Taking too much credit

I said yesterday that I don’t have Tuesday classes. Actually I am enrolled in a Tuesday and Thursday class, I just don’t know whether I want to take it now or wait until next year.  There are three classes I know for certain I will be taking. They are investment banking, doing business in India, which ends in a trip to India, and managerial accounting. Together these three classes make up 7.5 credits.

 

To put things in perspective, 63 credits are required to graduate and by the time a student has completed the required courses in Mods I & II, he has already earned 21 credits under his belt. This means that he only has to take an average of 7 credits per Mod to graduate. Last Mod I took five classes, for a total of 7.5 credits. If I were to take only the three classes listed above, I would be earning enough credits toward graduation.

 

But, just like everything else in business school, it’s not that simple. One common complaint among students is there is not enough time for us to do everything. This is true not just about school work, or the work required to find employment, but also when it comes to taking the classes that we want to take.

 

One class I very much would like to get into is business plan analysis. It begins every Monday with a class discussion followed by a talk by an entrepreneur who has founded a successful business. The class meets again on Wednesday with the same format, except on Wednesdays we hear from the investor who invested in the enterprise. The best advice I have ever received on business school came from an alum I met last year. He said that when you have an MBA, people will assume you possess certain skills such as marketing and accounting and telling them “I don’t know this because it was not my area of concentration” is not an acceptable answer. If I get off the waitlist, I would certainly take the class because knowing how to analyze a business plan is something that I may not be asked to do on the job but it is something I would be expected to be able to do. The professor said yesterday that a recent survey shows that 95% of Kenan-Flagler alums have read a business plan in the past year. Besides, I cannot take this next year because the class is for first years only.

 

The class I am enrolled in but don’t know whether I want to take is a completely different story. It is taxes in finance and open to first and second years. On the last day of Mod I, my financial accounting professor described it as highly recommended for anyone who will either pay taxes or work for someone who does. If I get into business plan analysis, I will definitely take it next year instead. If I don’t get in, I may still take it just to give me an excuse to get out of bed on Tuesdays and Thursday s.