Reflection Time!!

I think these blog assignments were helpful in learning management. It didn’t really help me learn the specifics of the subject - the books helped me with that – it helped me see what other people thought about the topics we discussed. Given that management is primarily about interacting with other people, seeing what people have to say about the various aspects of management was definitely a plus. There have been multiple instances when I have talked to my classmates and the things we wrote about in our blogs have come up. When we do talk about our blog assignments, we end up adding on our thoughts and elaborate what we think about the topic. I found that very helpful not only in understanding the topic at hand, but also in communicating with my classmates.

The reflections on the class activities were especially helpful. I’m sure everyone will agree that the class activities were different and fun. It is so different from how we are taught in our other classes and because of that it becomes something we share with people outside of our class and even outside of our college. Having done the reflections, talking about the activities becomes easier. Throughout the semester, I found myself describing these activities to my friends outside of school and what I had written in my blog often became the base of my explanation. It was something I could refer back to when explaining certain things. In that way, it was more cohesive than just repeating the activities in a procedural manner. When explaining to my friends, I often found that I understood more of the concept at hand; I was put in a position where I had to think about the core concepts in simpler terms which could be understood by anyone not attending our class.

Before this class, I was a skeptic when it came to blogging. I am definitely not a “convert” after this class, but I can say that my views about blogging have changed. Now, I see blogs as a useful tool. I am considering using this tool for the various programming/web projects that I do on the side. Given how these blog posts have organized my thoughts for management, I think it will be a good idea to use blogs as an aide to get my projects a bit more organized.

People have multiple personalities

It was great taking this personality test; knowing what kind of a person you are helps a lot, in my opinion. I wholeheartedly agree with the Cs evaluation of my personality. But, I would be lying if I said I was not expecting a S-type result.

Although I agree with the result, I do believe the test does not truly gauge your personality; like any other psychological evaluation, it merely gives you a time-specific evaluation of your frame of mind. For example: If you were having a particularly bad day, or were having self-esteem issues, taking the test on that day will reflect your negative attitude. The same goes for the flip-side of the argument: If you achieved something meaningful before the test, the test will reflect that positivity as well.

Also, it depends on what mindset you are applying this test towards. For example: With the test applied to a workspace oriented mindset, you may have a tendency to be more analytic with your actions. But at the same time, you maybe the leader amongst your group of friends and if you applied the test with the same mindset you have amongst your friends the leadership qualities would reflect that.

Maybe if you mixed and matched various mindsets you would get a more accurate evaluation of your personality. But what do I know? I am not a psychologist!

I don't really remember what mindset I was in, but the test really did evaluate me correctly. As you may be able to see just from this blog, I have a tendency to analyze things from different perspectives. A true Cs...and proud of it!

Vision of the Future

The video, although very cheesy and humorous, did present very valid points. I agree completely that holding a vision of the future will guide you towards it (I liked that rope across the river analogy). I think this fact holds true especially when future prospects look grim - a similar situation to the one the kids from the elementary school in Harlem were facing.

I have a few visions for my future on the back of my mind, but that's where they are - on the BACK OF MY MIND! Well without further ado, here are a few of them:

> Build a application which takes financial data from the web and calculates financial data for the user. (Could be used as part of a bundle of apps sold by major brokerages)

> Make a base for myself in London, England: the home to the football club I love - Arsenal FC. I would very much like to visit there time and again to watch the matches in person.

These are the long term goals. It will be long before either of these come true; I need knowledge and experience before I can make that application I have planned. The short-term action goals are to secure a job in the programming sector of a financial services organization. With that, I could gather enough knowledge and experience in order to make my application.

Decisions, decisions, decisions…

Our class was a perfect chaos. Everyone had their own opinions. Yet, somehow, we managed to come to a final decision. I don’t think everyone was perfectly satisfied with our final list though…

It was the "limited-time" parameter that made most of us accommodate to the list at hand, myself included. I doubt anyone who didn’t like the list, would have said so at the very end and run the risk of breaking unanimity and thus, scrap a whole class’ worth of effort. That, I think, is one approach all of us shared in that classroom.

