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 | The Ship Canal, University of Washington and Montlake Bridge. Seattle, WA July 22, 2005 |
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« The First Circle | Main | Perfect Storm » September 29, 2004End Of The BeginningMy Direct Marketing class ended yesterday. Going in to it, several people had warned me that "block mode" classes (and particularly those taught by Stearns) were an intense experience. I don't know that I was fully prepared for just HOW intense it was going to be. Most UW business school classes are two hours long. A "full load" is 16 credits, so that breaks down to 2 classes a day, 2 hours each, 4 days a week, 10 weeks a quarter. In contrast, Direct Marketing was 8 hours of instruction per day, for 7 days - 4 plus 3, with a weeklong break in the middle. Homework assigned on one day is usually due the next morning, and it often includes a presentation to the class in addition to the written component. So you leave class around 6 PM, fatigued and in need of pizza, and you have to be in class at 8:30 the next morning with your original, well-written insights (and Keynote deck) ready to rock and roll. Oh, and, you know - be sure to do the reading, too. My team was amazing (if you can ever work with Casey, Todd, Jo, Marnie or Deets - do so). It takes very special, focused, even-tempered people to be able to work cohesively at 4 AM, without bickering, on a solution that not everyone is 100% sure about. In fact, our final project (the one we turned in yesterday) kept us on campus until 4:19 AM on the morning it was due. No one cracked, and some really good stuff got generated pretty late in the game. The project was a HBS case called "Passion For Learning." Our mission was to develop business objectives, evaluate the current case options, develop options of our own, pick an option to run with, develop that option, and then explain how we would test our theories to see which was the best. Effectively, we were encouraged to be managers of this business, parachuted in to help the current owner figure out what to do. A lot of what we did involved the creation of personas, which was fun, creative, and gave me serious Microsoft flashbacks. =) The good news is that Stearns loved (raved about) our work. And, like I say, it's done, and we're through it. Regular classes start today at 1:30 with a Project Management class. Slower pace, ho! Posted by Gavin Shearer at September 29, 2004 10:34 AM. Posted to UW MBA. CommentsPost a commentThanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out) (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.) |