DarqByte

Finally, my long-awaited post about my adventures in the UNLV MBA program! Well, really, I’ve only completed one actual week of courses, but there’s so much more to talk about involving this program. Hopefully I’ll keep this shorter than 2,000 words.

Prep

So obviously I had to prepare for the program. I won’t go too far back into the history of my taking the GMAT and applying for the program. I’ve already talked about that. I never really came out and said it but yes, UNLV accepted me to the program.

I met with some officials for t he program and they suggested I consider doing the joint MBA/Masters MIS program. Since I considered at one point to pursue a Masters in MIS, I’ve taken it into consideration. Right now I decided to go for an MIS emphasis, but should I decide to increase the number of courses I’m taking per semester, I’ll probably move up to the joint program.

I decided to do most of my prep work such as getting a parking pass and books during the orientation week they had for us. Basically, the last week of summer before classes started saw us hitting campus Monday through Thursday from 5:30pm to 8:30pm to become oriented. Haha. Friday was a food & drink mixer at Bahama Breeze (yummy jerk chicken there).

Orientation

I began prepping for orientation before I even got there. They required business casual dress for all five days of orientation, and unfortunately, I didn’t have a week’s worth. I never have to dress up for work, so dressing business casual for an entire week would have seen me wearing the same pair of pants all five days and very likely having to re-wear a shirt or two. I don’t know how many shirts I had.

So that Monday I ran to the outlet mall near work during my lunch break and grabbed two more pairs of pants. Now I had three (or so I thought, I’ll touch on that later).

Since I get off of work at 4pm and orientation didn’t start until 5:30pm, I decided to hit up the bookstore and see what books I needed to get. Since they were pretty cheap, when compared to how much collegiate books can cost, I bought them on the spot. I also looked at backpacks because I needed a new one. Didn’t buy one, though.

The first day of orientation was really a true orientation. We got to meet many of the people involved with the program, including the coordinators of the joint degree programs. We got a couple presentations on how to get the most out of the MBA program and got to meet a lot of our fellow MBA students.

So Tuesday rolls around… I went and bought three nice shirts during my lunch break again. Now I finally had enough clothes to wrap up the whole week. I even went with a couple lighter-colored shirts as I’m starting to want some diversity.

I ran by parking services before Tuesday’s proceedings to buy a $3 plastic placard to hang from my rear-view mirror to put the parking pass on. Hurrah.

Tuesday saw a presentation on, well, presenting. The presenter was in the College of Education and he was giving us tips and ideas on how to be better in front of crowds and audiences because managers typically have to make presentations. We eventually divided into groups and mock presented to each other. The groups then decided on whom to send in front of the entire audience to present theirs. I nearly had to go for mine, but my group-mate Chris ended up going after I defeated him in Rochambeau. I rarely lose at that game.

Before the collection of students on Wednesday, I ran into the Student Union and got a couple things done, such as re-setting up my computer systems logon and I got my new RebelCard in. Saw Sean Conolly in there as well, which was nice to see him again.

I also swung by the bookstore again and got my backpack. Well, it’s not a backpack but a side bag. I like it better that way.

Wednesday saw us in the first of two full days of team building, led by Stoney Alder, whom teaches the Organizational Behavior (OB) class I’m currently in. The day was marked with different team-building exercises and discussions, but at the end we played the prisoner’s dilemma game. Basically, the game is built on the trust between the two sides. If they trust each other well enough then both will do well together. If they don’t trust each other, both can get screwed. It’s much like the ending of The Dark Knight where the Joker tries to get one of the two boats to blow up the other.

Ultimately, my group was turned into two teams and we actually trusted each other, ending up with the best score out of all of the groups and earning extra credit points for the OB class. I was the leader for one of the teams. Made me feel good.

On Thursday I just wrapped up a couple things before orientation, but nothing big. Stoney was leading things again and this time we had an exercise where we were all executives of a multi-national corporation who were figuring out who to hire for a new peer position in a new location. Each of us know part but not all of the requirements for the new position, and we had to combine all of our knowledge to rule out candidates for the position that didn’t fit the bill.

I should point out that yet again, I was the group leader… Interesting. But we came to our consensus and all of the groups listed who their candidate was to hire. We were in the minority, actually, on who we picked. Stoney started going the other way saying that the other main candidate the groups chose would be hired, but I decided to stick up for my team because we were dead certain we were right.

