Not To Be Trusted With Knives

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Nov
28

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NaBloPoMo – Day 28 – It’s All Over But The Marking

Category: NaBloPoMo, Nerdery, School, Teaching & Learning Tags: , , , Leave a Comment

Tonight was my last class of the course I’m teaching this semester. On my drive home from campus I was a little sad, because I know that I’ll not see any of my students again1! Despite having a class of 90 students, I actually got to know a fair number of them through in class discussion and chats on the break and after class.

The class is an intro to business concepts for students in food, nutrition, & health majors. The major assignment is writing a business plan together and we spent the last two classes having student presentations – which are Dragons’ Den style pitches where the students pretend they are pitching their business plans to room full of investors. Like last year, I was blown away by the creativity of both their business ideas and by their presentations, by the tough questions the students asked each other, and how much work and thought had gone into these projects, as evidenced by how well they dealt with those tough questions.

While I will definitely miss the students, I won’t be sad about getting my Tuesday nights back. And my Monday nights (when I did class prep). And my weekends (when I also did class prep). Teaching a class is a freaking lot of work. Well, once the marking gets wrapped up, that is.

  1. The trials and tribulations of being a sessional instructor who only teaches this one, fourth year course in that Faculty. [↩]

Nov
29

By

Teaching

Category: NaBloPoMo, Nerdery, rampant narcissism, School, Teaching & Learning Tags: , , , , , , Leave a Comment

Tonight was the last class of the course I’m teaching this semester. Since it was my first time teaching this class, it was a crazy amount of work and I am so, so, so, so, so, so tired. But I have to say that I really enjoyed teaching this class! The material leant itself well to active learning – though I definitely want to increase the amount of activities and decrease the amount of me-as-a-talking-head even more next year. The students did their class presentations this week and last and they were excellent – they really went above and beyond to produce some stellar work. A few students stayed behind after class to chat with me – they said that they agreed that more in-class activities would be better and even had some ideas for possible activities. And they said that they got a lot out of the class, as it was so different from any of their other classes, and that they found the little extras (like stories I told that brought the concepts into real life situations and videos I shared that touched on the concepts we were learning) really added some depth to the class, and that they really appreciated the work I’d put into it. That’s the kind of feedback that puts a smile on this very tired instructor’s face!

Sep
3

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Academically Promiscuous

Category: me, Nerdery, School Tags: , , , , Leave a Comment

It’s September, which means the start of the school year is upon us. This is, of course, rather meaningless if you aren’t a student, a parent of a student, or some sort of instructor… Now, don’t worry, I haven’t enrolled in any new degree programs1. But I have picked up a new teaching gig.

As you know, I teach an online stats class at the Justice Institute, but that is offered in the January semester. I haven’t taught a face-to-face class since before I started my MBA and, honestly, I’ve been missing the in-person interaction with the students2. I really enjoy working with students – it’s so rewarding to be able to help them learn new things, to see the moment when a new concept or skill just “clicks” for them, when they start to connect what they are learning in class with things in their other classes or their work, and I always learn new things from my students too. So when the opportunity to teach a class that is in my exact area of expertise came up for this semester, I jumped on it!

As you also may know, I have three different alma maters3 and I’ve taught at two different post-secondary institutions4. But now I’m adding yet another school to my repertoire, as the university I’ll be teaching at starting next week is Simon Fraser University. Now, you may recall that a few years back I got an Adjunct Prof title at SFU. In that capacity I’d done some grant writing with a colleague and supervised some practicum students, but this has been my first opportunity to teach a course5. And I’m pretty stoked about it.

So now the number of post-secondary institutions where I’ve taught has caught up with the number that I have degrees from! I know some academics who are academically monogamous (*cough* Dr. Dan *cough*), but apparently I am academically promiscuous.

Anyway, writing this blog posting has been a wee bit of a break from preparing my slides for next week’s class, but I really should get back to that! In the meantime, check out this adorable image that I found while looking for Creative Commons licensed or royalty-free images to put on my slides6!

L'il Devil

Image Credit: Post on Flickr by Darren Bell with a Creative Commons license.

