun.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-71198248705631789232012-12-13T00:46:00.000-05:002012-12-13T00:46:20.773-05:00Classroom vs. Real LifeI'm going to be spending some time in an aircraft in about a week. PIT -> LAX -> BNE (that's Brisbane Australia. Yes, I'm going home :)). The flight from PIT to LAX is quite long - about 5 hours, and we leave early evening. Normally, I would have a book with me, but it tends to put me to sleep (and I don't want that yet), so my other activity, cross-stitching, is going to be pulled out. It's rather tough for me to cross-stitch solely, I usually need some kind of aural entertainment.<br />
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When I went to Seattle/San Francisco at the beginning of the year, I had uploaded some podcasts about the life of consultants onto my iPod and listened to them while cross-stitching. Ultimately, it was those podcasts that showed me that I am not a good fit for Consulting. Remembering that I liked to listen to those podcasts, I spent some time looking for podcasts on the iTunes store. I bounced around the different categories - I went straight to Games and Hobbies first, then Careers, then just the Business section... and discovered the HBR podcasts.<br />
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Merrily, I started to download all the ones that sounded interesting. Career building was a must; there were a bunch around leadership, innovation, a few from HR-viewpoints... and then one caught my eye.<br />
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It's podcast "139: Is transparency always the best policy?" It was not the title that caught my eye, but rather the author - Paul Levy. Interestingly, in my last Power class, we had a case on Paul Levy and his role as CEO of the Beth Israel Deacon Medical Hospital. While the case itself was pretty dry, the last ten minutes of the class become quite lively when one of my classmates brought up the fact that he had had an intimate relationship with a female consultant he had brought on board. This was not covered in the case, and we started to talk about whether moral deficiencies had a right to be considered when studying the work of a leader (she was complaining that his having the affair was grounds to not talk about the case in class since it exemplified that sort of behavior).<br />
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In my opinion, what someone does in his or her private life has no bearing on that person's competence on the job. Now, this consultant did gain from being in a relationship with him, but had the relationship not been intimate, there would have been little to no outcry of favoritism - it's a given that in the business world, the adage "it's who you know" runs very true. And she seemed to be very competent in her job. It's very well known that if a new high-ranking person steps into a position in a company s/he will fill the lower ranks with her/his own people - VERY relevant for CEOs since they tend to clear out the executive suite when coming in. Is the presence of sex really that much of a difference? Or is it more that the consultant was female and that's the trope we as a society tend to fall on - that she slept her way to her position.<br />
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Regardless, I could go on forever about this since it's something that I have strong feelings about (being assessed on factors other than job competence and performance not sleeping to the top), but I'm not going to. I mention this situation to my partner, explained my position, and he makes this comment that for a business student, he's surprised at my lack of ethics. This made me scratch my head, because I had thought the relationship-benefits was a morality choice and the only thing that was unethical was that he had kept this potential conflict of interest from the Board.<br />
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While this post seems to ramble, it's highlighting three important things for the week:<br />
- I'm less than a week away from going home - this is the first time in 2 years<br />
- HBR, their podcasts, and other similar auditory experiences are worth investigating<br />
- I can't really vocalize the difference between morality and ethics, or at least the difference in my mind. <br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-4454238439044701622012-12-06T22:45:00.000-05:002012-12-06T22:45:49.061-05:00Unwritten Tepper RulesAn exercise that we had to do in a class of mine was to list all the "unwritten Tepper rules." Some so-called "rules" were thrown in, such as:<br />
- Unattended food in the Master's Lounge is fair game<br />
- Don't turn up late to Margot's Optimization class<br />
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and a few others I forgot. But the one that has stuck to me since then (and it was an exercise that happened a couple of weeks ago) was this:<br />
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- Don't trust Student Services; their "randomizer" is never random.<br />
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The reason it has stuck with me is because it has become a real point of disillusionment and resentment amongst my fellow classmates. Normally the "randomizer" shows up when we are given tickets for an event at the Console Stadium. David Tepper owns a box there (as well as the Penguins), and so he passes tickets along to the school if he's not attending. When the NHL wasn't striking, it was pretty often we'd get the email out for getting put into a drawing for tickets to a game. We all knew that it was up to one of the staff members of Student Services to choose who was going based on whim; the only randomness was who actually signed up for a ticket. Since we had nothing to lose, the majority of us didn't really care.<br />