After explaining how we ruled out the other candidate, Stoney asked one of the teams that chose the other candidate “How did you miss this?” Man am I happy I spoke up.

Friday was the mixer at Bahama Breeze. I didn’t have anything to do before-hand so I just surfed the web at work before heading there. It was fun, but nothing noteworthy to report.

Classes

So I started classes a week ago. I have classes on Monday and Wednesdays from 5:30pm to 8:15pm after work. My first class is Statistical Methods (SM), my second is OB. They’re interesting, but require a decent amount of work. Besides some menial things, I didn’t really have any homework to do. On Wednesday before classes, I ran by the bookstore to get an expandable folder for papers as well as a notepad for notes. I also grabbed an organizer from the Student Union (free!) so I could keep track of all of the crap I had to do.

Oh, I should mention that my courses are all reading ahead required. So rather than reading after the topic is discussed in class, we’re to read beforehand. It makes more sense this way, actually.

So at that point, I finally had everything I needed to actually take classes. Books, notepad, expanding folder, bookbag… Well, save for a piece of software my statistics class needs me to get, but I’m wrapping that up early this week.

For the weekend, I definitely had the first chapter’s homework to do for SM. It wasn’t hard, really, it just required a lot of flipping back and forth in the book and my notes to figure out what to graph, etc. For OB, I had to write up an example of a bad management situation I was in and explain what pitfalls there were, if any.

Of course, I also had to do all this reading ahead for the class discussions, which I’ve already done…

My weekend was filled with busy stuff for my classes. We have to do case reviews for my OB class and the first one potentially due is this Wednesday. I decided to write up my rough draft over the weekend and send it in to Stoney, assuming he’s still willing to do a look-over on it before I finally do turn it in. So I’m trying to stay ahead on the larger projects by getting some of them done early or at least rough drafted early.

We also have a semester project in SM to explain, using statistics, some issue. I think my partner and I are going to try to get a good head start on that going here in the near future as well.

All in all, I think I’ve got a good start going. I’m being much more responsible on my graduate level courses than I was on my undergraduate. I’m doing all of my assigned reading ahead of time, and I’m also doing multiple reads on separate days/times so I can try to really absorb all of the material. And I’m going to try to leverage my classmates for studying and proofreading of my papers so ensure I’m doing what I can to get passing grades.

Busy, but I think I’ll be alright. Having next Monday off will be nice, that’s for sure. I’ll try to keep any future MBA updates a bit less detailed than this, which ended up being… 1585 words long. Wow.

Robert Life, School classes, college, education, mba, university

Wait… NBA? No no… MBA!

Those of you that have known me awhile know that I never intended on ending my educational career with just a bachelor’s degree. I’ve always been planning on going for at least a Masters in Computer Science.

Hopefully starting this fall, I’ll be back at the UNLV campus for a Masters… In Business Administration. Yes, you read that right. Not Computer Science. Not Management Information Systems. Business Administration.

My financial advisor recommended for me to get the ball rolling this fall on a masters because my work will reimburse me 50% of course expenses up to $1000 per year if approved and I pass the course. I’ve spoken with HR here and it’s very likely that pursuing a Masters degree will qualify.

Like I said, I originally intended to pursue a Masters in CS. But my former coworker Jordan helped me to see I’m not cut out for that. I love programming and software development, don’t get me wrong. Computer Science is still a very interesting subject for me. But he was really good at the theory. He could use his mathematical background really well in applying high-level CS theories to his programming. While I could learn and understand everything he did, I was never near as good at being able to generate that kind of stuff.

It hit me that maybe I’m not really cut out for high-level CS. I started considering a Masters in Management Information Systems instead because it provides some of the business side logic to information technology. That ended quickly however, because three different people whose opinions I respect all suggested to go the MBA route instead, saying that the MIS won’t help me near as much.

Thus, I decided to go the MBA route. I’m in the process of getting my application materials together and am hoping that I can get things together in time to start officially this fall. I have to take the GMAT and I know I’m going to need to study for that, and I’ve got to get two recommendations ASAP as well. But I think I can cut it. I have a good GPA that will help out and I’m usually pretty good at taking tests, so… We’ll see.

Thus begins another chapter in my life. Pursuing an MBA while working as a software engineer. Should be interesting!

Robert Life career, education, masters in business administration, mba