MCOM 320

This is my last post on this blog, to finish the requirement for my MCOM 320 class. This has been a good exercise for me to be a little more creative and stretch in my writing abilities.

Yesterday in class my team did a presentation outlining some problems and recommended solutions for T-Mobile, which was also a good exercise and taught me a lot of things. I decided to look on T-Mobile's blog today to see what they're actually doing to improve their company, and this is what I found: http://blog.t-mobile.com/2011/11/09/t-mobile-attracts-customers-with-no-annual-contract-no-compromise-plans/. Basically instead of reworking their customer service or trying to integrate their systems more, they're improving a diversified line of products to attract new customers.

MCOM has been a good class for me and I've learned some things I didn't know before. At times though I've felt like the class was more geared towards demonstrating skills that I already should have developed than developing new skills. There was so much material and so little time that I felt like I only did decently because of my previous experience in the business environment and the grammar skills I already had.

The other concern I had with the class was the deadline for these blog posts being at midnight on Sunday, which encouraged many of the students to do their blogs last minute on the Sabbath. My personal ethics keep me from doing school work on Sunday, because I interpret the scriptures to include that as "working", and although I respect that other students don't see things the same way I do, I was disappointed that the requirement of the class almost encouraged Sunday homework and many of the students would do just that. I missed several blog posts, waking up Sunday morning and realizing that I could whip up a quick blog post to not lose points in the class, or hold to my principles and get a lower grade. I missed 3 or 4 blog posts that way, which was my fault for not remembering to do them before Saturday, but with a deadline for Sunday it slipped my mind until the day of when it was too late for me ethically. I checked once or twice to see how many of the students were actually doing their posts on Sunday, and looking at the blog tracker Saturday night late and Monday morning early, I saw that more than a third were fulfilling the assignment last minute on Sunday. If there is one thing I would change about the class it would be that - changing the blog deadline from Sunday at midnight to Saturday at midnight.

Here's a thought for the day: does what you're studying actually apply to what you're doing? Does it apply to what you're going to be doing? I made this little questionnaire because I thought it might spark a little bit of thought, and it's something I've been thinking about for the past few days. I had a conversation with my mom a few days ago, and she told me something that was really wise. She said that a college education is becoming less valuable in these shifty economic times, and just simply having a degree in whatever doesn't guarantee success. She talked about how a lot of degrees and programs at Universities don't have a lot of practical application and it's difficult to get jobs afterwards. However, she told me that there are some degrees that will always have value, because of the things taught that are hard to pick up in a hands-on environment. For example, a company looking for a new structural engineer for a building project would never hire a person without a college degree proving that they'd studied the ins and outs of structural engineering thoroughly. Another degree that will always have value is accounting (which is my current major), because of the need for accurate financial reporting methods. As I think about it, I'm becoming more sure of my decision to stick with the accounting path and get a degree in it, because it will give me the business experience and financial know-how to branch out into whatever field I want. Also, it's a great fall-back protection against changing times and economies, because there's always going to be taxes for filing and financial statements to produce and review, the whole modern business world depends on it. I feel good about going into something where I'm actually learning the skills and knowledge I'll use in my career and be able to apply in different settings.

Professional-Grade Writing

This is my brother Spencer. (He was also homeschooled). Spencer over the past few years has taken an interest in body-building, because he was a skinny kid growing up and felt like it stopped him from getting interest from girls. So, he decided to put an end to that and researched everything he could about body-building and anatomy and nutrition, and ended up gaining about 50 lbs and being in really good shape. People don't believe him when he says he was a tall scrawny kid that got picked on in middle school (for not going to middle school). Well, Spencer was dedicated and recorded every set and every bite of his journey, and has multiple notebooks filled with his records. He decided to compile it into a program to sell to people who have a hard time gaining weight, "hard-gainers", and also to people who want to start working out at the gym but have no idea where to start. He put together a draft of the program, complete with his story and the workout program and the diet, and sent it to me to look over. I've been closely following his program for about a month now and can already see results, and I'm getting more and more convinced that it's a product with value. I offered to help him with a more polished prototype that he can send out and get some attention with, and I've decided to give it a go tomorrow.

Thinking about how to polish Spencer's body-building guide has made me wonder about why it's so easy to pick out a poorly written document, but it's so hard to write a document that isn't poorly written. I mean, the average person can tell in less than a minute if a sales pitch they're reading or a published article is professional quality, yet there are very few people who actually know how write professionally. I feel like part of this comes from our education system, where academic writing is taught by highschool teachers who care more about big vocabularies and flowery sentences than actual content or style. I learned how to write in that extravagant, boring style in my one semester of highschool, and even though I was good at it I couldn't stand reading anything I'd written for the class. BYU seems to have a lot of this academic influence, and it comes out any time students have writing assignments. The sentences are long, the flow is complicated, and the words are reminiscent of Pride and Prejudice. Although those papers get high points in the standard English courses, the same styles applied in real-world writing mark a person as immature and amateur. People don't like to read things that are boring! So, writing effectively is as much of an art and talent as it is an academic science, and it's important to learn how to use both effectively.

Home-school

How does college life compare to home-school? Most of us have a stereotype of home-schoolers as socially awkward kids who wear their pants too high and don't know how to leave mommy. They wear hand-me-down sneakers and sport the rolling backpacks, and wear a smug look as they pass their publicly-schooled peers. They're almost like a distinct class of nerd, a social under class that crops up occasionally, but is generally ignored. Having been home-schooled myself, I come from the other side and will make some comparisons to college life, and how the two are surprisingly similar.

