First Semester in Review

I finished my first semester of my graduate program. I survived! Not only did I survive, but I'm pretty sure I excelled! At least, I think I did, but everything is relative to my undergrad where I was happy to get Cs in my classes.

I really loved my Organizational Behavior class. So much of it came naturally for me because it's all the stuff that I and we, the BYU Human Resources personnel, have been trying to get our managers across campus to do for ages now! Dr. Thompson was a fabulous teacher. I think I'm going to end up with an A in the class.

And then my Economics class. It was a beast. Dr. Walters is a great man, very helpful, and personable. I can tell he is very smart. But I think he is still ironing out the kinks in his teaching style and method... because we had some struggles with his assignments and exams. The final exam was take-home and it took me 6.5 hours to complete it - I had to do a cost-benefit analysis and do all the calculations and then make a recommendation. While it was a difficult class, I really learned a lot and my confidence in economics as a topic has been boosted, which is good! One of our text books, Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan, was a fascinating! I recommend it for anyone to read. He writes with a lot of personality and with a lot of interesting examples. Unless I bombed the final, I think I'll come out with a B or B+.

So I love my program! And I really think I made the right choice in choosing the Master of Public Administration program. My classmates are wonderful and have a lot of good insights from their work experience. I definitely think the vast array and amount of work experience we all have adds so much to my learning and makes it mean so much more. Sadly, we did lose one of our classmates to a tragic death. She was a part-time flight instructor for Utah Valley University. She and a student both died in a plane crash in Payson, Utah. It was so sad. It just shows, once again, how fragile life is and how Heavenly Father can bring anyone home at anytime.

As for my team - everyone is great! I really lucked out. Everyone works really hard and does their fair share. Dr. Thompson was always docking us points on our team papers because he wanted us to tell him about our conflicts and how we handle them... but we never really had any conflict! We get along great and we did some great work! We'll remain as a team through the next semester and term. But until then, I'm going to enjoy this Christmas break and get some pleasure reading in! And quilting. :)