The First 5 Weeks of Classes

Not the most interesting picture of UCLA campus, but I really liked the sky in this one.

I'm exactly halfway through the Fall Quarter so now that I'm done with midterms, it's a time for a recap.  I'll start with the boring academic stuff, since this is school we're talking about. 

Classes have been alright so far.  They definitely feel a lot more interactive than what I remember from undergrad, but I'll admit that I've been a little disappointed with the professors in the first batch of core classes.  Our Leadership Foundations professor in orientation set the bar real high so there was a noticeable drop off once the Fall Quarter began.  Hopefully the better instructors are hiding out in elective courses.  Our accounting professor makes things more confusing by talking and is kinda a jerk.  Our econ professor is a 20 something Brazilian guy, is probably my favorite because he's hilarious, but he's not really that good at explaining things.  Our marketing professor is a nice older woman who agrees with everything everyone says and since her class is almost entirely discussion based, I honestly feel like I haven't learned anything from her this quarter.  Our stats professor is actually pretty good, but its a pretty dry class.  We also have a communications class and a career class once a week each.  The comm professor actually seems really good, but that class scares me because he wants us to, like, talk in front of people.

The workload has certainly been keeping us busy, as I alluded to in the last post.  However, I think since I took business classes as an undergrad and had studied for CFA tests over the past few years that I have a bit of an advantage this quarter over students who are completely new to the subjects, have language barriers, or have not taken an exam in 5+ years.  Midterms definitely led to a long, tiring week, but I didn't find myself stressing out as much as a lot of other students, and my first couple grades that came in were pretty good. 

Although people found a lot of the exams more difficult than expected, the one test that had everyone talking afterward was the marketing final (it's only a 2-credit, 5-week class which is why we had a final, not a midterm, last week).  The class had been case based, and it was widely assumed that we would receive a new case for the final and have to prepare a write-up like we did for previous cases.  To make a long, not that interesting, story short, we were instead given the case that we were supposed to have read for homework two nights before.  Although this might seem like a gift, especially since it was an open-book, open-note test, we weren't told to bring our old cases or case notes with us to the exam.  Some people did, and already had extensive notes and calculations or summaries written up already.  Others didn't bring the case and had to wait for the professor to print off additional copies (which cut into exam time) and had to basically re-read (or read for the first time) the entire 30 page document before starting their exam.  Either way, people were pretty upset because it seemed to put way too much emphasis (45% of the course grade) basically on one homework reading which had been assigned while all other classes were having their midterms, and people started off the final with a very unlevel playing field.  (For full disclosure: I didn't bring the case or notes with me, spent an hour of exam time just reading it, and didn't create any suggested exhibits to support my write-up because of lack of time.  I'm not overly concerned about my grade though because the majority of people seemed to be in the same boat as me.)

And a final academic update, post-midterms: Our intro finance class started this week to replace the marketing time slot.  The professor actually seemed really awesome (he's head of the dept, I saw him interviewed on CNN the other day, etc).  I found out though that because I've passed the CFA I can automatically waive the course and since it's only a 2 credit course I don't have to replace the credits to graduate.  So rather than hearing the intro finance material for the hundredth time, I decided to drop the class after the first day.  And now my Mondays and Wednesdays consist of one class, starting at 12:45.  I'm going to try my best not to sleep in and be productive on those mornings, but we'll see how that goes, starting tomorrow.

UCLA campus