Just in Case You Were Wondering

I am officially past the half way mark of my first semester of Business School. I wrapped up my last 2 mid-terms last week and now I'm focused on my final presentation, reports and exams. Time has definitely flown by! We have two more weeks of instruction and then the dreaded finals week. It's all lovely though because I'm trying my HARDEST to get out of Japan for the summer...so test week, bring it on! Anyway, since I've been extra slack on blogging, I figured I'd devote this post to my opinions about the classes I'm taking.

One thing I love about my classes this term is my schedule. I don't have any classes before 12:15 and no classes on Tuesdays. Life is good...so here goes:

Business Game: When I first started this class, I thought it would be really interesting and expected to learn a lot. That's not exactly what's happening. Something different about this system of Japanese education is you don't get any feedback. I've turned in a report for this class every week since the beginning of the semester and haven't received one graded assignment back. The only grades you actually get are for tests, only in this class the 2 "tests" we have are based on our company's performance in this virtual game. Ok wait, let me explain this a little better.

In this class we are broken up into 12 teams. Each team is appointed a company president who we are in theory supposed to follow his lead. Only the lead part...yeah, that's not really happening either. You might as well call us the Blind Boys of Alabama only there's 4 of us and I'm the only Negro. It is a true case of the blind leading the blind. Throughout the semester, we play 2 games. One of them is running a virtual bakery and the other is shipping cooling units to some remote island. There are business decisions that you have to make and the goal of each game is to attain the largest profit surplus. The company with the highest profit surplus gets A's. The rest of the class? Well, he hasn't been very specific about how he plans to grade the rest of the class.

Before each "test" get the game scenario that gives general info about P&L, B/S, operating costs and marketing costs but what my team is seriously lacking each time is a real business strategy, and let's not even mention our communication issues. What frustrates me the most is not my president's lack of leadership ability but the teacher's failure to instruct. What is the purpose of playing a game 4 times (2 for grades) without any feedback about what we are doing wrong so we can improve?

Worried about my grades and progress in the class, I visited the teacher's office hours to get some clarification and feedback and do you know what he told me? He said "In my class, the point is not to teach. It is to get you to think. And Smile. OH! You must remember to smile." So I sat there in his smokey office, (yes the teachers are allowed to smoke indoors) and smiled and thought to myself, "This damn, thinking and smiling better get me an A, that's all I know."
I have yet been able to find the logic or purpose of a class that does not instruct or correct mistakes. Isn't this the time to make and correct mistakes?!

I say a special prayer for my grade in this class every week.

Leadership: My teacher for this class is really cool. Like, so cool that actually want to go to his house and have dinner with him and his wife and talk about his life and travels. He's an older Japanese dude who went to HBS (Harvard Business School), hitched-hiked around America for 6 months as a college student. I believe he said he did a semester or a year at Berkley during the 70's so he was loving America at the time. He's written and published several books about leadership, management and one called "The Successful Businessman Meditates" which I think is fascinating. The class itself is cool too. This is the one where my group is called G5 and we got the best marks on our presentation a while back. We are forced to think a lot about our life, goals, future, abilities, skills and qualifications as well as define why we believe certain qualities of leaders are important etc.

I believe this class is a little more beneficial for some of the other people (read: younger people) in the class because I've been through courses or seminars that have challenged me with those same questions before. I definitely enjoy this class but honestly some days it feels like a semester long Myers-Briggs test.

I'm taking 3 more classes but I'll stop here for the night and have faith in me, k? It won't be quite as long until you see the next blog.

Next Up: Data Analysis (SNORE), Organizational Behavior (MY FAV!) and Microeconomic (Say What?!)

Guess who's Bizack?!

Sorry about that ya'll. No excuses. I spend PLENTY of time on Twitter and Facebook so I definitely could take some time to update this blog....MY BAD.

Last we left off, I was ticked off by THE MAN. (THE MAN: Folks in administration who shut your girl down when all a sista' was trying to do was educate herself.) You will be pleased to know that I did not embarrass myself or my country by showing my true displeasure but I did attempt to attend classes and was pretty much turned around at the door. THE MAN must have had an idea I was coming back because the teacher knew right away that I wasn't enrolled and told me I couldn't just sit in. Whatev!

I was definitley upset because being able to take language classes this semester would have been a great benefit to me considering 4/5 lectures are given in Japanese but decided to just move on and do my best. Honestly, if I were to dwell on the frustration I have with the bureaucracy BS that surround daily operations in this country I would be an angry soul. I have a personal rule. I allow myself to be pissed off/sad/upset about something for one day, and then I have to let it go......so F (forget) THE MAN.

Break a freakin' rule already!

Today I'm blogging with a bit of a chip on my shoulder. Now before I get into explaining why, I'm going to admit that I had a part, actually a large part in what I'm about to complain about, but I'm still pissed and here's why.