  1. I’m still sticking by my claim that I’m not going to do any more degrees! [↩]
  2. While doing my MBA, I often thought about how, though I really enjoyed all the cool things I was learning, I kind of liked being on the other side of the classroom better! [↩]
  3. McMaster – the best university in the history of universities! – for my BSc(Hons), University of Guelph  for my MSc, and UBC for my PhD and MBA. [↩]
  4. UBC and the JI [↩]
  5. This is the first time that they’ve needed an instructor in a class that I have expertise in where the class wasn’t during the day. I can only teach night classes, since my day job is, well, a day job. [↩]
  6. For the record, the slide on which I’ll be putting this image is during the part of my class where I’m talking about group work and, in particular, the importance of having someone be a devil’s advocate, so you don’t get stuck in groupthink! [↩]

Jun
13

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How Many Hours Does One Spend on Homework in a Part-time MBA Program? The Final Analysis

Category: Nerdery, School Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

Hey, remember that time that I did an MBA? That was pretty awesome. And remember how I’m a huge nerd and was tracking all the hours that I spent on said MBA? Also pretty awesome. Anyway, the last time that I provided an updated summary, it was of the data up to the end of summer 2013. So, for completeness sake, I’ve analyzed the full data set, from the beginning of the pre-core program until I handed in my industry paper, the final thing I had to do in my MBA. (Spoiler alert: the final analysis is not much different from what I saw in the preliminary analysis). A few caveats about these data:

  • I completed the program in 24 instead of 28 months, so the amount of time I spent per week is higher than it would have been if I’d completed the program as scheduled
  • The part-time program, as scheduled, consists of a full weekend of classes roughly every third weekend, except July & August, plus work on a business plan and industry project that spanned several months and was done outside of class weekends. I took some courses from outside my program (e.g., full-time MBA classes offered in the evenings, EMBA courses offered on different weekends, some online/distributed learning courses). This makes my time spent in class less regular than it otherwise would have been.
  • My industry project was a project that was related to work, so some of it was done on work time. Since this was work I’d have been doing anyway, it was not counted as school work time (Though anything I did that was extra for the industry project was conducted on my own time and is counted in the data).
  • Transit time to and from school was not counted, unless I happened to be doing homework (e.g., reading while on the Skytrain) during that time.

And now, to the juicy data!

Overall for the two years, I spent:

  • 831 hours on homework
  • 641 hours in class
  • = 1472 hours total

If my next best alternative use of that time was to do freelance work and I charged $100/hr as a consultant, that would mean my opportunity cost for that time was $147,2001.

Overall2:

Hours spent on homework per week, on average  7.95
Hours spent in class per week, on average  6.14
Total hours spent on school per week, on average 14.23
Hours spent on homework per hour of class time 1.3

When you break it down to core3 vs. post core, you get the following:

Core Post-Core
Hours spent on homework per week, on average   7.95  7.96
Hours spent in class per week, on average   6.85  5.64
Total hours spent on school per week, on average 14.80 13.82
Hours spent on homework per hour of class time   1.2 1.4

The above tables tells us that:

  • I spent more time per week in core than in post-core
  • I spent the same amount of time per week doing homework in core as in post-core (regardless of the fact that I had more class time in core))
  • I spent more hours of homework per hour of class time in core than in core

Now, because I, along with all my classmates swore to our business statistics professor that we would always graph our data, here are some swanky graphs (click to embiggen)!

Time spent on MBA program per day

Time spent in MBA - daily totals (FINAL)

Time spent on MBA program per week

Time spent in MBA - weekly totals (FINAL)

 

So, in conclusion, I spent a heck of a lot of time on the MBA program. However, you should note that this was my experience, but it differs from others. For example, I spoke to a classmate at graduation who told me that he spent 40 hours per week total, for the whole 28 months of the program4. And I’m sure there are students who spent less time and in different patterns, given what was going on in the lives at various points – a lot can happen in two and a half years! Basically, I’m pretty happy with my time allocation because while it was a huge amount of time and required a lot of sacrifice, I invested the time that was needed to learn what I wanted to and needed to learn, but I still managed to have some fun along the way5. But mostly, I’m happy that it’s done!

