Semester 1 Postmordem

I am feeling quite celebratory today that the semester is over. (This happened Tuesday afternoon, but Wed & Thurs were hectic enough that I did not have time to fully appreciate the sense of relief and closure.)

The breakdown:

Marketing - course grade = 98%. The final indeed did turn out to be much easier than the other tests and I got a 100% on it. I studied for the final more than was strictly necessary to receive a 100%, let alone a grade sufficient to secure an A in the course, but I have the material from the book down pretty much cold at this point. (My fundamental position on my classes this semester was that the opportunity costs of additional study are minimal, so I might as well do enough to achieve complete mastery of the material and not merely an A in the course, and that I should get in the habit of putting a lot of time and effort into school so later, when the demands get greater, I do not have to experience as drastic a ratcheting-up.)

I really noticed how much I had learned yesterday when I was reading the book Consumer Psychology for Marketing and had immediate intimate familiarity with the marketing concepts, models, and terms in the book. I had started reading this book before taking the marketing class but I wasn't getting very much out of it at that time. (This is one of the books I checked out from the UT library quite a while back.)

Calculus 2 - I am confident that my final exam score is going to be 100 minus any stupid calculation errors. One of the series questions was sort of baffling for a while, but after attempting multiple lines of attack, I realized that I could apply the "partial fractions" technique we learned in integration to rewrite the nth term (a-sub-n); kind of sneaky. So my course grade should be in the neighborhood of 100% (so I get to feel all cheated about the lack of A+'s).

Psychology (Attitude change) - I just checked and I got a 100% for my course grade. On Tuesday, I did my performance of the Cherokee nutrition presentation I have been putting together (and dreading) and I have to admit, I basically enjoyed it. I hated it at various stages, and was pulling my hair out about it and put in a ton of work into it, but ultimately, I thought it was actually pretty decent even by "real project" (as opposed to academic exercise) standards. My professor said she was "seriously very impressed" by it, and I was particularly gratified when she asked me where I found the children's Rabbit story that I told and I got to say, "Oh, I wrote it." (An additional reason for wanting to excel spectacularly in this class is that I am planning on having the professor write me a recommendation.)

Writing the Rabbit story was the most fun element of the whole project (and even though it took me only an hour to do it, I had been thinking from the conception of the project that I wanted to find a way to sneak Rabbit - the Cherokee trickster hero who in the traditional stories is frequently taught lessons after making mistakes - into it; in the end, I transformed him slightly into a Rabbit-as-Kid character who was tricked by a witch) and it was an effective form of self-persuasion, since I have several times since then thought twice about a food choice after realizing that this was the kind of behavior that screwed Rabbit up. Despite this being what theory and past research would suggest, I was still surprised that preparing and presenting this information actually worked in changing my attitude and behavior.

The psychology class was tremendously valuable to me, not only as good preparation for marketing grad school, but in terms of the applicability of the ideas and techniques to life in general. Is there any aspect of life in which being more effective in persuading other people (or oneself, really) is not useful?

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the teaching in my classes and the thought that the professors put into setting up the course assignments, grading, and other such elements. One of the benefits of attending a teaching-oriented, rather than research-oriented, university is that the professors do view teaching as their primary job. Of course, I may have just gotten lucky this semester (and I am sure this is the case where my math professor is concerned - he is truly outstanding in a way that I cannot hope will be matched by others in his department) and will have a lot more to grumble about next semester.

One example of thoughtful design: my psychology course had a lot of reading (par for the course for graduate psych classes) that we needed to do prior to the class meeting or the discussion would be terrible. (It was a seminar format and had four students). To ensure that we actually did the reading at a sufficiently attentive level, the professor assigned "short papers" to be due on every set of readings, which included summarization of key points, our evaluation/criticisms, and further research we would like to see. Although writing these papers was a time-consuming pain in the ass, it made me read and evaluate them more thoroughly, prepared me for the class discussions, and served as a good starting point for studying for the exams.

And for those keeping score at home, our continually late marketing professor did indeed show up for the final at 8:10 rather than 8:00. There was much grumbling notice of this fact amongst the throng of students assembled outside the locked classroom door. A girl said to me, "You'd think he could be on time for the final exam at least," and I responded, "Well, he is demonstrating consistency, for whatever that's worth." Another girl tried to find a way to excuse him for his tardiness - "Well, maybe driving all the way from Austin is tough." Someone else said, "Half this class drove in from Austin this morning and we all managed to be here on time." The guy had zero credibility on the "professional behavior" front by the end, which was unfortunate, because his basic message about the importance of it was sound and quite valuable for people approaching the transition point from student to working adult. I do give him credit for his sustained attempts to emphasize to us how vital things like knowing our strengths and weaknesses, trying to improve those weaknesses, having a plan, behaving professionally, and so forth are in getting a good job and having a successful career, even if he did sort of undermine his own message with some of his behavior. (Perhaps this was a subtle attempt to demonstrate what not to do? Ahem.)