Category Archives: Academia

Spring 2016 Semester Review

Grades are in… and I am no longer a student. :D Here is a quick review of the classes I took this semester.

FIN 445 – Adv. Investments
This was hands down the best class of the semester. I had the same professor that I had last semester for the first Investments class, and he is the best professor I’ve had. He has a lot of experience throughout his career that he was really able to integrate into the class. He’s just one of those people that can walk into the room and easily by the smartest person there, but is still very humble about it.

We had about four tests and five projects, so it was a really heavy workload, but unlike most classes, I found all of the projects really beneficial. It was the perfect culmination of all the different concepts, valuation methods, and lessons from all the different finance classes I’ve taken. It was a lot of hard work, and it didn’t help that it was three hours a week on a Wednesday night, but I would have recommended anyone in the business school to take his class. I’m actually a little sad that I won’t be taking him any more. *tear*

Credits: 3
Final Grade: A

MGT 471 – Strategic Management
Sigh. This class was terrible. In a matter of two weeks, we had gone through four different professors. I’m not sure what happened, but the department definitely just scrambled to find someone to teach this class, and he was truly terrible. He had never taught before, was definitely unqualified, completely unorganized, and gave absolutely no clear instructions or feedback. We didn’t even receive a syllabus until a month and a half into the semester.

You know it’s bad when the professor says, “Just think, in a few years this class will just be one bad nightmare.”

To top it all off, a large portion of my grade was a twenty minute group presentation. I had six people in my group, and if I was lucky, two of them would show up on any given day. So I ended up doing almost the whole presentation. Another guy offered to do our recommendations for us, so I let him. The day of the presentation, he didn’t show up and he didn’t do the recommendations, so needless to say, it was the worst presentation I’ve ever given in my undergraduate career and we got ripped apart in our Q&A because I literally just pulled everything out of my butt in about 0.2437 seconds.

The professor never lectured and he would just spend all class talking about himself and what he does on the weekend. There was actually one class where he brought in these chia seed muffins and read us the ingredients on the label. :|

He didn’t even lecture over any of the content that was going to be on the final. But then he told us that he had already told us everything that would be on there, and “we would be fine.” LOL JK.

My favorite part of the semester is definitely when the course and professor evaluations come around, because trust me, I don’t hold my opinions back. :horns:

Credits: 3
Final Grade: A

FIN 350 – Introduction to Insurance and Risk Management
I did not really want to take this class, but I needed another finance elective and it was the only one that really fit my schedule, so I took it. This was a really difficult class because it was largely based on law, so it felt like a law class. There was a lot of contract analysis and a lot of laws and court cases and precedence. Blech.

My professor was really good, though. For such a dry topic, he tried to make it interesting. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, haha. The class also wasn’t super organized, but it was okay since we didn’t have a lot of assignments and such.

We did have a huge report at the end of the semester with vary vague guidelines, which was frustrating. Did he want five pages? Thirty-five pages? I honestly ran out of time with it and could have done more, but I did complete about sixteen pages, so I think it was enough.

Credits: 3
Final Grade: A

CIT 105P – Foundations Of Computing // CIT 106P – Computers Uses & Impact
This class was so easy, it was wonderful compared to my other three. I took these only because my advisors failed to tell me until my last semester before graduating that I needed 8 more credits of general electives. Thankfully, these were online and, since they were so easy, I finished them up in about a month.

These two classes mainly focused on creating word documents, excel spreadsheets, and power points that followed certain guidelines, so it was really a piece of cake. We also had to do some small assignments over the internet, and a couple papers, but nothing that I wasn’t already familiar with.

Credits: 8
Final Grade: A

Conclusion
Overall, not a horrible semester considering I was taking 17 credit hours. I managed a 4.0 GPA for the semester, which means my overall GPA is a 3.93! Woot! I definitely learned a lot more in some of my classes than in others, but I’m just so glad to be done.

I’m a bit sad this is my last “semester review” post, at least for now. But who knows what the future may hold? 8)

The Last Semester (& Getting Organized)

I am on my last semester of school! It feels so good to say that. I feel like I haven’t talked much about what’s been going on with me lately, but I think a large part of that is because I’ve been so busy trying to get everything together for my classes.

There was a bit of a fiasco at the end of last term when what I thought was going to be my lightest course load for my last semester turned into my heaviest course load. When I met with my advisor, apparently some of my classes that I took for dual credit in high school didn’t actually count towards my degree, when they told me my freshman year that everything transferred, no problem. So the last three semesters I had been taking really light loads of only 12 credit hours and now I’m taking 17 my last semester.

I opted to take the eight extra credit hours that I didn’t know I needed in the form of two online computer courses, hoping they would be super easy. Turns out I was right! I’ve actually already finished one of them, so it’s nice to have one class done only two weeks in! The other class I would have been finished with by now as well, but I managed to corrupt all the files on my flash drive. D:

I’m still not exactly sure how it happened. I was at work, and my flash drive was acting a little weird. I couldn’t create any new folders or save anything to it, so I ejected it and put it back in. It prompted me to scan the drive, which I’ve always done before, but when I opened it up, all my files had been changed to “FILE000X.CHK.” I freaked out, googled what in the crap I just did, and tried for hours and hours different programs and methods to recover my files. Some were able to change the files, but when I tried to open them they were all corrupted. I even called a couple of computer repair shops to see if they could fix it. One of them said he had never even heard of what I’d done. Eventually I just decided to cut my losses and move on.

Not backing up these files, I would like to add, looks very stupid on the surface, but I (kinda) had my reasons. Normally I back everything up with Dropbox, but my computer at work blocks pretty much any site that isn’t the company’s website, so that disrupted my normal routine. I also have a regular back up on my laptop. The problem was I just kept forgetting to copy my files from my flash drive to my laptop. Additionally, I never had problems with my flash drive before and I’d never lost it either, so I figured the probability of me losing anything was very, very slim. After all, I had my drive for eight years and nothing had ever happened. So I really am pretty embarrassed because this is such a rookie mistake.

Now I’m at least copying my files locally to my work computer. I had my first online class almost completely done and I lost all those files, so I basically have to go back and redo the class. A lot of the other stuff on there was more for nostalgia’s sake, so it wasn’t a huge deal that it got corrupted, but the whole thing was just so frustrating.

On the bright side, however, losing all of my files really made me go through everything on my computer. Being an organized person, I don’t know how my computer was as messy as it was. I deleted a lot of old pictures and files and rearranged everything into nice folders and subfolders.

I also finally downloaded Windows 10. I waited a good amount of time after its release just so that there would be some time for bugs to be fixed t and to gauge everyone else’s reactions to it. I wasn’t fond of Windows 8, so I wasn’t sure how all the app integration would settle with me, but I really like the new Windows! It definitely feels like an upgrade and it looks a lot sleeker.

Desktop
“We’ll always have Paris.”

I had a bit of a scare at first because my internet was not only staying connected for a minute and then would disconnect for a few minutes. I had to keep manually connecting and disconnecting and I had never had any problems before the download. But after I updated a couple of programs and gave my laptop a restart, I haven’t had any problems since. I also cleaned up my desktop and reorganized all of my pictures, too!

I feel now that I have everything truly organized (and backed up properly!), I can take on this semester. In addition to the two online courses, I’m taking Strategic Management, Advanced Investments, and Insurance and Risk Management (trust me, not my first choice). Generally they are all going pretty well so far (though I am on my fourth professor for my Strategy class, but that’s another post for another time).

Happy February!