  1. Of course, that assumes I could find 14 hours per week of freelance work for 2 years. If my next best alternative use of that time was to sit around eating Doritos, the opportunity cost would be significantly less. [↩]
  2. Note that if I’d taken the full 28 months to do the program – assuming that the total number of hours spent on the modules I would have taken would be the same as the total number of hours spent on the modules that I did taken – I would have spent an average of:

    • 6.68 hours per week on homework
    • 5.29 hours per week in class
    • =12.26 hours per week total [↩]
    • When I say “core” here, I’m actually including the pre-core, which was three optional weekends immediately before the core, as well as the 10 months of the core program itself. [↩]
    • Or possibly he finished a month or so early – so 40 hours per week for 26 or 27 months. I can’t quite remember for sure. [↩]
    • Three half marathons and a trip to Europe come to mind! [↩]

Jun
3

By

MBA = Most Bad Ass

Category: awesomeness, events, family, friends, Nerdery, School, Vancouver Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Last Wednesday, I attended my fourth – and final – university convocation as a graduate1, receiving my hard earned MBA2. It’s hard to believe that just 28 months ago3, me and 50 other brave souls embarked on the intense and life changing journey that is the part-time MBA program at UBC. Taking an program like this – super intense in both the amount and type of work – while also holding down full-time jobs4 takes a special5 kind of person. I knew I was going to learn a lot in this program, as I had no background in business whatsoever, but when I look back on it, I’m still stunned by how much I learned. Entire fields that I knew nothing about – accounting, finance, economics, marketing, just to name a few – are now not only comprehensible to me, but also fascinating. This program has provided not just content, but also new skills that I apply every day in my work and personal life and it has expanded my worldview.

And I feel very privileged to have traveled these past 28 months with the most fantastic group of people. I met people from all sorts of different sectors and backgrounds and learned as much from them as I did from my professors and textbooks. We worked hard together through countless classes and group meetings and Skype meetings and lunch meetings, through study groups and running simulated businesses and writing business plans and doing Friday case nights and the seemingly endless hours of capstone weekend. There were papers and exams and presentations and celebrations. There was a lot of laughter and some tears and some rants and all the things that life-long friendships are made of.

The day of graduation, though they were calling for rain, actually turned out to be sunny and beautiful! One of the graduates from the full-time MBA cohort with whom I had a class6 and next to whom I sat at grad (due to us having surnames that are alphabetically similar) noted that this was because he’d worked his skills from the MBA – Master of the Black Arts. The convocation ceremony was nice, full of all the pomp and circumstance that a university convocation entails – the speeches were great and since I knew all of the part-time MBAs and a bunch of the full-timers (as I’d taken a couple of classes from the full-time program and some of them took some of our part-time classes) the seemingly endless parade of graduates crossing the stage was more interesting to me than my previous graduations, where I’d known far fewer of the people graduating.

This is the sea of graduates as seen from the balcony of the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at UBC, where convocation is held:

MBA Graduation 2014 - A Sea of Graduates

You can spot me in the fifth row by the fact that I’m in a pink robe instead of the black MBA robe – one of the perks of having the PhD7.

In other news, I totally underestimated how long I’d be on stage when I said 7.4 seconds – it actually turns out that I was on stage for nearly 20 whole seconds! Here’s the video to prove it:

Here is 4/5ths of D2NA, my group from school. One of our big project in the Core part of our program was to write a business plan and our company was D2NA, and our product was the Double Device (you may recall our mascot, Marty The Moose.)). From left to right we have Bronwyn, me, the guy who holds the ceremonial university mace8 (not part of our group), Emily, and Tyler. Missing from the photo is Edmond, who wasn’t at the ceremony.

D2NA at MBA Grad!

And here’s a photo of me with Fran, the most helpful person EVER! When I first started my MBA, UBC had some difficulty in figuring out how to process my scholarship, as it’s a rare type of scholarship9 and they didn’t appear to have ever had a student with one of these before, so no one in the finance area could figure out how to deal with it. But Fran came to my rescue and after about a billion emails with Finance, she was able to get it sorted out for me so that I could get my scholarship money and thus be able to pay my tuition fees. She came up to me after the ceremony and introduced herself because, despite the aforementioned billion emails, we’d never actually met in person. Needless to say, I gave her the biggest hug!

MBA Graduation 2014

Because I’m spoiled, my mom and my Aunt Eileen came out from Toronto for my big day:

My mom, me and Aunt Eileen

They were here for the whole week and we had many adventures, which will have to be the subject of another blog posting as this one is already getting way long!

