Catching Up!

They (whoever "they" are) say that going for an MBA makes you become more efficient.  So how's this?  I'm going to cover two days in one entry!

Julian Barling, our Leadership prof, was a hoot!  So, it wasn't so bad having class with him for 12 hours yesterday.  Yes, you read that right.  We had twelve straight hours of the same guy in the same day.  Don't ask me what I learned.  I don't remember.  I do know that he is coming back next Wednesday and that we have an assignment based on the movie The Twelve Angry Men.

The sad thing that happened is that someone decided to withdraw from the program.  Believe me, the thought has crossed my mind a couple of times, so I certainly empathized with him.  Queen's handled it all very discreetly.

I got home around 9pm and had a chance to say goodnight to my girls.  They were still sort of awake when I crept in to give them kisses.  It had been their first day of school, so we talked about their teachers and what they did and who was in their classes.  And then they asked me if I liked my teacher.  (It's like they just realized what "Mommy is in school" means.)  I explained that I have had five teachers so far (six as of today) and that they all seemed nice.

I tried to read the cases that I needed done for today before I went to bed last night.  My eyes started closing about half-way through the Microsoft case, so I called it a day.  You know what that means, though.  I woke up and had it on my mind.  I skipped the gym and found a quiet place to sit and read and take notes.  I was the most prepared person on the team for our meeting about the assignment tonight.  Not so sure it was worth missing the gym though.

I cried at school today.  Someone asked me how my girls' first day went and I started to answer and my eyes welled up (is that the right term Michael?).  She gave me a hug, and I was on the verge of tears all day.

Today we started our work on the Role of the General Manager.  It's a junior strategy course.  Porter's 5 Forces model and stuff.  (We do Porter tomorrow.)  Today, we covered some sort of congruency theory.  It's supposed to be a model to help you make sense of things.  Well, as we worked on our Microsoft case (which required referencing the Congruency Model), I think we got it all confused.  By "we", I mean my whole team.

Anyway, Sean was the Lead and I was the Second and it was tough.  The two quietest people in the team were leading.  It was challenging.  The more senior (in job level) people were biting their tongues and trying to diplomatically help the others improve.  I don't think it was taken that way.  I might have kicked in and tried to facilitate, but the reality is that I was too busy trying to make sense of what everyone was saying and incorporating it into our report.  (The Second does the initial typing at the team meeting and the Lead is supposed to take the document and clean it up and make sure all the salient points are addressed.  There is usually a back & forth between the Lead and the Second and when the document is nearly done, it goes to the team.  We aren't going to follow that on this one.)

We didn't finish so we invoked our team norm of work-life balance and packed up.  We'll finish it tomorrow. (It's due at 10pm.)

Well, that's it for now.  I have another case and some Harvard Business Review articles to read.  I hope to read at least one thing before I fall asleep.  I want to go to the gym in the morning.