Adv Seminar in Accounting Ending, Review and Grade

I took this class in the Summer of 2011, this is an Accounting Elective.

This class was my third to date with Debby Turner, after Financial and Managerial Accounting and International Accounting. I have a great idea of what to expect from her courses. Let me say that this wasn’t a typical accounting class, there weren’t debits and credits or really any sort of basic math. Finally in the MBA program we talked about some of the recent (past couple decades) of “accounting failures”. We analyzed if these were indeed accounting failures or if they were actually ethical dilemmas and legal issues. Hint: They weren’t accounting failures. The format was pretty simple, there were only about 20 students in the class so Class Participation was expected and represented a portion of the final grade. There were weekly assignments that needed to be turned in for a grade and a final exam that tied the course together. All that was really required was to read in advanced and answer the questions assigned as homework, and participate in the class.

We spent about four weeks on Enron and what exactly happened and how they failed; really interesting stuff honestly. We analyzed the legal ramifications of mark to market accounting and what exactly happened at Enron leading up to the resignation of Jeff Skilling and the eventual “death” of Ken Lay. We read and discussed WorldCom and HealthSouth, exactly what happened to each company. We hit on the causes and legal ramifications of the failures in congress.

We learned more about Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank acts and exactly what they mean to companies around the United States. There was so much information in this course that really bridged the gap for those of us who don’t really know all the details of these frauds and company failures. I highly recommend this class, whether you are accounting or finance savvy or not. I learned quite a bit about the world of accounting, and little about how to detect the possible frauds just by looking at the financials. I give the class information and format as well as the professor a solid “A”. I got an “A”.

Operations Management Review, Ending and Grade

I took this course in the Spring of 2011:

This was an MBA level Operations Management Course. I will say that Ravi Subramanian was a great professor, educated, and general was excited to be teaching this class to Evening MBA’s, who are professionals and were eager to share their knowledge. There was a class project where we had to find an operation based problem, reporting on the project, analyzing the procedures and offering improvement insights and successes. My group had a few students who worked in operations and they gave me unbelievable supplemental knowledge to the teachings of the class.

Topics covered included flow charts, the basic of operations, Gantt charts (which have since come up at my work), bottle necking, and the like. Let me say that someone in operations for a living may believe the information in the class was way too rudimentary. It is possible that my operations based colleagues felt about this class the way I felt about the Marketing Management course I reviewed earlier. But for someone with no existing knowledge of the details of Operations Management, I found the course interesting.

The class had the project and a couple exams for the grade. Let me say the exams weren’t easy, in fact I found them to be difficult even open note exams. And the only problem I have with the super difficult exams is that we get the questions wrong but don’t ever learn the correct answer. If the goal of the program is to learn the material, and we get answers wrong on tests but never get to discuss the right answers then we have a batch of information we never really learned. I know that is a different diatribe, but I think it is important. I don’t care if I get a 50% or a 97%, in both circumstances there is some information I don’t know very well. Ravi specifically went over each exam questions for the class so we all knew where our thought process should have been… so refreshing that he went over answers to questions so we could learn. If the students didn’t think the same way he gave us a chance to write a request to regrade that question. If the argument made sense and could be justified he would give the points back; even if it was semantics based arguments – which resulted in my getting an answer correct.

This class was a great learning experience and honestly made me consider taking more operations based classes in the program. I think that is a very high praise from me as it takes a solid educator to sway me from the goals I have set for myself in the program. I give Ravi a solid “A” and the class a solid “A”, even though I received a solid “B”.

International Accounting Grade, Ending and Review

This is an elective for an Accounting Concentration, I took this class in Spring 2011.

I decided that I would do my best to focus all of my electives in Accounting, so upon completion of the program I could of satisfied the legal credit requirement to sit for the CPA exams. If I make every elective Accounting I would be pretty close to satisfying the requirements legally from an education point of view. I believe I would have 27 of the 30 required just by making that designation. So accounting electives would have to be the only electives I would take, if hearing about accounting classes bores you, I am sorry, I will do my best to entertain.

International accounting is great because it is a specifically designed Independent study, it is an accounting elective, and it satisfies the International elective criteria that is required in the program. Talk about knocking out three birds with one stone. I sat down with Debby Turner and got the information and approval to register for the class – a policy of all independent studies. We rented text books from Debby and she gave us a list of multiple questions that corresponded to each chapter, the answers to the questions, and the rules for a small paper that was to be written prior to completion.

I woke up on Saturdays read the chapter and answered the questions, without looking at the book or the answers, graded myself and if I got 90% or greater I moved on. If I didn’t, I would look at the questions I answered incorrectly and revisited the topics. I would retry the exam, there was some sure fire human error and bias in the process though, since I already saw the answers, it helped me learn. I repeated the efforts until I scored over 90% and then moved to the next chapter the following week.