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Then came the Germany Trek signup. For the final mini in the second year, a small group of Tepper students are able to go on a four-week trek around Germany as their capstone project. It's highly popular and space is very limited. When the people who threw their names into the ring didn't get into the trek, some grumblings occurred.<br />
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Then came the Corporate Restructuring issue. This class is taught by Dean Dammon. It proved to be extremely popular with our class, with 113 people designating it their top class when pre-registration happened a couple of weeks ago. Even when another class slot was opened, there were too many people to accommodate for the 40-person class. So, Student Services "randomly" placed people in the class and the waitlist. Coincidently, a lot of the people who got into the Germany trek also got into this class; a lot of the people who didn't get into Germany got waitlisted. One that I know of also had an issue with being waitlisted for <a href="http://julianneharty.blogspot.com/2012/11/waitlist-woes.html" target="_blank">Corporate and Renewable Strategy</a> in addition to being waitlisted for Germany and now Corporate Restructuring. Foul play was now being cried (although not loud enough for Student Services to hear it).<br />
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It puts a bit of a bad taste in my mouth that blatant favoritism occurs in an environment that, by all manner of speaking, should be objective. While I understand, from my Power & Influence class, that life isn't fair and getting ahead is about buttering people up... I didn't expect it with my educational experience. Add this in with the general dissatisfaction I hold for the school services in general (all the other things that come with going to Tepper, NOT the education) this year, and that's a lot of unhappiness on my end. I'm not going to get into the services issue in detail - but tuition increased for the incoming class, and yet funding for our clubs and activities decreased significantly this year. We now have to pay more out-of-pocket for specific Tepper events, such as the Winter Formal that just passed. Tepper is the <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/rankings/" target="_blank">6th most expensive school</a>. I really wonder where our money goes towards, and whether it's worth putting our education and experiences on the line for fickle administrators who play favorites.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-35848406683870155062012-12-02T16:03:00.000-05:002012-12-02T16:03:08.811-05:00Recruiting & International ImageI had lunch with some prospective students earlier this week, and one of them asked a couple of questions that I couldn't answer.<br />
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The first question:<br />
<u>"It seems as though a lot of students are getting jobs and internships from off-campus sources than on. Is this true?"</u><br />
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From <a href="http://www.tepper.cmu.edu/corporations-and-recruiters/recruiters/salary-statistics/mba-statistics/2011-mba-graduates-primary-source-of-job-acceptances/index.aspx" target="_blank">statistics</a> of the Class of 2011 (2012 is soon to be published in a new website format), about 70% of fulltime offers were from campus-based sources. They include Career Fairs as part of campus recruiting. I fall under the 30% who got my internship (and potentially my full time job) off-campus from my own networking - but, as I have said before - the CoC has been very helpful with my own recruiting efforts.<br />
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For students who are looking for more traditional MBA career paths, like banking, corporate finance, consulting and some marketing positions, there is a fair amount of on-campus recruiting. Consulting is huge here - all the big firms (except BCG, although I think that has just changed) come on campus.<br />
Similarly, firms who have structured MBA programs also tend to recruit more on-campus than those who don't. It's probably too expensive to fly around the country to hold interviews for one position where an MBA would be helpful to have, as a lot of the job postings I'm looking at are.<br />
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But we were just told recently that our class of 2013 currently is beating the class of 2012 in terms of number of people with full-time offers. No-one in our class didn't get an internship who wanted an internship, so that was also heartening news. Turns out the class of 2014 is also being very proactive with their internship searches.<br />
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The final line here is to say that, yes, our CoC facilitates a lot of on-campus recruiting efforts. They're also very helpful for off-campus recruiting initiated by the student. But, there should never be an expectation that the CoC is there to find a job for you.<br />
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The second question:<u> </u><br />
<u>"What is the value of Carnegie Mellon's MBA degree outside of the US?</u>"<br />
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I spent some time chatting to people, which lead to some interesting conclusions. It turns out it's the Carnegie Mellon brand that holds the sway, not the Tepper name. Especially in China and India, Carnegie Mellon has a reputation for being highly innovative and technical.<br />
