Spring QUARTER
2022
Picture Perfect
Course Overview
ARTIFACTS
Systems of Thought
The formal "proof" of my declared major!
For the past few quarters, I've changed my mind about what concentration in the Foster School of Business I wanted to take on.
At first, it was accounting, but that idea went out the window when I felt like I was missing out on applying my creative tendencies.
Then, it was marketing, but that proved to be too much creativity and not enough hard data.
Finally, I stumbled upon information systems - the perfect blend of the creativity found in programming and number crunching found in solving those programming problems.
Towards the end of the quarter, I made my choice of concentration official by declaring my major as information systems.
All Fin and Games
An excerpt from one of the case study we solved in FIN 350.
Few things frustrate me more than the seemingly unsolvable. Yet, it is those very problems that drive my curiosity and compel me to find some answer.
Coming into finance, I was prepared to dislike it. People had always said “you either like accounting or finance, not both”. Seeing as how I loved my accounting classes, I was prepared to thoroughly dislike this class.
And I was right, I did, but also, I kind of didn’t?
It wasn’t anything about the professor or the structure of the course. It wasn’t anything about the content we learned (it was math heavy, which I loved). It wasn’t anything about how it was graded or marked.
What was it, then? I had no vigor or passion to apply it. In most courses, I search for some sort of real-world application. How could what I’ve learned impact the world for the good? What does this mean for our future, our past?
When it came to this course, I just couldn’t do it. I loved the numbers, I loved the concepts, but working through real-life cases like the one pictured didn’t make me feel excited for what this meant for the world.
I was initially disappointed in myself for this, as I had always secretly prided myself on my innate curiosity in a wide range of topics. However, it’s taken reflecting back on this quarter to realize that my disinterest in the topic is actually not only ok, but valuable.
I have so many interests and was already knee deep in potential majors, that what I needed in this quarter was not to be overwhelmed with another option of study, but a clear, streamlined path of what I did and did not want to do.
Though disheartening to not like the class, I’m very grateful for the perspective on finding interest in a course of study it gave me.
Law and Order
The chaos of my MGMT 200 notes.
Under normal circumstances, I would consider myself to be a pretty neat note taker. When it came to MGMT 200 though, that was a different story.
My brain is hardwired to take notes for traditional topics like science, math, and history. Though law contains some historical elements, a lot of what we had to do in MGMT 200 was memorizing cases and applying them to a case scenario we were given.
Trying to take notes for a historical concept, but one that we would need to apply confused me. Half of my brain was taking notes like a history class, while the other half was trying to capture the essence of "note application" that I used in my math based courses.
Overall, navigating a new system of note taking was immensely hard. However, after the initial chaos of these note takings (see left), I learned how to apply the skills I already know and blend together old techniques to get the most out of a class with an unfamiliar format.
Even in this snapshot, you can see the methodology slowly improve! I wouldn't recommend searching "?" in my notes though. You might be returned with too many results.