I learned a lot through the process about the international side of accounting, the different rules, the most likely future of accounting, the way things are done in other countries and how they change their accounting to trade on different stock exchanges, and the tax related rules from working and producing products or owning land overseas. Ultimately, I was able to put together what I believe was an articulate paper that answered some of the questions I had when I started the course.

I have stated before that I like to know what I don’t know about a topic, this independent study allowed me to learn everything that I could in the time allotted. I very much like Debby Turners approach to accounting and the learning process matches mine almost perfectly. I recommend this class to anyone and everyone that has any interest in Accounting and needs their International elective satisfied still. The material was perfectly presented so I give Debby an “A” , and the material an “A” as well. I got an “A”.

Marketing Management 1 Review, Ending and Grade

I took this course in the Spring of 2011:

Marketing Management was an undergraduate marketing class presented as an MBA marketing level course. I completely understand that this is an Intro to Marketing class, but the topics were very basic and we missed an opportunity to dive into the mathematical portion of Marketing. I an MBA program that has a certain IT flair, this missed opportunity really hurt the course in my opinion.

The class was one of those where you come to the room and sit down to watch the professor lecture from the slides from the textbook, there was no need to be there other than if you wanted to supplement the reading with a regurgitation of the book in the class. That isn’t always a bad thing though; it helps drive home the point of the material. Marketing is broad, it is hard to define, it is hard to determine the value the marketing department is bringing to the table. We hit on all the key topics, from advertising and the marketing mix, the four P’s, the process of segmentation and the difference between Sales and Marketing. All of these topics are important, but as a group we only scratched the surface of how each is accomplished.

We didn’t discuss the science of Marketing, we didn’t delve into the mathematics of how segmentation is accomplished, how companies conduct and execute user and client data to better the products or approach. In fact the only time this information came up was in the class simulation. I had no idea how to properly invest in the future of the company we were simulating or how to use my department’s resources to ensure my clients were happy and continuing to use my company. Ultimately, I made it through about 3 of the 4 years of the simulation and I was fired as marketing manager… I wasn’t the only one fired. We weren’t equipped with the knowledge to be a marketer when we completed the course.

This was an intro to the ideas of marketing class, not a MBA Marketing course at a Technology Institute. I was disappointed, maybe because of my expectations going in that weren’t met, or the fact that the class culminated in a simulation in which I was fired. I will say though, I think the professor was engaging and involved the class specifically in the discussions through small in class assignments. I believe that in the short run of things Professor Vantine was handicapped with having to teach basic knowledge and couldn’t or didn’t have time to do any more than scratch the surface of each Marketing discipline. I also understand if each person wanted to know more about marketing they could take more classes on the topic.

With all of that said, this was an undergraduate level Marketing course in an MBA curriculum. If you knew nothing of Marketing going in you may learn quite a bit, but if your company has a marketing department or have ever worked for a company with a marketing department you already understand the basics of marketing. I will further this by saying that Peter Vantine did a good job, my only personal gripe was this: it was stated by the professor that a basic “30,000 foot view” understanding of the concepts would be enough to do well on exams and perform well in the class. I take “well” to mean an “A”, I studied concepts and ideas not definitions and didn’t do as well on the exams as I would have if I was told to know the definitions in the class.

A memo to all future students: an “A” means knowing ALL of the definitions, not understanding the concepts. I got a “B”, to the class I give a “C”, to the professor I mimic the “B”.

Business Communicaitons Review, Ending and Grade

I took this couse in the Fall of 2010:

This is a class that I did not like. A third party company taught the speaking course and it was only one credit. The class needs to exist for those who are more uncomfortable speaking in public, I get that. However, I could say a simple test could result in waiving the communications class from a good portion of students in the program. Additionally, I have been in sales or a sales discipline for my career, let me say that I wasted the money in this one credit class and got nothing out of the lessons except jokes to poke fun of my friends in the program. This should be reevaluated by those in charge of the program.

There was no grade, only a pass/fail option. For those of us in the program paying out of pocket this was truly a waste of money. If I would have given this course a grade, I would say that it deserved a D in my mind. I won’t issue a grade since the third party company didn’t give me a grade either: rather I will give them a FAIL.

How could it be better? Actually discuss Business Communication. Effective Agenda creation, power point discussions, how to effectively create a memo, what to do with personal twitter accounts, how to use LinkedIn more effectively… I could go on and on. No one that I know took this class and now is a wonderful public speaker: Just sayin…

Data Analysis Review, Ending and Grades

The second course I took during my first semester was Data Analysis (an Excel based Analysis and Basic Statistic course). This course was fundamentally awesome. I have no background using Excel as a tool, so every bit of material was really quite useful.

