reflections

i finished my social dancing walkabout. it wasn't a blast. but it was ok. i was able to address the issue of teaaching 3 dances in 3 hours. the most notable would be how they learned the tango in an hour only. the tango a latin dance but it is considered a standard dance in dancesport. i learned tango the hard way. strict tempo dancesport isn't much fun. plus my teacher's were too nerdy, the footwork and tempo was draining... it was hard to enjoy the dance. but in a lot of ways i am thankful for that training. it helped my form a lot and only minor quirks remain to be corrected. but the speed was something i'm not up to par yet.
anyways, around 10 pairs had fun doing the swing, chachacha and tango. everyone was quite excited with the tango which was nice because most of the time in group dance classes people shy away when its tango time. there was a low turnout of participants, partly due to scheduling and communications. the email system here at aim is still buggy. 2 of my emails did not push through on that same day. some 2nd year MBA and MDM friends were asking me why their class wasn't informed of the issue. apparently the posters i left at the elevators weren't enough or they were too busy/engrossed to notice it. marketing isn't a strong suite of mine. i had problems attracting female participants in the walkabout and i owe a lot to Rosie, Bingo, Kristine, Johnson, Lan and Diamond for helping me find other females and in taking photos. i could have made sure by advertising to the class presidents about the walkabout but then the low turnout was optimal in teaching everyone. i also thought i could have pre-enlisted the participant and have them pay me in advance. but revenue generation was not really a risk factor. and besides, at 100php the dance session was a steal. i could charge 15 times if it wasn't my walkabout.
im thinking about how to present the walkabout report. hmm... it seems i'll have to be creative...
only a few more weeks and 1st year b-school is officially over , the hype over passing FM2 is high among us whose passage to second year is contingent on that course. and our professor isn't something to be trifled with. so we are gonna be on an overdrive in our next two sessions for FM2. goodluck to me and my comrades.
i'm looking forward to my Action Consultancy with IPVG, i had fun in our interview. half of the time we were laughing as if we were college students in the cafeteria. perhaps, it was in their culture. IPVG CEO Enrique Gonzales says his company is like the 'Apple of Asia.' and Apple is one of the two companies i would like to work for after my mba. 2nd would be Google. IPVG can come as third :D back to their culture, it was a lot of fun being there alone, and yet we were not talking about monkey business but the current issues RA had as operations manager of the e-games division. the thing is it seems he's been too busy lately, that he has replied or filled up the Terms of Reference for our Action Consultancy. i'll just have to pester him a bit and drop by his office sometime.
the next five weeks is filled with deadlines for papers. we even have this presentation for Management Communication where one of us in the CAN group will act out a world leader in a speech. I was thinking of doing Ghandi but i have too much flabs. hahaha.

grades and dance-walkabout....

our b-school grades for quantitative subjects were released last friday. for our program, we are required to pass 25% of our quanti grades. So out of 17 units, we must not fail in 3.75 units; although we are still taking up the remaining 3 units of the total. i was fortunate enough to fail in 2 units, in Language of Business (LOB). so I still need to pass Financial Management 2 to seal my quanti subjects for the first year. some of my friends, weren't so fortunate thought. 4 Filipinos were advised that they cannot anymore proceed to 2nd year, but they can stay to complete the 8th month since they are already paid for.
its ironic how one of Asia's premiere business school has undertaken its MBA 16-month program in a moderately unstructured fashion. the delivery of the program is questionable. a lot of emphasis was veered towards speeding up the process but retention or inculcation of the learnings was given secondary though, based on my opinion. since the start of the program, there were already a mismatch of the student's progress and speed of delivery of the courses. eventually the courses were slowed down for us students to breath but the feedback process was terrible. wash grades were incomplete and teacher feedback did not mirror an exact picture of how student's were faring in class. moreover, some students say some mentors aren't much help to them. the previous batch who were still under the 2-year mba program had an allowable failure rate of 11 units. i think AIM restructured the program to weed out mba's who weren't good enough, but then its not enough to be stricter on rules, without restructuring the teaching and feedback program.
i feel the program could have been rolled out better. i hope the administration acknowledges their shortcoming and work better with the students if they still want to regain being the number one b-school for Asia. i wish goog luck to my friends an to myself who still need to pass FM2 to proceed to second year.
i'm going to hold my dance walkabout tomorrow : Social Dancing 101, the idiots guide to dancing chachacha, tango and swing. i didn't put the 'idiots guide' in the poster though. :D

the next 6 weeks

the first half, its finally going to end.
in 6 weeks 1st year of B-school is over, and it should be time to contemplate... like Socrates did.
in 3 weeks this blog which was started as a project of my HBO class folio will be submitted. and so, what have I written? and does my writing come with lessons learned? or is it but a diary of dates and events? what more could i have done?
what have i learned?
ah... my blog says, a walk in the wild side. but what is wild with taking up B-school?
there's the rub.
did i study b-school to learn? or just to have that diploma for an entry into a better job?
did i study b-school find my inner business acumen? or just to translate my gung-ho tactics into businesslike propaganda?
did i study b-school to become another guy in a black suit with an attache case?

the next 6 weeks will be full of deadlines and projects. sleep will be a luxury but i do hope, that when the smoke clears, things will be pretty calm. and ideas will mold into a core, that will better me.