Burton Simmons’s “Adventures in Business School”

I just found out that one of the purposes of this program is to help us, as people (and potential managers) be able to find patterns in unrelated facts. How do we take the noise of information in the world and filter through it to come up with salient knowledge and the ability to make decisions?

There is no class on Fridays in the Willamette MBA program. They are quick to assure you, though, that Friday isn’t a “day off.” It’s just a day to “schedule your work differently.” That’s nice. I see it as a day I’m not getting more worked assigned to me and an opportunity to catch up on what happened over the week.

Right now I’m sitting in the student lounge on the first floor, typing a paper. It’s great because there are almost a dozen of us here, working either solo or in groups on a variety of projects. We can ask a question of the room, talk to another team working on the same project, say “Hi” to classmates, and tap the general knowledge of first and second year students. The unspoken collaboration factor in this room is incredible.

It’s already started. This morning I missed my first two classes. I didn’t want to miss them, but I somehow slept through my alarm (not a concious choice, I assure you) and woke up two hours late with “OH SHIT” being the first words out of my mouth.

I needed it, though.

I’ve been sleeping about 4 hours a night for the past several days due to a variety of personal reasons. I’ve been doing readings and homework and classes and meetings for school for about 14-16 hours a day. My body must have rebelled this morning and said “No more!”

So here I am at school, waiting for the current class to end so I can walk into the classroom. I’m early (for the next class) so I’ll probably do homework out here. This isn’t how I want it; I want and need to be a good student.

Today one of the big discussions has been on creativity and the idea of coming up with new ideas (like, for business, you know?) One of the readings discussed pattern building in the human brain and that the order in which we’re presented with data can vastly effect the result we come up with; we naturally limit ourselves to “in the box” thinking because we build patterns in our brains to deal with situations.

Here’s a quick demonstration on how patterns get built in a normal person’s mind (though this somewhat loses effectiveness in print.)

Spell “POTS” 5 times fast.
What do you do at a green light?

Apparently, the correct answer is not “stop” (as almost anyone you administer the test to will respond.)

Interesting test. Since I’m not a very creative person, this particular part of the educational experience is going to be tough for me.

So the great misconception I’m finding I had in high school and college was that calcoolus was purely theoretical, without practical use in the “real world” and therefore highly forgettable in the post-college environment.

Never let it be said that I’m unwilling to admit I’m wrong. (If you can decipher that sentence…)

It seems that the way to determine “marginal revenue” (which, I’m finding, is the rate of change in the total revenue) is to take the derivative of the equation for the “total revenue”. When the derivative equals zero is when the marginal revenue is at the highest (or lowest) value(s). This - and how to find the derivative of the function - is what was shown to us by the tutor today after class. You read that right - after class we covered in an hour and a half what it took me almost my entire senior year in high school to learn!

I believe the appropriate phrase here is “OMG!”

I’m in my second week of class and I’ve noticed something big. You see, at a private school it seems I can email my professor a question at 10 at night and he’ll actually respond. This was, of course, unheard of at a public university. Craziness.