I would say the book for the course “Data Analysis & Decision Making 3e” was definitely worth purchasing, all of the material covered in the course is covered in depth in the book. The book also came with a disc with additional free add-in material that helps with real world application and shows the reader the usefulness of Excel as a business tool.

With all of that said… The book was a better resource than the lecture. The professor, Robert Burgess, is articulate and detail oriented. Unfortunately, this type of material can only be covered in a certain way. So, at times the lectures, dragged a bit, although they were easy to follow. The professor did a great job of using off topic material to keep the class fun, which is very much appreciated from the student’s point of view.

There were three tests in the class, all of which gave a really good overview of the application of the material. This is a technical university, and because of that, I am happy this course was added to the core requirements.

The largest percentage grade in the class came from a group presentation using all of the material learned in the course. The interesting thing about the organization of the groups, is that the professor had us each take an online survey to find information on our personal backgrounds. He then put our groups together in a way that created the most “chaos”. My background was in Hotel Sales, my group mates ranged from Marine Biology to Engineering to Finance. The group worked very well together, as unlike undergraduate studies, everyone was enrolled in the MBA program for the same reasons: to learn.

I will add one more item to commend the professor, he gave a group project that was extremely open ended, which kept the class interested and was a great end of course presentation / case study on how randomly thrown together groups could interpret the exact same set of directions differently. The presentations and group project was really a lot of fun. Doing the group project was at times frustrating and difficult to see past the insanity of the open ended project. Once you could catch a glimps to the professors end game everything became much more clear. On the final day of class when all the groups presented, everything that wasn't cleared up prior to that point, instantly clicked.

Ultimately, I walked out of the class with an “A”. I feel that is the perfect representation of my knowledge on Excel after completing the class. I would also give the overall class a “B+”. The professor did a great job of making the material interesting to the students, but as the class applied to lecture, it was hard to handle at times. I have a hard time believing that any of the other core courses will be able to take such drab material and apply them in such creative ways; thank you to Professor Burgess for a well thought out and interesting class.

Accounting Review, Ending and Grades

Let me tell you a little about this last seven months. I started school at Georgia Tech, I took two classes in my first semester. I believe that Accounting is extremely important, this class was a combination of Financial Accounting (first half of the semester) and Managerial Accounting (the second half of the semester).

***Firstly, the book was an absolute waste of time; the professor just went off of her own notes… Don’t buy the book; it is of no value to the course.

The Financial Accounting information as taught was awesome. The material taught me the ability to look at a company’s financial statements as a means to find “red flags” that would indicate trouble in the future. Since I was laid off in February and actively looking for employment, I focused on applying my knowledge to find a large successful company that I wanted to work for. So, for me, the application of the material was almost immediate and extremely useful.

The Managerial Accounting portion was a little easier to apply. Since the class was focused on how to react and record transactions from an inside the corporation view point, the material wass a little more intuitive, falling in line with my personal background.

The material for both courses was covered in traditional lecture, small group projects (2 people), and exams.

Ultimately, I ended up with a “B” in the class. It wasn’t the grade I wanted, but with the personal distraction of being laid off mid semester, the week the second exam was due, really distracted me from performing my best. I learned a large amount of information and believe that all of the material is applicable (almost immediately) when transferred to the business world.

On a more financial based grade scale, I would say that I would give the course and instructor, Debbie Turner, a solid grade of “A”. Sometimes in education, I would say that although my grade was not, ultimately what I wanted from the class, I left with the belief that my knowledge taken from the class is more on par with an “A”. In all reality, it was what I learned and can apply that is directly related to how I feel about the course. I would say that I am very happy with my first MBA class at Georgia Tech.

Murphy's in the Virginia Highlands Review

Last night for Lindsay’s birthday we went to Murphy’s in the Virginia Highlands. We have been there a couple times. No better time than now to review one of our favorite restaurants.

Lindsay and I went there for the first time prior to a show at the Fabulous Fox, Cinderella (Ballet). I had the "Georgia White Shrimp and Grips" (a personal favorite). It was so tasty I ordered it every time after. We have never had a bad experience.

Yesterday we went with her parents and are happy to report the experience as wonderful as before. They had the "Guiness Braised Beef Brisket" and the special "Surf and Turf", she had a "Grilled Chicken Paillard" and I enjoyed (a twist) the "Baby Back Ribs". The brisket was flavorful and tender. The steak was well seasoned and cooked to perfection. The chicken was the best dish on the menu, I think. And the ribs were tender and the "honey chipotle glaze" great.

I am all about supporting local growers. At Murphy's all fruit and vegetables on the menu are locally grown and organic, a trend I am pleased to report.

The service is always spot on, everyone has an expansive wine knowledge. Every time someone asks for a recommendation for a nice dinner that doesn’t break the bank, I always recommend Murphy’s. Chances are you may run into us there.