Speaking of spoiled, I was spoiled by my mom and aunt, who not only came all this way for my grad, but also showered me with gifts, including the beautiful shoes I wore to grad10 and the beautiful flowers that you see me holding11

And as if I weren’t spoiled enough, my Aunty Gwen sent me this MBA grad present – a gorgeous blanket that she crocheted herself, made specifically to go with my beloved purple chair:

Handmade afghan - an MBA grad present from my Aunty GwenThe picture does not do it justice – it’s an exquisite stitch that she used an the colours in it as so beautiful and it totally completes the chair!

All in all, it was a lovely day and I am very pleased that I can now officially put the “MBA” behind my name. For the record, I am now legally entitled to write my name thusly:

Beth Snow, BSc(Hons), MSc, PhD, MBA, CE

So that’s 18 letters after my name – and only 8 letters in my name! Even if you were to use my full legal name “Mary Elizabeth Snow” instead of just “Beth”, that’s only 17 letters in my name – still one fewer than all the ones I’ve earned the right to be put after my name!

Image Credit: Specially thanks to my Aunt Eileen and my friend and classmate, Emily Graham, for the photos and video!

Footnotes:

  1. If I get any more university degrees, they will have to be of the Honorary Doctorate variety, as I have no plans to actually do work for another degree. Though apparently you have to do something honourable in order to be granted an Hon Doc, so I guess I’ll have to figure out something honourable to do now. [↩]
  2. A.k.a., graduating from grade 25 [↩]
  3. And three years ago I don’t think I’d even started studying for the GMAT yet! [↩]
  4. Not to mention having families, social lives, etc. By my count there were 11 babies born or conceived during the 28 months of our program, along with 6 weddings. [↩]
  5. Translation: Crazy. [↩]
  6. Healthcare Management. [↩]
  7. You can spot the other PhD from my class – Keith – in the bottom left of that photo. [↩]
  8. I have no idea why the university has a ceremonial mace. [↩]
  9. Mostly because you can only get it if you hold a health sciences-based PhD and are doing an MBA, and there aren’t many people who have done a PhD that want to go back to school! [↩]
  10. See photo above. [↩]
  11. The flowers, sadly, have had to live on my balcony as the cats seem to think they look most delicious and I have no idea if these particular flowers are poisonous to cats, so to be on the safe side, I’m keeping them outside. [↩]

May
27

By

My Graduation – Live Stream

Category: Nerdery, School Tags: , , , , , , 4 Comments

Even if you can’t be there in person, you can still have all the fun of watching hundreds of strangers graduate in order to catch the 7.4 seconds that I’ll be on the stage getting my fourth – and final – university degree1.

Just follow this link and select the May 28th, 11 am webcast. And remember, that’s 11 am Pacific Daylight Time, so for those of you in Ontario, that’s 2 pm Eastern Daylight Time.

I should be pretty easy to spot, as I will be one of only two people getting an MBA who will be wearing the pink & blue robes and puffy hat of a PhD, while the other MBAs will be wearing black robes and mortar board style hats. The other MBA graduate who will be wearing the PhD robes is a man who is about 6ft tall, so I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to tell the two of us apart.

  1. Unless a university – or universities – want to give me an honorary doctorate(s). I’m done with working for my degrees, but I’m more than happy to take free ones! [↩]

Apr
2

By

Official Proof That I Can Count to 20

Category: Nerdery, School Tags: , , , , , , Leave a Comment

Hey, remember that time that I finished my MBA? That was pretty spectacular, if I do say so myself. But, because I’m me, I’m paranoid that I’m going to get to convocation day and someone will say “Actually, you only did 28.5 credits of post-core modules, but you were supposed to do 30 credits. No MBA for you!” I mean, sure I kept meticulous track of my courses (especially given that I messed around with the schedule, taking things from various different programs that I was interested in, instead of just the ones laid out for my cohort). I know without a doubt that I needed to do the equivalent of 20 post-core modules, worth 1.5 credits each1. Sure, I’ve counted all my credits up 17 different times. I’ve added them by hand and on a spreadsheet. I’ve had a fellow classmate count them for me. And I’ve had the MBA office double check that all my credits actually count. But what if we all made the exact same counting error and no one noticed? It could totally happen. Well, the other day we got an email about all the glorious things that await us when we become alumni2  and in said email it told us that we could ask the MBA office to produce a letter certifying that we have completed the program3. And thus I give you:

MBA Letter of Completion

Proof!