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<a href="http://www.economist.com/whichmba/carnegie-mellon-university-%E2%80%93-tepper-school-business/2012" target="_blank">The Economist</a> has Tepper ranked as No. 17 internationally for B-schools.<br />
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Otherwise, I cannot answer this question. Does anyone have feedback for this?<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-88487622327470692452012-11-25T23:05:00.000-05:002012-11-25T23:05:15.647-05:00Waitlist Woes<br />
Although they abolished it for incoming classes, my class
is required, as part of the degree, to take a Strategy course. On a
related note, in order to obtain a concentration in Strategy, one needs
to have taken three elective courses in Strategy. The Strategy course
selection has been very very slim. Classes that have "Strategy" in the title are not necessarily considered for the Strategy concentration; there are extremely few courses (I've only seen one) that have dealt with Strategy in a concentrated form.<br />
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I was looking over my class selections at the beginning of the Mini and realised that I could take an extra class. I'm a bit of a sucker for getting my money's worth of education from this institute, and the course title "Renewable Corporate Strategy" seemed to be great - a pure strategy course that meets on Thursday nights. This would mean that I would have a class on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday nights, but I've found I'm starting to prefer night classes so this wasn't a problem. I register for it, and discover I'm number 12 on the waitlist.<br />
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Now, Tepper has a little-known and not-well-enforced policy that states this:<br />
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<i>"All students admitted to any course with a waiting list must attend the
first class, unless notified otherwise. No-shows may lose their space to
other waitlisted students unless they receive prior permission to miss
class by contacting the professor."</i><br />
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In a prior handbook, I believe it also stated that if a student did not attend the first day of class, without reasonable notice to the professor, then that student stood a chance of getting dropped from the class and a student from the waitlist would take her/his place.<br />
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I was made aware of this policy in a class I took last mini - Managing Intellectual Capital - since the professor enforces this strictly. His classes are very popular, and so he makes pains to ensure that only those who are truly interested (i.e. the ones who show up) are the ones that get the privilege of getting taught by him. For some naive reason, I thought this was how a lot of super-popular classes worked. I was wrong.<br />
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I turn up to the Strategy class, and the room is nearly full to busting. It's OK - I participate in the class and really enjoy the topics of discussion. Later, I mention to the Professor that I am on the waitlist, and he purses his lips and says that although 3-4 students typically drop the class, it may not be possible for me to participate just because of where I am.<br />
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Next week, the classroom is noticeably emptier. In fact, he passed out tent name cards and a large stack was left over. I had been told previously, by another classmate also on the waitlist, that she had been removed from the waitlist and put into the class through intervention by Student Services. I looked eagerly myself, but I was now number 7.<br />
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For the first half of the class, I was somewhat upset - I am there, someone on the waitlist wanting to get an education from this professor in this class, and yet there were a good number of people who chose to skip the class, who had taken their seat for granted. What was worse is that, when I looked through the tentcards, I saw a few names on there who were participating in a brewery tour that was happening at the same time!<br />
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I talked to the Professor again about my chances of getting in the class, pointing out the large number of people who didn't turn up. I also mentioned the policy that some professors (ahem, above) adhered to, and how it was not right that I, an eager student, wouldn't be able to join the class, especially given how some students aren't taking their academic duties seriously. He seemed genuinely concerned, but torn because it was "fair" that the students who originally got in the class should be able to stay in the class. He promised to talk to Student Services for me. Coincidentally, this was the last day to Add/Drop classes, and thus my last chance.<br />
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The next day, I awaken to an email from Student Services telling me that I had been dropped from the waitlist, and that they were very sorry that they weren't able to accommodate all the students who wanted to take the class. Then they drivelled on about how they've dropped the Strategy concentration requirement to just 2 Strategy electives, and also allowed for some of the courses with "strategy" in the title, like Pricing Strategy, Technology Strategy, Brand Strategy, to be also considered as part of the Strategy concentration, provided that one of the more Strategy-centric courses was also taken.<br />
<br />
