I finished my 3rd semester at UTD in early December, and grades are posted. I ended up with an A in Global Business, an A in Management of Information Systems, and a B in Statistics. The B in stats pulled my GPA down to a 3.817, which is slightly below my final GPA in undergrad, so I’m not terribly upset. I’ve budgeted a B in Finance, and As for the rest of my degree, so I should end up just under a 3.9 when I graduate.

I was not impressed with my Global Business class or my MIS class. I feel like both of them could have had some interesting things to discuss, but they both just rambled on with no point. In today’s globalized society, it would have been helpful to talk about different business customs and expectations around the world, and business “norms” in other countries. Instead, we talked about standard models and the history of the soviet union. My MIS class consisted of reading a Harvard Business Review case each week, and discussing it in a painfully boring 4 hour session. I was under the impression that this class would go into spreadsheets, project management software, and even some coding, similar to my information systems class in undergrad, but that was not the case. My stats class was actually pretty good, and the professor made a point to include applications for different areas of business, including marketing. I was pleased to see several examples that dealt with comparing the effectiveness of different advertising mediums, promotions, and atmospheres, and I can see how using statistics would be helpful in allocating my marketing dollars.

This semester of my MBA was purely required, and I don’t feel that my business acumen increased as a result of the semester. The MBA is supposed to be a well-rounded degree for future managers, but if you have your undergraduate degree in a business function, you’ve already taken most of these classes. Thus, if I was doing a graduate degree for the love of learning, I would choose the Master’s in Marketing, not the MBA. Because I felt my classes added no value to my knowledge, I was ridiculously unmotivated to do anything more than show up to class and submit my slides for the group PowerPoint. I’m generally really aggressive when it comes to academics, and group projects in particular, but this semester just didn’t strike me. However, it’s a good indication (and somewhat comforting) of how I will perform “at my worst”. I can’t be 100% all the time, so it’s nice to know that my 75%-80% is strong enough to get me through.

I’m taking 9 hours next semester, and two of my classes are electives. I’m hoping that these classes will bring back the creative stimulation of my Buyer Behavior class from my first semester of grad school!