Monday, February 13, 2006

Spring Semester 2005 Mod B - Finance

By the time the 2nd mod came in the Spring term in 2005, I was feeling my oats ... two A-s! WOW! Any doubts about how I'd do in the MBA program left me. I felt much more confident. In fact, I was probably too confident going into the 2nd mod.

Managerial Finance

My first finance professor at Cox was Sara Moeller. She was quirky. I had a hard time for the first couple of weeks, understanding what she was saying. She would talk a million miles an hour. Plus, there was so much information that she had to cover, it was difficult to assimilate that much content. But, after about 3 weeks, I was feeling better. I was able to sort out the irrelevant information and focus on what really mattered. She did a good job of reviewing each week what we were trying to accomplish.

We didn't use the textbook at all. All of the content came from her notes. We did one case and then we had the final. She let us have a cheat sheet. I came to realize that those cheat sheets are valuable. If you really work hard to understand the concepts and then capture the formulas and problems on the cheat sheet, it becomes a nice reference page for future use.

I did well in the class ... I earned a B+.

We were Sara's last class that she taught at SMU. She had accepted an offer to teach at Wake Forest. She is a big basketball fan (she's pretty tall). The NCAA mens' basketball tournament was on TV during class. So, during breaks, she would turn on the TV and we'd watch the action. Anyway ... she kept telling us that she'd be so much happier at Wake. She'd be able to do more research, live in beautiful state and be right in the middle of basketball-land ... especially in the ACC. So it was a no-brainer for her.

I look back on that class and time with fondess. It is memorable for me. The warm weather was returning, the NCAA basketball tourney was on and I also bought a new laptop ... a Dell Inspiron 700m. I sold my old laptop on eBay and then bought this one. It's been a great purchase. I'm not sure if I'll hold on to it or sell it after I'm done with school.

Anyway ... fun memories. That was just last year! Time goes by quickly.

Spring 2006 Update

Not much of an update right now. I found I got a B+ on my 2nd negotiation exercise. That's what I expected. Only two more class exercises to go and then the final. Should be a breeze.

Excel modeling ... class is tonight. I worked on the case a little. Our group will meet tomorrow.

Chess Update

I took the day off on Friday. I caught up on homework and then played chess! My rating deviation (RD) was very high, so whenever I won or lost, my rating would wildly swing up or down. I'm just trying to work out the bugs in my blitz and crazyhouse game. Sometime around August, I plan on getting back into standard playing mode. I want to go to the 7 circles too ... get my tactics strength up. Anyway ... it was a lot of fun playing chess! I feel much better after playing ... even if a lose a bunch of games.

The 2/13/06 chessgames.com puzzle ... so easy ... Rh7+. Since the white king cannot move (into check), the white rook needs to keep checking and be captured to gain the stalemate (black is up on material by 2 pawns, so a stalemate is better than losing). There is a big debate in the kibitzing about weather stalemate should be a draw or a win. I can undertand both points of view. I think I'm in the stalemate=draw camp. It would make sense to make the stalmate=lose for the person who has to move his king in check (much like a resignation). But by adding the stalemate=draw rule, it gives the "underdog" or person with little material left, a fighting chance to make the game a draw. It just gives the game another layer of strategy. Of course, stalemate=draw falls right in line with the rule that you cannot move your king into check. Interesting debate.

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