I was not interested in taking the course to complete a requirement or a concentration, but for the education I would receive since it was a pure Strategy course and didn't deal with theoretics (like Game Theory). It seems as though the focus was on providing a core Strategy class for the first years than to provide any significant or relevant strategy class for the rest of the school, and thus we missed out. I also feel that there should be an enforced "turn up to the first class or you'll get dropped" for the classes with a long waitlist. To me, "fairness" is having all the students interested in the education from the class be there, and not those who just had it as a choice. But that also, in this case, opens up the can of worms that is my disagreement with having to take "requirement" electives in order to graduate. Thankfully they removed it from the subsequent classes and replaced it with a core class, but oh, it really sucks when I'm pre-registering for a class and I have to give up a class I want to take to take a class I have to take.<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-89443327709405774672012-11-18T14:39:00.004-05:002012-11-18T14:39:55.676-05:00Autumn in PittsburghOver the last couple of months, the city has exploded into this amazing display of brilliant reds, yellows, oranges, and rusts. Since Pittsburgh had a bit of a drought over the summer, the theory is that that has triggered the amazing colours you see below:<br />
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These trees turned red in early October. They are at the front of the CMU campus by Forbes Ave.<br />
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<a href="http://smg.beta.photobucket.com/user/silverdragonn/library/" target="_blank"><img alt="Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App" border="0" src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v77/silverdragonn/IMG_20121004_132944.jpg" /></a><br />
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A couple of weeks later, the red turned into a sparkling gold: <br />
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<a href="http://smg.beta.photobucket.com/user/silverdragonn/library/" target="_blank"><img alt="Uploaded from the Photobucket Android
App" border="0" src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v77/silverdragonn/IMG_20121015_083746.jpg" /></a><br />
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Gold is a common colour around here. The following two shots are on North Craig Street in late September/early October:<br />
<a href="http://smg.beta.photobucket.com/user/silverdragonn/library/" target="_blank"><img alt="Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App" border="0" src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v77/silverdragonn/IMG_20121004_100148.jpg" /></a><br />
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<a href="http://smg.beta.photobucket.com/user/silverdragonn/library/" target="_blank"><img alt="Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App" border="0" src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v77/silverdragonn/IMG_20121004_100139.jpg" /></a><br />
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These are shots taken from my place in North Oakland the last couple of weeks:<br />
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<a href="http://smg.beta.photobucket.com/user/silverdragonn/library/" target="_blank"><img alt="Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App" border="0" src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v77/silverdragonn/IMG_20121111_154957.jpg" /></a><br />
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<a href="http://smg.beta.photobucket.com/user/silverdragonn/library/" target="_blank"><img alt="Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App" border="0" src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v77/silverdragonn/IMG_20121111_154924.jpg" /></a><br />
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And from this morning:<br />
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This tree is outside Skibo gym, opposite Posner Hall, early October:<br />
<a href="http://smg.beta.photobucket.com/user/silverdragonn/library/" target="_blank"><img alt="Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App" border="0" src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v77/silverdragonn/IMG_20121003_172610.jpg" /></a> <br />
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Finally, these trees are in South Side, across the river from CMU, taken this morning:<br />
<a href="http://smg.beta.photobucket.com/user/silverdragonn/library/" target="_blank"><img alt="Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App" border="0" src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v77/silverdragonn/IMG_20121118_115405.jpg" /></a><br />
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<a href="http://smg.beta.photobucket.com/user/silverdragonn/library/" target="_blank"><img alt="Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App" border="0" src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v77/silverdragonn/IMG_20121118_115413.jpg" /></a><br />
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<a href="http://smg.beta.photobucket.com/user/silverdragonn/library/" target="_blank"><img alt="Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App" border="0" src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v77/silverdragonn/IMG_20121118_115423.jpg" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-20577319437393935072012-11-02T12:05:00.001-04:002012-11-02T12:05:50.871-04:00Electives Part 3A little late out the gate - I was too busy doing a lot of nothing during the break :) I am also fortunate to say that Hurricane Sandy had little-to-no effect on Pittsburgh, other than rain and cold.<br />