In addition to the 5 core classes I'm taking in the MBA curriculum, I intended to take 2 Japanese language classes through the International Center, one Speaking class and one Kanji class. In addition to having different start/finish dates from my grad school courses, the classes at the IC also have a different set of enrollment procedures. To enroll in the Japanese classes, there is a set 5-days block where students register to say they are interested in taking classes. This isn't signing up for classes, this is just going and entering your name in the computer and for all intents and purposes expressing interest. Next you have to attend a 30-minute orientation at which if you are not present, you will not be able to register for classes. This orientation is set and they make it very clear their are no exceptions. If you cannot attend, you will not be able to study at the IC during that term. At the orientation, students receive a registration form which must be completed, signed by the students advisor, and returned to the office within a week. Got all that?

Okay, so I went to the pre-orientation sign up. No problem. I attended the orientation as well, got my form, gave the form to my advisor and received the form back Wednesday afternoon during my last class of the day (3:15-6pm). The registration from was due in the office by 5pm Thursday. Yesterday (Thursday) after class I came home and started unpacking my bookbag and realized that I forgot to turn my registration form in to the office!! Thursday is my longest day of classes and somehow didn't make a note to myself that I needed to return this form and well...I forgot. I know then that I'm going to have to do some serious begging, persuading because these folks don't take kindly to breaking the rules.

Today, after my gift from God Microeconomics class (I'm trying to be optimistic here) I went to the International Center office and was told that they could not accept my form. She said a student came in 15 minutes after 5pm yesterday and the Department head turned them away. And here's where I vent.


Really I don't understand why they can't bend the rules when it's for a good cause. Don't these folks understand that I'm begging to study Japanese, because I NEED TO STUDY JAPANESE IF I'M GOING TO GRADUATE FROM THIS MBA PROGRAM. I'm not doing it for their amusement! I've been here for 6 months and my grades in the Japanese language program have been spectaular. My attendance has been pretty darn good too. I may have missed 1 day of classes in 6 months which happened to be Christmas Eve (well, that is after I missed the first two weeks of school when Jody passed). Even when I did miss the first 2 weeks of the 6 week intensive language program, I came back BUST MY BEHIND and got straight A's in 5 classes. SEE!

So here's what I've decided to do: Go to class anyway and keep going until the teachers put me out. And then once they put me out, they'll have to kick me out again because I'm going to keep going. I don't care if I don't get grades on my record for the International Center. I need these classes so that I continue to increase my Japanese speaking and reading ability. It's the only way I'm going to be able to graduate from this program, and I'm not exaggerating. All of my class lectures, with the exception of Organizational Behavior, are given in Japanese and continuing my language study is fundamental to my success.

I messed up. I missed the deadline. It's my fault. Punish me some other way, but don't restrict me from studying just for the sake of rules. I understand the rules are in places to keep things in order. Japanese folks STRIVE or rules and orderliness as to I (somtimes) but exceptions to rules exist for a reason. Break a dang rule already people!

Lucky Me!

I lucked up on this very cool concert today after my last class. I was going to get my bike so I could head home when I heard music playing and saw a crowd in the Cafe so I went up for a closer look. It turns out that one of the most popular and, in my opinion, most talent clubs on campus, The Shamisen club.

I just so happened to have my fabulous new camera with me as well and got a few good videos of the performance. Check it out!

Just in case anyone is interested here's a little wiki info about the shamisen. This next video is a little bit longer but features music you probably have heard before, 2 shamisen solos, a drum solo and some "entertaining" dancing/clapping at the end. Enjoy!

G5 in the House!

Today I had my first group presentation of my MBA program. For our leadership class our assignment was to decide as a group what we thought were the qualities a leader should possess are and present them to the rest of the class. Initially it didn't seem like it should be a very difficult thing to do but when you factor in the group dynamics it was quite challenging. Being 7 people from 5 very different countries (China, Japan, Canada, Mozambique, America) I thought it would be a good idea to called our group G5, you know like Group of 5? Since we have all these other summits and things like G20 and G8, I thought G5 would fit right in! Well, our group's diversity proved too be both a strength and a weakness. One of the Chinese women in the group speaks only Japanese and Chinese. One of the guys in the group speaks mainly English and his native tongue is Portuguese. The remaining folks speak a mixture of English and Japanese but because there was no one language that all 7 of us spoke, there were at least two languages being spoken at all times! Needless to say, we put in a good bit of work to come to some common ground.



We didn't know this going into the assignment but our teacher made us rank the presentations based on three things: #1. content, #2. presentation and #3. group cohesiveness and out of the 7 groups in the class, G5 was ranked the highest!

I definitely felt good to start the term off with respect from our professor and our classmates. Now if we can just keep this momentum going....