Time well spent

Something happened this past week which confirmed something that I have always suspected. I learned that I spend too much time on homework assignments. A lot of times when I come across something on an assignment that I cannot figure out I would end up spending way too much time on it.

 

I handed in three assignments this past week, one for marketing, one for advanced topics in accounting, and one for fixed income. For the fixed income assignment, the math portion was pretty straight forward, I was able to even solve the extra credit question, but there were two open ended qualitative questions that had me spending hours staring into blank space. When I woke up the next morning, I felt angry looking back at how much time I spent on the entire assignment. I felt even angrier this past Monday when my professor announced that he did not grade the qualitative questions because they were too open ended. My assignment for advanced topics in accounting was similar. About half the assignment I could figure out with no problems but the other half proved to be a stumbling block. And just as I did with the fixed income assignment, I spent a major amount of time trying to figure out something I ultimately could not figure out at the end. I got back the assignment this past week and received a descent grade on it (a “check,” as opposed to a “check plus” or “check minus”). Marketing was a different story. I had only one hour to work on my write up because I waited until the last minute to do it. During that hour, I pushed myself to read, understand, and analyze as much as I could. At the end of the marketing class, I felt so embarrassed about the quality of my write up that I talked to the professor and offered to do an extra credit assignment . The write up was returned to me on Tuesday, I got descent grade on it.

 

What I need to start doing is to set a time limit for myself on every assignment because every assignment will have something that I just cannot figure out. And according to the economic theory of diminishing marginal returns, every additional unit of time (minute, hour) I spend on an assignment will give me a return that is less than that generated by the previous unit.

 

And speaking of time, I found out today that we have no classes on Monday for Labor Day.

Tags: MBA Experience, economics, time management

Zzzzzzzzz

I had trouble staying awake in two out of my three classes today. I get tired very easily sometimes. Last week I started experimenting with something where I would come home after my last class, which ends at 3:30 the latest, and take a nap for a couple of hours before starting my homework. I found it to be quite helpful and will try to do more of that this year.

 

On Friday night we had a reunion dinner at my professor’s house for all the students who went to India in May for the Global Immersion Experience. We all received a CD with about 100 of the best pictures we took during our eleven days there. The professor played the pictures on his living room television set and a running joke throughout the evening was that many of the pictures of me featured me sleeping; me sleeping on the bus, sleeping on the plane, sleeping on the train to Agra. I don’t think I slept more than anyone else in the group, more likely that someone decided it was funny to take a picture every time he saw me sleeping. One of my classmates said to me, “you do sleep a lot.”

Using economics to alter behaviors on the internet

The Wall Street Journal on Friday had a great article about how Yahoo! has been using economists to apply microeconomic theory to improve the services it offers to its users.

 

“These days, Mr. Schwarz is thinking about how to use economics to save attractive women from unwanted solicitations on an Internet dating site. One idea employs the concept of "scarcity," rationing the number of free messages each lothario can send. Another uses full disclosure, by displaying how many people a suitor has already approached.”

 

The article goes on to describe (in the last paragraphs) another research project the economists is working on where he has to predict how parties behave when they enter market where one side is more eager to reveal its preferences than the other. The research has implications on various offerings such as Yahoo! HotJobs and Yahoo! Personals.

 

“Mr. Schwarz also co-wrote a paper examining search-ad auctions. It concluded that Yahoo's system doesn't encourage people to bid what they think the ad is worth to their business, something that caught the attention of Yahoo executives. They expect Mr. Schwarz to work on future versions of their ad systems, a task he has already embraced.”

 

A couple of my projects at my summer internship deals with exactly this issue, how much should our clients (companies that sell products on their web pages) bid for various search terms on search engines. These are the keywords that results in the sponsored links that populate the far right margin of a Google of Yahoo! search results page. Yahoo! is currently fine tuning its search-ad system with a project code named Panama. Yahoo! stock plummeted when it was announced over the summer that Panama’s release would be delayed.

 

This article got my attention because it actually mentions a couple of topics that I know quite a bit about. If only I can convince Yahoo! to hire me based on my grasp of microeconomic theory and my work experience, I’d can then pretty much blow off the rest of my second year, much like what many of my classmates are either doing or planning on doing.