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<u>Managing Intellectual Capital and Knowledge-Intensive Businesses (Mini 1, 2012. Taught by Robert Kelley)</u><br />
<b>Background:</b> Given how I want to work in IT/entertainment industries, where the brainwork is the product, this course seemed pretty ideal. Professor Kelley has a reputation for being an excellent teacher also.<br />
<br />
<b>Course Deliverables:</b> Class participation 1/3; Individual paper 1/3, Group project & presentation 1/3 <br />
<u> </u><br />
<b>Good Stuff:</b> I immensely enjoyed his class. A lot of his class was discussion-based, which meant that it was less sage-on-the-stage format and more hearing the inputs and thoughts of my classmates. This also explains the heavy emphasis on class participation in the grading scheme. This format allowed the very long class (6:30-10.00) to go by rather quickly. It also seemed a lot of people didn't skip the class either, which meant that they were likewise engaged.<br />
The topics we could choose for our group project were interesting and revolved around IC and organizations. We chose to do the topic on how to structure the organization to best manage IC. I like researching academic papers and reading/learning all this stuff, so I volunteered to do this piece. Thankfully, my teammates all preferred to do the other aspects of the project, which meant this was a perfect fit.<br />
The individual paper was to draw up a business plan, essentially, of one's own career progression. It was interesting, since I do this type of work already in my head, but putting it down on paper and seeing how much I'm really worth was a great exercise.<br />
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<b>Bad Stuff:</b> There was a LOT of reading to do in this class. Again, not that much of an issue for me, but I would spend an entire Saturday doing the readings.<br />
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<u>Commercialization & Innovation: Strategy (Mini 1, 2012. Taught by Art Boni)</u><br />
<b>Background: </b>I was told I had to take this class as part of the Technology Leadership track, even though it wasn't on the track course listing.<br />
<u> </u><br />
<b>Course Deliverables:</b> I think it was just a final project presentation. Participation was also assessed.<br />
<br />
<b>Good Stuff:</b> Similar to another entrepreneurship course I took in Mini 1 2011, this was pretty light on the deliverables. The content was interesting - about identifying a market need before doing anything related to business plans - and the idea we ended up following through with was non-rigid facial tracking technology - the same technology used in Avatar, only we applied it to video games.<br />
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<b>Bad Stuff:</b> It had a LOT of overlap with another course in this mini (see below) and thus didn't grab my attention all to well. <br />
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<u>Innovation Ecosystems (Mini 1, 2012. Taught by Jim Herbsleb)</u><br />
<b>Background: </b>Another Track-requisite course, but it's new and was added for the academic year.<br />
<u> </u><br />
<b>Course Deliverables:</b> A project proposal, presentation, and final write-up on an ecosystem.<br />
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<b>Good Stuff:</b> This ended up being a very engaging and interesting course that opened my mind up to this idea of ecosystems and complements. It had been touched on before in my Technology Strategy course, but this was truly immersive and very interesting. It had a lot of applicability to technology products.<br />
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<b>Bad Stuff:</b> This was the class with the unfortunate episode with the teammate that I had discussed a few posts back. It didn't colour my view of the class itself, since the professor was very understanding of the situation.<br />
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<u>Information Security & Privacy (Mini 1, 2012. Taught by Norman Sadeh)</u><br />
<b>Background: </b>Another Track-requisite course.<br />
<u> </u><br />
<b>Course Deliverables:</b> A mid-term and final exam, an individual homework assignment, and a group project<br />
<br />
<b>Good Stuff: </b>Another pretty interesting course, I was more intrigued by the privacy side of things than the security side of things. We had a guest speaker - the CSO of Alcoa - in for one class and he was very interesting. The exams were surprisingly easy. I also liked how the professor released the Homework assignment three weeks before it was due, which gave me plenty of time to pace myself. I've learned my lesson with CS-based courses; they can't be completed at the last minute :) (my other classmates, however, didn't learn this lesson and was frantically trying to complete this homework, which took a good 12 hours to complete, on the sunday before it was due). The professor also seemed very engaged and interested in our projects and encouraged us to come and see him constantly for guidance and advice.<br />
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<b>Bad Stuff:</b> The work requirements were skewed. Let's take, for example, the mid-term exam. There was one question which was a fill-in-the-word type of question. There were 6 words that needed to be filled in. Each word was worth the same number of points as a short paragraph answer in other questions - which meant that by putting in the wrong word, it was heavily penalised. <br />
Other students complained about the homework and how long it was, but since my expectations had changed to be more aware that the CS-courses are work-intensive, I don't have anything to complain about.<br />
