Let's talk via blog.

I love to learn new things, so the fact that we had to create our own blog for the purpose of this class was a great learning experience for me. Since I am not an enthusiast of virtual communities I would probably not come across blogging for a long time if not for this class.
Great majority of Baruch students, including me, are people who have a lot of responsibilities outside of school, but in addition to that, they want to obtain excellent education. I feel like one of the thing that is difficult to upkeep for students like us, who try to juggle so many things and usually exchange only a quick hi or bye, is the learning about and from each other experience that if not more important, then probably at least as useful as book knowledge. I think that this blog writing assignment gave us some ground to maintain this contact with other classmates.
The assignments that I liked the most were the ones that asked for reflecting on our group class activities such as, the eggscellent way to plan and our whole class debate on our grades. Writing these blogs made me think about the actual group processes that took place and about group dynamics. Although I didn’t comment a lot, I found the topics that were posted on the professor’s blog very interesting and a great way to think about my own position on some issues.
I have never liked writing diaries and a blog is a kind of a diary so I don’t think that I will continue to post my thoughts right after this class ends. However, I am going to keep the account for my blog. I believe that whatever I learn now may be useful in the future, and the familiarity with writing blogs may prove to be one of these things.

My little game.

Every few months a year
I have to play this little game:
Section 1534,
Damn! It’s already closed.
PSY starts at 3:30,
For me it’s a bit too early.
I leave work at 5
So 6 pm is all right.
I can take MGT,
Followed by MKT.
I need something for another day
But forget about Saturday.
Monday and Wednesday will do
And I can add extra two.
I can take professor B
But I heard he’s too strict.
If I could take professor K
Wow, that would be fun again!
I guess I’ll take professor O
And I will have to make it work.
Let’s give it another look
Well, looks pretty good.
I’m glad I managed to do it again,
My class schedule, this time fall 08.

Conscientious - that's who I am.

I have to admit that I really enjoyed taking the personality profile test that we conducted in class. I have an interest in psychology and till just recently I’ve been considering majoring in this discipline. I’ve taken various kinds of psychological tests but I found many of them being inaccurate or my results fall somewhere in the middle of all possible categories and in consequence left me without a clear answer. After taking DISC, I was truly surprised that at the end I got a single and clear result.
I am a type C that stands for conscientiousness and subtype s which is steadiness and I totally agree with this result. When I was reading the description of a person whose primary management style is conscientiousness I felt like it was all about me. As a conscientious type of a person I like to work in a predictable environment where performance objectives are clearly defined. I’ve always perceived myself as a detail oriented person who tends to think analytically and before making any decision spends a lot of time weighing pros and cons. I also consider myself to be a very reliable person and this is the trait that I value a lot in other people I just really can’t stand unreliable individuals.
My subtype is steadiness and I think that many of the descriptions in this category apply to me. The ones that in my opinion seem to characterize my personality the most include, desire to help others, creating a stable and harmonious work environment and being a good listener (this one you probably figured out by now from the title of my blog).
I think that the type Cs is a very accurate description of my personality, I feel good about myself and I don’t wish to be another type. Personality makes each of us unique and we shouldn’t try to become someone different. Moreover, I think that after personality is shaped in early years of life, it is impossible to make a drastic change in behavior later on. However, instead of changing I always try to improve or modify some of my traits in order to have better relationships in the workplace or in my personal life.
I think that knowing other people’s management style is very useful, especially if one has to work in a group. Team work requires people to take on different roles. If it was possible for everyone in a group to know what “type” the other people are, it would be easier to assign responsibilities and understand reasoning of others.

Group desicion making = conflict

Firstly, I want to congratulate all of us that during the decision making activity we were able to make a unanimous vote and get something out of an hour long deliberations. I have to admit that at the beginning of our discussion I wasn’t very convinced that we will be able to get a hundred percent of votes on one idea. Though, the results of our discussion confirmed that the means of dealing with conflict that each of us took were effective in achieving our mutual goal, even if the goal didn’t fully comply with our individual interests.

My behavior in the class decision making process demonstrated accommodation and compromise. I believe that in any relationship, whether personal or business, we have to compromise and quite often this is the only method that successfully ends a conflict. For many people compromise is difficult to accept and it sounds like giving up one’s own view. I totally disagree with that opinion. I think that compromise is very effective if it is used at the right time. A person who compromises to quickly is a loser. On the other hand when it is obvious that no party in the conflict will get exactly what they want, compromising at this point of discussion is the only way to go. In my opinion it is just dull to stubbornly defend one’s point if it has no chance of winning.

As my other approach in the class discussion I used accommodation. My grade for the test was lower than I would like it to be but it was still higher than the average for the class, so I felt like my classmates who got really low grades should have the priority in deciding about what should be done to move the grades up. I kind of knew that any grade improvement options chosen by my classmates will benefit my grade as well, and I will go along with the ideas.

In overall, I think that as a group we did fine job negotiating the terms for our grades improvement. If I was to name our biggest weakness in the decision making process it would be inability to think collectively by some individuals, which lead to wasting way to much time and in effect not having enough time to work on our second part of discussion - the form of the second test.