Tags: Internet, economics

Putting it all together

One of the things that’s nice about being a second year, I am told, is that you get to see how what you learn in one class applies to another. It’s a nice feeling that after nine months, eighteen classes, and four Mods, to finally know that what you learn in one class is knowledge that actually “lives” outside the bubble of that one classroom.

 

And it’s about time too. Let me give you an example of how today I was able to apply what I learned in one class to another. In advanced financial reporting, we were learning about bond futures contracts and in response to a classmate’s question, the professor said that many of these futures contracts can only be utilized by investors and institutions with the means to do so. His exact words were “you have to have money to walk into a casino.”

 

Later on in marketing class, we did a case about how a particular casino chain uses its loyal rewards program to attract and retain customers. And I must say that knowing one has to have money to walk into a gambling casino really enhanced my understanding of the case. Because judging from what I know about casinos, I would have thought that they purposely target those who could least afford this type of “entertainment.”

 

Oh and when class ended, the professor showed us this great clip on the potential evils of companies collecting too much data on their customers.

Tags: MBA Experience

Volunteers needed for Comfort Zone Camp

After my lunch on Saturday at the Boar’s Head Inn, I met a gentleman at the resorts wearing a hat and shirt bearing the initials CZC. I randomly struck up a conversation with him and asked about the initials. He explained that he works for Comfort Zone Camp, a non-profit organization that operates a year round camp for children who have lost one or both parents to death. The camp needs volunteers for its locations in Richmond and New Jersey.

I told him that while I do not know anyone who would be interested in volunteering, I would put a mention of it on my blog. So if you are 21 or older, love to work with kids, and wish to volunteer for a worthy cause, please get in touch with Mr. Kelly Hughes, whose contact information is below.

Kelly Hughes

Operation’s Director

Comfort Zone Camp, Inc.

2101-A Westmoreland Street

Richmond, Virginia 23230

804-377-3430

866-488-5679

Kelly@ComfortZoneCamp.org

Dropping derivatives and exercising my options

I ended up dropping the derivatives class last week because I found the material to be a bit too technical and did not like the professor's teaching styles. This will let  me to further concentrate on the other five classes I am taking. And by dropping the class I can go to an earlier section of the marketing class and end my day a bit early.

 

The first assignment of the marketing class is due this week. We have the option of writing a case write up for either the case due tomorrow or the one due Thursday. I am going to do the one due tomorrow. Usually when professors give me the option on which assignments to write up, I always do the early ones because they are usually graded more leniently and doing so gets them out of the way so that I can concentrate on the other assignments.

 

While this is the second week of class at Kenan-Flagler, the rest o the university will not begin class until Wednesday. On my way home tonight from the library I drove past many small groups of undergrads navigating their way between the dorms, the fraternity houses, and Franklin Street. As I drove I marvel at the options that are available to them at this stage in their lives and wonder if they will take full advantage of them or if they will look back when they are in their thirties and wish they had made some choices differently.

Tags: MBA Experience

Tough times ahead for the Wahoos

Greetings from Charlottesville, Virginia. I stopped by Central Virginia this morning on my way to our nation’s capital where I will be attending the thirtieth birthday bash of a friend of mine from UVA. I will be having lunch later today at the Boar’s Head Inn with another friend of mine from my undergrad years whom I have not seen in almost eight years.

 

These are tough times for students, alumni, and other supporters of the University of Virginia.  Earlier this week, U.S. News & World Report came out with its annual rankings of America’s top college and UVA’s rankings fell to 24th among top national universities. While we are still the number two public university in the national (behind Berkeley), number 24 overall is the lowest we’ve been in the years since I have been a Wahoo. During my first year, UVA jumped from number 21 to number 18 and during my last year, UVA was still the number 1 public university in the country.

 

And we are not doing all that well in other areas. After arriving in Charlottesville five years ago to much fanfare, Al Groh has failed to light new fire into our football program. In September, I will get to see Virginia play in person for the first time in two years as the Cavaliers go to Durham to play against Duke. Never in my life did I think Virginia would be chosen to play at Duke’s homecoming.

Tags: UVA