As I grew up I was educated at home, primarily by my mother. I learned from an early age that I had to be self-motivated and disciplined in order to learn anything, because if I didn't put in the effort there was very little my mom could do to force me. I decided to make the most of things, and even though I didn't study exactly the same topics as my friends in school did, I learned the basics of reading, writing, and math, and I felt like it was sufficient.

When I got to BYU, I found out that I could do well in my lasses by just doing the exact same thing I did in home-school. While those around me were complaining about how much harder college was than high school, I just quietly got my work done and studied concepts till I knew them. I was already used to not having a strict schedule and rules to follow, so I didn't feel like I had to stay up late or waste time with TV shows or experiment with "new-found" freedoms, I'd already seen where that goes and I realized what I was at school for.

I feel like home-school is really an extension of college life, but in reverse. It gives personal responsibility to kids when their younger, and it can give a great head start to being successful in college. I don't vouch for all homeschoolers, I find it just as weird when I pass the kid clacking along the walkway with his rolling backpack and t-shirt tucked in, but there's merit in giving personal responsibility to younger people so they can make independent choices sooner.

Education

I've been thinking recently about what a college education really says about a person. The further I get in my studies here at BYU I've been coming to the conclusion that a degree says more about what kind of person you are than what knowledge or skills you have. I find that most of my time at college is spent doing assignments and projects and readings that have little or no relevance to what I'll actually be doing for most of my life, and all the details that I'm so meticulously examined on disappear out of my head the minute finals are over. However, I'm determined to get my 4-year degree because of what that degree says about my character and my work ethic.

I would never hire an employee for an important, long-term position in a company I owned unless they had a college degree, but in all honesty I don't think I'd care very much what they got their degree in. If it was a skilled position I'd want to know what real-world experience they had with those skills. The only purpose for the degree would be to tell me that the person had time-management skills, and could stick to something and accomplish it. The degree would also tell me that the employee knew how to take an assignment and complete it satisfactorily, and that he or she could manage some level of stress and handle some level of responsibility.

Sometimes I get a little frustrated in my studies when I don't see any value in what i'm cramming into my brain to satisfy an assignment or a professor, but I figure that it's because of the unpleasantness of the task that my degree will mean something and actually have some value.

Damon

School Online?

This morning I woke up to my alarm at 7:30 and considered getting up and starting my day, then I smiled and pulled my covers in tighter and slept till nine. My Accounting 200 class (which starts at 8) was doing a software day, where we watch an accounting lecture on our own time, so attendance wasn't required and I'd done the work last night. I'd also read ahead in my math text and completed my online homework, so I decided to skip both the math lecture and lab that I have scheduled on Tuesdays. It felt so good to catch up on my sleep, and because I was rested when I got up I studied hard for an ISYS test and just got done taking it.

I love having flexible schedules where I can choose when to study and when to not, I feel like I get so much more out of the experience that way. I've sat through so many lectures when I was so tired that I could hardly keep my eyes open, just because my attendance was required. I always end up having to review the textbook and slides and whatever other resources are available, and since the information on tests usually comes from those resources as well I end up not paying full attention in class. I like the idea of having hybrid classes, where a professor offers once or twice a week to cover the material in an optional lecture, and have as the main bulk of information video lectures from the same professor that the students can study on their own time, following the schedule of tests and course outlines. Professors would have so much more time to do their own work and research and whatever else they do, and students would actually get more out of their classes and not just have to cram all sorts of information into short-term memory for tests and then forget it all. Wouldn't it be nice. :)

Here's a YouTube sales pitch for these kinds of classes, it's a little bit stuffy and academic sounding but has some good points.

Trust with Students

I'm taking an introductory Accounting class this semester and I'm in an auditorium with about 500 other students learning the basics from a professor who wrote the textbook. I'm enjoying the subject and so far it hasn't been to difficult, it seems intuitive for the most part and I figure it'll help my in my future business ventures. Our first day in class though, our professor said and did a few things that I felt were less than professional, and especially in the first couple days of class, where impressions are made for the rest of the semester. A student fielded a question he posed and then before even commenting on the answer, he asked where the student was from and he responded "Great Britain". The professor then went on a tangent about an English person he knew who was always talking about the independence of America as a small thing, like England had just "released us like a white dove". Then he went up the isle a couple rows and said directly to the student: "Just so you know, we beat you in a war!". Another student fielding a question was asked where he was from, and when he responded with Indiana, the professor asked if he was good at basketball, and then proceeded to make fun of him for not being able to dunk, since he was from Indiana and obviously should play basketball. Another student from Texas (my home state which made it a touch personal), was asked on the spot to give us his opinion about Governor Perry running for president. He responded well, and ended by saying "I'd rather have a businessman than a politician." The professor then corrected him by saying "or businesswoman." to which he responded negatively, and subsequently was called out by the professor as being sexist and was made to stand up so everyone could see him, putting him in a humiliating position.

My thoughts after this experience are that a teacher in any class has to have a certain level of trust or credibility with the students to be able to teach them well. When I saw my accounting professor acting the way he did, it did two things to my trust in him. First, it made me think he was unprofessional and so no matter what his academic achievements or experience, I can't take him seriously and I'll take everything he says with a grain of salt. Second, I lost my desire to participate in the class or to really extend myself in any meaningful way, because I don't know if he'd put me on the spot like he did to those other students. Unfortunately both of those things hinder my learning in the class, and so the effectiveness of a teacher like that is limited because there's no trust in the class.