Planning process vs. outcome.

“When the outcome drives the process we will only go to where we’ve already been. If process drives the outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there."
“Incomplete Manifesto for Growth,” Bruce Mau

In the beginning, I would like to say that the exercise we did during our Monday class was an “eggs-cellent” way for me to get hands-on experience with planning.

I think that my group, more or less, went through all of the planning steps. Our goal, which was clearly defined by the professor, was to construct cushioning for our egg that will protect the egg from breaking when dropped from height of 10 ft. to a bucket. We identified our resources which included 8 straws and 2 foot piece of tape. Our group strength was that we were all active in the planning process and we all contributed ideas to the project. Our weaknesses were quite obvious: time constraint and lack of experience with inventing and building egg-protective devices. We came up with two alternative ideas. After having discussion about possible problems with constructing and not having enough material for our more advanced project, by the majority of votes we settled for the other project that seemed to be easier to build. We found it really difficult to create and imagine how our device would look on the egg without having the actual egg in our hands. Now I feel like we didn’t spend too much time on assigning roles to our group members. When we were provided building materials every person in the group began working on something and helping each other in order to complete our task. Implementation phase was the most difficult and chaotic part of our planning process. We were running out of time and we had to modify our original idea in order to finish before the deadline.

Even though our final protective device wasn’t able to save our egg from breaking, we definitely haven’t fail as a planning team. Of course, it would be nice if we were able to reach our goal and get the extra 5 points, though, I feel like our involvement and the fun that we had during our planning process were more important than the outcome.

Life as Juggling

I found this text on line and I loved it. Since so many of us have problems with time management I thought some of you may enjoy reading this.



Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air.
You name them Work, Family, Health, Friends, Spirit, and you're keeping them all in the air.
You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls -- family, health, friends, and spirit -- are made of glass.
If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same.
You must understand that and strive for balance in your life. How?
1. Don't undermine your worth by comparing yourself with others. It is because we are different that each of us is special.
2. Don't set your goals by what other people deem important. Only you know what is best for you.
3. Don't take for granted the things closest to your heart. Cling to them as you would your life, for without them, life is meaningless.
4. Don't let your life slip through your fingers by living in the past or for the future. By living your life one day at a time, you live ALL the days of your life.
5. Don't give up when you still have something to give. Nothing is really over until the moment you stop trying.
6. Don't be afraid to admit that you are less than perfect. It is this fragile thread that binds us together.
7. Don't be afraid to encounter risks. It is by taking chances that we learn how to be brave.
8. Don't shut love out of your life by saying it's impossible to find. The quickest way to receive love is to give; the fastest way to lose love is to hold it too tightly; and the best way to keep love is to give it wings.
9. Don't run through life so fast that you forget not only where you've been, but also where you are going.
10. Don't forget that a person's greatest emotional need is to feel appreciated.
11. Don't be afraid to learn. Knowledge is weightless, a treasure you can always carry easily.
12. Don’t use time or words carelessly. Neither can be retrieved.
Life is not a race, but a journey to be savored each step of the way.
Yesterday is History, Tomorrow is a Mystery, and Today is a gift. That's why we call it "The Present."
[This is said to have been written by Brian G. Dyson, the CEO of Coca-Cola, and given as a commencement address at Georgia Tech.]

My morning rush.

I’ve always been quite good at managing most aspects of my life. I think that I am really good at managing my finances; I don’t make impulsive purchases and I always pay my credit card bills on time. This past semester I learned how to maintain balance between the time required for completing my school and work activities. I took too many classes and was so overworked that I didn’t really know what was going on around me. Luckily, I was able to finish the semester without sacrificing my grades. After having that experience I realized that it doesn’t make any sense to take more classes that I can handle. However, like everyone else, I have a very annoying management problem – I just have no idea how to manage my time in the morning before I leave for work.
It just seems to me that in the morning time passes by twice as fast as it does at other times of the day. Too many times I end up rushing myself to leave on time and running to catch my train. I usually give myself an hour to get ready to work (I wake up at 6 AM and leave my apartment at 7 AM). This one hour seems to be so little time to do so many things. You might say that perhaps I should wake up earlier to give myself more time in the morning. Believe me, I’ve tried but it is impossible because I love to sleep! I have to have enough sleep which for me means eight hours; if I sleep less than that I get headaches and I am really unable to concentrate during the day. I know, eight hours of sleep sounds like a luxury in the busy lives that we all lead but I have to afford this luxury (maybe I am just getting old, in high school I could stay up till 3 AM wake up at 7 AM and I was fine). The morning is the time for my most important meal. During the day I can skip lunch or dinner but I just have to have breakfast in the morning (again if I don’t, I get headaches). I don’t leave my apartment without having something to eat. In addition to having my own breakfast I have to feed my beloved pet rabbit and give him his usual half-hour run around the apartment. Then, I need to pack my stuff that I am taking with me. I leave my apartment at 7 AM and some days of the week I don’t come back till before 10 PM so I have to remember to take all the things that I will need during the day. There is also a dozen of other things that I have to do every morning and they take up so much time and make my mornings very stressful.

Do any of you have a similar management problem?