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This little anecdote doesn't fall into either good or bad, but my group had a member who was in the school of Computer Science. The Friday before the project was due, he sent the group an email explaining how he dropped the class since he would be shuttling between San Francisco and Seattle for job interviews for the next two weeks. Our group took it in our stride - we had all taken upon ourselves to do different sections of the work, and his wasn't that important to the grand scheme of the project. It just seemed odd that he would wait until this last minute to let us know, when presumably he would've already known about the interviews and made the trip plans before that Friday.<br />
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<u>Government & Business (Mini 1, 2012. Taught by Jay Apt and Michael Griffin</u><br />
<b>Background: </b>I added this class after the mini had already started, when I felt that my courseload for the mini was too light. A friend of mine had told me it was being taught by a former <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Apt">NASA astronaut</a>, so curious, I enrolled.<br />
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<b>Course Deliverables: </b>2 Case writeups, 2 Homeworks. Optional: Debate involvement. Class participation was also taken into consideration, I believe.<br />
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<b>Good Stuff:</b> This was a fascinating class. I keep making the mistake of thinking government is a dry, boring topic. This really opened my eyes to how businesses encourage regulation by the government to their advantage, of how government isn't always anti- or pro-business, since a regulation always puts one sort of business against another, and how little lobbying money does - businesses pay for lobbying (which, before this class, was extremely distasteful in my eyes) but they tend to woo only those in the government who are sympathetic to their cause or strong supporters. I took this class for curiosity sake, and I'm really glad I did.<br />
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<b>Bad Stuff:</b> There was slight confusion with groups, since we had to change groups to be composed of new people for the second half of the assignments, but that was it. I had a really great time in this class and learned a lot.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-40720645294011125902012-10-23T14:25:00.000-04:002012-10-23T14:25:43.599-04:00Work opportunitiesWhile expressly forbidden for first years in the first two minis, Tepper offers students part-time jobs to hold during the rest of their education. Because I was so active with the admissions help in my first two minis - I signed up both minis, I was almost always available, and I had a good relationship with the admissions staff - I was asked if I wanted to work as an admissions coordinator for the calendar year of 2012. I believe I started in February; I think it is also one of the only times a first year is offered a job.<br />
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Come second year, and the opportunities are numerous:<br />
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- Career Services: The CoC sent out an email near the end of the school year asking for applicants to help with the corporate presentations. This usually includes introducing the company, passing around and collecting the sign-in sheets, and assisting the presentors.<br />
- Accelerated Leadership: This is a service where students can gain help for presentation & communication-style issues. The Center asks notable students who have high marks in the presentations classes to be available as the tutors for this center.<br />
- Teaching Assistants/Grading Assistants: Usually for the core classes, the lecturers asks students who received excellent grades in the class to be a TA for the next coming class. Sometimes, rarely, TA opportunities exist for undergraduate classes (I will be a TA for an undergraduate OB class next semester). This doesn't happen for every core class. Some are TA'd by PhD students, since the content is quite difficult (I'm looking at you, Probability & Statistics and Optimization)<br />
- Tutors: Similar to TAs, tutors are found for the more difficult classes. The school doesn't publicise tutors, but if a first year turns up to Student Services and asks, he or she can be assigned a tutor for a specific class. Again, an email goes out amongst the second years in the first week or so when we get back asking if anyone wants to be a tutor. I believe there is a still a vetting process that the tutor has to go through - i.e. has a great grade.<br />
- Admissions Coordinators: and, of course like I mentioned, assisting the Admissions group with coordinating the student visits - i.e. we get a student onboard to take a prospective to class and to lunch. There's about 7 of us.<br />
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There are cases of some second years continuing their internships on a part-time basis, especially if they interned locally at a startup or smaller business.<br />
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The workload isn't onerous, and it always feels good to be earning something (even if it's only a little bit). My admissions job will probably end by early next mini; but that's OK, since I'll be starting my TA job then.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4465576281661499295.post-77622610876063797262012-10-20T11:55:00.000-04:002012-10-20T11:55:42.399-04:00Teamwork/year 2So my goal of 1 post a week has been destroyed :) To be fair, I had a wedding to attend last week.<br />
