A TALE OF TWO COUNTRIES

We are two weeks in to Quarter #2 and our classes are Financial Accounting and Statistics.  Interestingly, our accounting professor is from Germany and our Stats professor from Shiraz, Iran (both male this time; last quarter, both were female).  The two experiences could not be any more different.  Our German accountant is an avid surf fan - our first case analysis was on Volcom - with a very mellow demeanor.  He tells us that he's not trying to turn us in to accountants; just wants to give us the tools to know how to organize the numbers and make use of them in making business decisions.  To prove to us that he doesn't fit the accountign stereotype, he shows YouTube videos (Family Guy, etc) at the beginning of every class.  The pace is fairly leisurely ... at least in comparison with ....

Stats.  A very different experience.  The professor loves his subject matter and, I think, assumed that we knew far more than we did about the subject coming in to the class.  Our assignment before the first class was to read six chapters (250 pages) of our textbook.  After breezing through the first 6 chapters in the first class he gave us our first assignment which we turned in last night.  The assignment comprised 11 multi-part questions that took me, I'm ashamed to say, 5-6 hours to complete.  Turns out I wasn't alone.  There was a mini-mutiny in class last night as everyone was very concerned about having the time to keep up with this pace.  The professor commiserated with us and was very open to the dialogue, agreeing to provide extra help away from class.  However, he didn't waver regarding the content or pace of the class - "You are getting an MBA from UCI.  It's a serious degree."  Kind of respect him for that.  He probably doesn't surf ...

By the way, we've been discussing sample distributions in Stats and the prof frequently uses average class age as an example.  I've learned that I am what is known as an "Outlier" in the data (I loved the Malcolm Gladwell book; so I guess Outlier is a good thing?).  My age is beyond the upper limit in a Box & Whiskers Plot of the age distribution for my class.

SUMMER SCHOOL

We started our 2nd quarter this week - our classes are Financial Accounting and Statistics.  Doesn't sound exciting, does it? - especially for summer school.  However, I hear among my classmates an excitement about getting into some of the financial meat of our coursework.  These classes, we believe, will start to unlock some of the skills that will help us move to the next level in our organization or make that transition to another company or industry.

My two accounting classes in undergrad were taken nearly 30 years ago and I know that I didn't retain much from those classes.  However, I'm finding that I must have accumulated more accounting knowledge during my career than I'd expected as the concepts that I've read about in the first few chapters of the book seem very familiar.  The prof's approach to this class seems to be that he doesn't want to make us into accountants; he just wants to make sure that we have a facility with balance sheets and income statements so that we can understand and use this data in making decisions as managers.  So, it looks like the pace of this class will be manageable.

Stats may be another story.  We were required to read the first 250 pages of the textbook before the first class and the professor will assume that we know this as he starts the class on page 251.  If I remember very little of accounting from my undergrad years, I remember absolutely nothing from my stats class and I'm fairly certain that I haven't used much of it since.  First stats class is tonight ...