Personally, I was going for “Compete to win” over the removal of essay. But as soon as I realized how daunting the task of convincing everyone was, I soon slipped into avoidance. By the mid-way point of class, I was already repeating glances at the clock and thinking about the pleasures of a certain intoxicating beverage. In my mind: “This is not going to happen…”

Although I gave up on my point, I did not give up on the task at hand. I tried suggesting alternatives and helped in ways I saw best-fit. Though, I was careful not to do too much of what I saw best-fit as my definition of “best-fit” at that moment was heavily biased towards the singularity of the removal of the essay.

Hindsight being 20-20, the quickest way to tackle our problem would probably have come from us breaking down into smaller groups, addressing similar opinions and barter out a list that would suit everyone’s needs. I am sure that ordeal would still be just as chaotic as the actual approach we took in class; however, it would reduce conflicts between classmates. If we had predetermined a time when we would deal with conflicts in an orderly fashion, the emotional impact of the conflicts would have been significantly lower and thus, would allow for quicker compromise or accommodation, which in turn would allow for a quicker decision.

This method would have been more efficient for our case. It would also have been very methodical, boring and easy to forget… I like our actual approach better; at least, the chaos of it all has sealed different concepts of decision making in my mind. Now, just have to make sure the seal doesn’t break before the next exam.

Thank you for your time.

Building the Egg a Home

Before anything else, I must say that our planning/crafting lesson was one of the best classroom experiences I have had in Baruch so far. It would have been the outright best if our egg hadn't cracked. But hey...no complains, really.

Our team had set the goal to have a cushioned base and we brainstormed for ideas to achieve that goal. Although we came up with quite a few ideas, we kept jumping onto the newest idea for development and in essence, we did not have a proper alternate plan. We worked well together in both the planning and building phases, but we did not specify any tasks for any member of the team. But the reason we did not have to specify any tasks may have been because our team members constantly volunteered pro-actively for tasks at hand.

Our execution of our plan was very rushed and we were not able to replicate the design we had in mind. This was because we failed to evaluate our resources properly and were left with unused materials at the end.

All in all, I think we did a pretty good job of working together. We achieved our goal of making a cushioned base for the egg. Our downfall was in the fact that we neglected the sides of the egg.

The Kids Are Crazy...But So Are The Parents

I am usually pretty okay with what I see in new cultures...I have moved around a lot in my childhood, so I have gotten used to getting-used-to-new-things. But one of the things that I absolutely, could not believe was true was how little respect young children have for their parents here in New York.

I am not talking about teenagers or even about "tweens". I am talking about pre-adolescent CHILDREN! I remember being of that age: me, or any my friends for that matter, were scared pants-less of our teachers, parents and maybe an older sibling here and there. The point is that we were scared of our elders and we paid them the respect they deserved. Yes, there were cases where elders were abusive and did not deserve any respect, but even in those cases the most we could do was NOT pay them any respect - as opposed to verbally/physically abusing them.

Not to say we were complete angels who were tamed by fear, no! We had our moments of daring. It was a thrill when we could get away with spur-of-the-moment craziness. But I can confess that being scared of my parents as a child makes me respect them greatly today.

Seeing children behaving so disrespectfully and having such control over their parents was something that made me very uneasy, when I first moved to New York. Today however, I am very shocked at how parents actually put a leash on their children. Personally, I think leashes are for animals not for a human being. How is a child to learn and explore if s/he is tethered to one spot?

Two sides of the same coin or something different? I would love to hear about it from someone else.

Quick Introduction

Hello everyone,

I am originally from Nepal. I have lived in different countries for different periods of my life, but by far nothing beats NYC. I live alone out here and battling hard so as not to get sick in this weather.

I like soccer and computer programming but am pursuing a career in Finance - don't ask me why. I enjoy administrating back-ends of websites but this will be my first incursion out on the front-end; I'm finding this exciting and looking forward to it.

So until next time, goodbye.