And, since I already have it handy, here’s the spreadsheet listing all the courses that I took. You know, in case you were wondering (a) what I’ve been doing for the past two years, (b) what topics you can now ask me for my expert advice on, or (c) you happen to be thinking about doing an MBA and want to know what some of the stuff you might cover could be4:

So now that I have my proof (and all of you can count my courses in that spreadsheet, just to be sure), I’m pretty content that come May 28, I shall be crossing the stage to receive my MBA. And so today I placed my order to rent my regalia for the ceremony. And, as I was informed by the robe guy5, because I already have a PhD, I get to again wear the pink robe and puffy hat that is reserved only for those special people who have a doctorate from UBC – because one always wears the robes of their highest degree when at a graduation ceremony. Long live the puffy hat!

  1. Two of the course I took were 3 credit courses, so they count as two modules. [↩]
  2. Of course, I’m already an alumna of UBC. But what does it make you when you are a double alumna? An dalumna? An alumna2?. [↩]
  3. Such a thing might be useful if, say, one was getting a job that requires an MBA and one needed proof before our graduation ceremony, which isn’t until late May. I’m not in that situation myself, but I want proof to prove to me that I can count! [↩]
  4. Come on, you *know* you want to do an MBA! All the cool kids are doing it! [↩]
  5. I totally have a robe guy. [↩]

Dec
20

By

All My Courses

Category: Nerdery, School, Vancouver Tags: , , , , , Leave a Comment

Hey, remember that time I finished all my classes for my MBA1? Did you ever wonder what all those classes I took were? Lucky for you, I have a spreadsheet!

I did some colour coding, because everything is better with colour coding.

  • Dark purple is for the Integrated Core – this took the first 10 months of the program and included a whole whack of different subjects (Accounting, Finance, Marketing, Organizational Behaviour, Supply Chain Management, Information Technology Management, Business Ethics, Statistics, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics), plus integrated case studies, a business simulation game, and a business plan).
  • Orange is for the post-core modules I took from the MBA program.
  • Green is for courses I took from outside of Sauder.
  • Yellow is for courses I took from the Executive MBA in Healthcare program at Sauder.

In conclusion, I learned a lot of stuff!

  1. Assuming I passed my Business Ethics exam. Knock on wood. [↩]

Nov
25

By

Last class EVER

Category: NaBloPoMo, Nerdery, School Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

Tonight I go to the last class of my MBA program. Despite the fact that I’ve been talking about it non-stop for the last month, it’s still a bit surreal. As I reflect back on the 2 years of classes I’ve been to, I can honestly say that despite all the blood, sweat, tears, and insane amount of sleep deprivation of the last 24 months, it’s been pretty awesome. I’ve learned a tonne, been challenged in new ways, expanded my worldview, and made some fantastic friends. I’ve taken things that I’ve learned in school on the weekend and brought them back to the office and used them on Monday morning to do my work even better than I could before. One of the last things I have left to do in my program is finish up my “industry project” paper – I’m doing a project for work and because I’m able to apply the things I’ve been learning over the past 2 years and because I have a supervisor (from school) who is pushing me to go farther and work even harder on it, it’s going to be freaking awesome!

So, yeah, in conclusion, you have to be a bit insane and/or a masochist to take an intense program like a part-time MBA program while working full-time, but it’s totally worth it.

Nov
16

By

Happy PhDiversary To Me!

Category: events, NaBloPoMo, Nerdery, Teaching & Learning Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

As detailed in a previous posting, Nov 16 marks the anniversary of the day I received my PhD, according to my transcript. The convocation ceremony for my PhD was Nov 22, 2006 and my current theory1 is that Nov 16 marks the day that Senate voted to approve candidates for convocation – but I based that entirely on speculation.

At any rate, I am commemorating this, my 7th PhDiversary, in the traditional fashion, by posting this picture of a Tumbeast in a puffy PhD hat:

PhD Tumblbeast

And speaking of the puffy hat, it will soon be making its reappearance in my life as I have a grad photo session booked for Nov 252 and, as detailed in a previous posting, I will be yet again donning the pink robe and puffy hat of a UBC PhDer for that photo, as well as for the convocation ceremony next spring. Long live the puffy hat!

  1. Translation: I’m too lazy to actually investigate this. [↩]
  2. I’m actually dreading this a bit, as I don’t really want to see how much older and fatter I’m going to look in these photos compared to the ones that were taken in the same robe and hat 7 years ago! [↩]
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