Category: School

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I’ve got plans on this day, this day, this day…

Fortunately, the Economics professor isn’t in our group, so there would be no benefit to indulging in any ass-kicking. Mind you, the temptation is still there.

There are six groups that have to make presentations to the class scattered throughout the next couple weeks. We’re Group #1, which means that this upcoming Monday, we have to:

  • Give our presentation
  • Submit an 8-10 page paper about it
  • Take the midterm exam

Translation: this week is going to be shitty. What provides with a few bonus points is that I have plans every single day until then.

Wednesday: haircut & dinner with friends I haven’t seen in months
Thursday: presentation by the CEO of Buffalo Wild Wings & trivia
Friday: dinner with Mensa Gen-X group (I could have played pool for a couple hours with a Meetup group, but I chose dinner with my peeps)
Saturday: meeting with family to celebrate a few birthdays, mine included (seeing a movie at the Science Museum, then dinner)
Sunday: book reading for a friend (this is my second chance—I missed the one three weeks earlier)

If you’ll flash back with me almost eight years ago, there were two “beauties” sitting on a bed, saying that one of the “geeks” only went out two times a month. That was me. Two nights every month and that was it. Now my schedule is getting filled up when I need it to be flexible.

Our group talked it over before class yesterday and decided that we’re going to meet on Thursday afternoon. If our discussion lasts so long that I have to miss the presentation, well, that’s one more thing I’ll probably blame on the professor. Plus I’ll miss eating wings from BWW afterward, which would doubly suck.

For the sake of our class presentation, we’ll meet again on Saturday—as long as I can get to the Science Museum on time, that’s not such a big deal. Still, the fact that I’m so busy after only going out two nights a month… I’m not sure if this is Alanis Morissette-esque irony or actual irony, but it’s still worth a few bonus points.

On a more positive note, the professor made a comment during class that I had to write down: Microeconomics is like sex. You have to do it slowly.

Naturally, my brain immediately took that in the wrong direction: Microeconomics is like sex. You have to do it slowly, but sometimes you come up with an answer too quickly and disappoint your professor.

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Okay, seriously, how many people?

I’m kinda dreading my Economics class coming up later this evening. It’s not that the subject is boring (although it can be at times)—the problem is the instructor. I assume he has certain things he wants to discuss since there’s a slideshow covering that week’s reading assignment, but if that’s the case, I better keep doing the reading because we don’t come close to finishing the slideshow during class.

We started last week by discussing group projects. We’re all being put into groups of five or six people to write a paper and make a presentation to the class, which is no big deal. It became a big deal when the instructor asked the class, “What’s the optimal size of a group?” People were piping up with numbers like four and five; some developed a plan based on which jobs needed to be done for a project; I almost told him to use a dartboard.

No one was giving him the answer he wanted, so the discussion went on for fifteen minutes until he finally told us that you determine the optimal size of the group by weighing the costs of adding another person versus the benefits. When those numbers become equal, that’s the best size. In other words, he was asking for numbers, then gave us an economic concept as the answer.

Is five or six a good size for a group? Yes.

Is it the optimal size? Maybe.

Is there an objective way to measure costs and benefits to determine this? No.

Why didn’t he give us the answer he wanted about costs and benefits right away instead of wasting the first fifteen minutes of class last week? I don’t know, but if he was in my group, I think kicking his ass after that would have been a major benefit.

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MBA survey for the Twin Cities area

I’m doing a project with three of my classmates at Augsburg and we initially sent this as an e-mail to the other MBA students and alumni. It just occurred to me this morning that posting this on my blog and on Facebook would help us get a larger sample size with a wider variety of viewpoints, etc.

Thus, if you are over 18 and live in the Twin Cities area, I’d appreciate it if you could click on the link below and take a couple minutes to answer eight questions. Thanks, everyone.

_________________________________________________________________

We are a group of Augsburg College MBA students conducting a survey related to our Management Consulting Project and are hoping for your willing participation.

The purpose of our survey is to gather information about the feasibility of launching an organic bakery as a social enterprise that donates 100% of all profits to help the local community.

The survey will take 5 to 10 minutes to complete. Results will be used in summary form only in order to protect identity. Responses are important to gauge this potential enterprise’s ability to positively impact the Twin Cities community.

Please click the link below:

http://augsburg.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_9oiTpJTpOjnJgt6
Thank you for taking the time to assist with our research.

Adam Kluge, Carolyn Mollner, La Tosha Randall & Shawn Bakken

_________________________________________________________________

UPDATE: The survey is now closed. Or if the link is still active and you can go to the survey form, we’re not collecting any more results, so… yeah. Thanks to everyone who took a few minutes to answer the questions—we appreciate your input.