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I've mentioned before how b-school seems to be all about teamwork. I've been burned severely by a teammember putting my education at risk, and the rest of that team also not performing to a required standard. I had hoped I learned from this experience and thus sought out those people who reflected my own attitude and work ethic.<br />
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The second thing I should have learned: don't team with someone who has completed "checked out" of the schooling process. <br />
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I know I've mentioned this before also, but by the time second year comes around, there's no external incentive to work. Awards have been issued, scholarships have been sent out, the mantra "grades don't matter" has truly sunk in, and most eyes are towards the final goal - a job after graduation. It's pretty easy-going in comparison to first year. Minimal effort is required to get a passing grade (if not a good grade), and people have learned that the effort expended to go from an A- to an A is not worth the jump. Also, as I discovered, this means that minimal effort is given to team work projects.<br />
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Before the mini started, I had someone reach out to me and ask to team up for a class. I made it very clear I didn't want a repeat of what happened to me the previous mini (where I did all the work), and he/she assured me it wouldn't happen. I trusted this assurance. Looking back, I think this person had scoped me for being a teammate because I would be relied upon to do the majority of the work, and I think this person figured he/she would be on easy street for this class.<br />
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The first warning came when Teammate offered to submit our project proposal but didn't do so on time. Now, while I acknowledge that everyone tends to not worry about end-of-term projects until the end of the mini, Teammate didn't seem engaged with the project and didn't read or respond to any correspondence I had sent out regarding work I had already done.<br />
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Second warning: the meeting we had as a team 1 week before a presentation assessment item was due. Teammate started talking about a subject that wasn't what we had decided on. I was concerned, but thought we had reached a compromise. I sent out a report outline to make sure that everything was cool.<br />
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Boiling pot syndrome: I labored over the week and weekend to do what we had agreed upon at the beginning of the mini: write the report then write the presentation. I did both, and sent it out. A number of times, each one saying "presentation on Monday". Two HOURS before the presentation was due to be submitted, Teammate responds "I didn't realize it was due today." Teammate submits presentation with his/her slides to the professor - the rest of the team didn't get to see it. Presentation comes, and I ask to present (since I wasn't going to be available the next session), and presentation contains a bunch of information that is completely different than what we decided on - the information that Teammate talked about in the last meeting. What's worse, it didn't flow in a logical manner. I'm fuming, but don't say anything to Teammate. Instead, I talk to the professor about Teammate's attitude. Professor also noticed that things were odd in the presentation.<br />
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Sh*t hits the fan: I'm in Gettysburg for the wedding of a close friend. I get an email from Teammate saying what he did to my report. I look in the report and see that Teammate wrote an executive summary that contained no information from the report itself (and talked about stuff that, again, was related to his presentation) and neglected to write up the pieces he had volunteered to do. I send a scathing email in response, asking him to do the work. I also email the professor, explaining the situation. Teammate responds in the 28-yr-old version of "you're a meany poopy head" by attacking everything I've done and getting insulting. He claims that our project topic is on the subject he was working on. Professor responds by allowing two separate reports to be written. I pull this trump card on Teammate and tell him that unless he does the work, s/he's going to have to write his own report on his subject (which, looking back, is the exact same topic as s/he's doing in another class. I get the feeling that Teammate is looking to cut corners and not do any extra work but is affronted by the fact I called him/her out on it). Teammate comes around, but not without taking a few more additional pot shots.<br />
Report finally gets submitted with all our names on it.<br />
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Looking back on it, there are a number of lessons I took from this. The first and obvious one: don't team with this person again.<br />
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But what is more sad is this fact: Teammate was a friend. Teammate was also one of those bad eggs that happened to fall through the cracks of the admissions program and had alienated a huge part of the class due to his/her arrogant behaviour. I was his/her defender. Now that I received the full brunt of this person's arrogance and petulance, I feel I cannot defend this person anymore. Nor do I feel that our friendship is worth holding onto, especially when his/her disdain and contempt shone brightly through his/her actions and the emails that were written to me.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0