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Denver, Colorado, United States
i'm 33. i live with my husband, baby daughter 2 dogs and 1 kitty. i'm a chemical engineer with an MBA and work in technical sales. i tend to bite off more than i *think* i can chew and end up with a full bulging mouth for awhile before i can finally swallow. i thrive in chaos, but strive for order.

6.01.2005

this is your second degree?

at the risk of sounding like a snob, i have to ask.. how do some people obtain a college degree, much less get accepted to and complete a masters program?

case in point.

i'm currently getting my mba. i just finished my first semester and am taking one summer class called "managing individuals and teams". it is a VERY easy class. the lowest ranking class in the mba program. so easy that our first assignment was to take a personality test so that we can be split into groups. so easy that the professor spent 2 hours talking about the 4 different personality categories and having us "guess" what category of people matches up with a certain profession (ie, engineer = "analyzer", nurse = "affiliator", artist="conceptualizer", fireman="activator")*

it went something like this:
prof: "how about a fireman?"
annoying student sitting in the front center seat (you know the type - the one that thinks they're super smart, but they ask a million dumb questions causing the class to go 15 minutes over and you to sit there rolling your eyes and looking at your watch): "affiliator"
prof: actually, they are an activator (thinking, i'm sure, "i just TOLD you this dumbass")
student proceeds to argue for 10 minutes on why he thinks his answer is right, even though the prof had just clearly given us an explanation of why a fireman was, indeed, an activator personality.

i just rolled my eyes, looked at my watch, and mumbled to the guy next to me "obviously this guy is NOT an activator".

*sidenote: these stereotypes didn't sit too well with me because i am a blend of all categories and also a tad anal, which made me annoyed that i didn't fit neatly into a category.

3 comments:

  1. I have truly discovered that some adult learners are THE WORST! There are people in my program who just complain and complain all the time, to whom I just want to scream, "SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!" I have held it together so far pretty well, but I am certainly not promising anything.

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  2. Anonymous3:04 PM

    I've had the same experience in my MBA classes (just finished). My biggest complaint was that I went into the program (naive) thinking that these people would be super smart and motivated to do well and to learn. Most are just there to get the degree! AHH! This was especially annoying for "Group" projects.

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  3. I think that's true of any master's program. There were a few people in my engineering grad program that I wondered how they ever graduated from undergrad, or got a decent enough score on the GRE, let alone made it through a semester of grad school!

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