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Another empiricist bites the dust

Back on November 4th, I went on a tear because someone in my class was obsessed with empiricism and insistent on the existence of an “empirical truth”. I wanted to punch him in the face then and I might still feel the urge now, but the gods answered an unspoken prayer to preserve my fists and shut the guy up in one fell swoop: he dropped out of the class. And that’s the truth, too.

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Thank God a picture says a thousand words…

Because his paper didn’t do the picture justice.

This may sound like one of those stupid passive-aggressive Facebook status messages where the person is implying something angrily, but doesn’t outright say, “Jeremy, pull your head out of your ass and stop having sex with my girlfriend! I hate you!” In this case, I know my classmate is a good guy, but… ugh.

In our current class, we’ve been split into small groups and there are three things we have to do every week: 1) Write an individual paper about the topic, 2) use everyone’s information and analysis to write a group paper, then 3) make a group presentation. Doesn’t seem too difficult and might be fun in some cases. This group paper… not so fun.

It was about systems theory (I mentioned it back on November 8th) and we were each supposed to observe something. An event, a situation, your neighbor naked in the shower—whatever tickled your fancy. Along with describing it according to systems theory, we were supposed to draw a diagram that included a bunch of elements that had an influence within that system: traffic is bad because rubberneckers crash into each other, Dick Cheney got away with shooting someone in the face because he was the vice president, there’s no steam in the neighbor’s shower because she likes using cold water, etc.

The diagram and the paper were supposed to match. You could look at either one and get the same information with the same relationships of the elements in the system. In this person’s paper, the final page was a very complex and elaborate chart with a lot of items and a lot of arrows. Very dynamic, very informative—I thought it was really good. The section of his paper that coincided with that chart was two paragraphs long.

I was working on the group paper using what we’d all written and sometimes I could copy and paste some of the information. Not in this case. Nope, I had to choose a portion of his diagram on my own and write about that. I finished the paper, sent it out to the group and told them explicitly what I’d used their papers to focus on. Since some of the information overlapped, having people talking about the same stuff during our group presentation wouldn’t leave a good impression, you know?

Once that was done, I had plenty of time to roam around the house, feeling frustrated and angry and doing a lot of swearing inside my head. It was so upsetting, I didn’t even bother trying to watch my neighbor naked in the shower tonight. Yeah, it was that bad.

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“There’s a reason the empiricists died out.”

I’ve taking classes at Augsburg for less than a year, so that might be the reason why I’ve never felt such a strong compulsion to turn around and punch someone in the face before. When someone is so resistant to a rational concept and won’t shut up about it… [Insert strangling noise here.]

I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned Peter Stark in here before, but he was the instructor for my Leadership class and is striking back for Organization Behavior and Development. He’s a smart guy. Smart enough to know that you can only teach so much about system theory, quantum theory and empiricism in a four-hour class before people’s neurons start shooting sparks out their ears. He let us out 45 minutes early, but it might have been earlier if not for the douchebag who was intent on defending the concept of empiricism to the point of lunacy.

He seemed so proud of it, too. He didn’t openly state, “This is what [blank] said!”, but pointed out that he’d read David Hume, John Locke and a couple other empiricists. As he was doing so, I was thinking, “Congratulations on your Philosophy degree! I got one, too! Shut the hell up!” But of course, he wouldn’t.

And “but” was a word he was very reliant on. Peter would say something…

“But…”
“No buts!”
“But…”
“No buts!”
“But…”

The discussion (or lack thereof) keeps making me want to beat my head against a wall. Or beating that guy’s head against a wall if that was an available option. Here’s the deal: There is no empirical truth. Sensory experience is an individualistic process, something that goes on in your head. Someone else might see the same thing, but the way they perceive it could be completely different.

Assume there’s an object that’s purple. You and another person look at the object and agree, yes, it definitely looks purple. So what if you agree? Does that mean you’re seeing the same purple? No two brains are identical, so no two people are guaranteed to experience “purple” in the same manner. If you’re an empiricist like this guy? Everyone does. Period.

If you need another example, consider speed. Sprinting the 100 meter dash. Biking down a mountain at 55 mph. Driving a car at 150 mph. Flying a jet at… a really fast speed. Your proximity to other objects. Running into the wind versus being in an enclosed space. All of these variables influence the way you experience speed (feeling the wind, seeing passing objects, tasting the dust that people are leaving in your face, etc.). So which one is the correct one? Which one is “fast”?

Hume and Locke lived in the 18th Century—you think they had the same standards as you? If there’s such a thing as an “empirical truth”, they’d enjoy a smooth drive through the countryside like you do instead of spending the entire time screaming their lungs out. It’s like saying there are an infinite number of possibilities in any given situation, but there’s one “correct” one.

“But…”
“No buts!”
“But…”
*WHAP!*

According to empiricism, the pain I’d feel in my fist combined with the whining I’d hear from his mouth would have made the situation much simpler and a lot less irritating. And that’s the truth.