Tanaka MBA

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Glad It's All Over

Only it's not, of course. We've four exams straight after Christmas (OK, the New Year, strictly). Real exams. Not case studies.

Today's exam (Strategy Management) wasn't too bad, expect for Question 2, in which we had to calculate something. Well, that wouldn't have too bad. IfI'd had any idea how to calculate it.

If I've got 4 Cs this week, I'll have passed. I won't be happy, but I'll have passed.

It's the Christmas party tonight at 43 South Molton Street. I think I'll have a Cosmopolitan tonight. I've never had one.

On the Third Day

People & Organisations this morning. We weren't given the case in advance, so the exam was half an hour longer to give us time to read it. At least, we had plenty of time to answer the questions, although they were very samey. I'm not sure if I gort enough P&O buzzwords in, although i did mention transactional v. transformational leadership/management a few times, although I didn't get the chance to explicitly name Max Weber. It seemed more a strategy/human resources case really, which could be slightly worrying. Oh, well.

It'll all be over tomorrow. Better get revising for Strategy Management. It's a HBS case on wheelchairs from the mid-90s. Rather dull. I'm afraid. But I've got to get on.

Another One Bites the Dust

Marketing Management. That was a tough one, much than I'd been expecting (hoping for). Basically, it was a three hour exam that we had to do in two. Actually, it was worse than that because the questions were purely framed. There was one on the potential profit of GolfLogix that was presented in such a open-ended manner that to answer it properly would have taken three hours easily. Well, if I get a B (or even a C, Heaven forbid), I'll be alright.

In other news, we got our Strategy Management surprise tests back. I'd been quite proud to learn on Saturday that I'd got an A+. I was gutted to discover that virtually everyone else got either an A or an A+. I'm surprised that Annabelle inflated the grades so much. Never find. I got "truly excellent" on my mine. Which might be better than someone else who also got an A+, but "excellent" written on the script.

In other other news, I got an A for the Business Economics. Many people were complaining that the lecturer had graded the assignments very harshly and were particularly upset by some comments he made in an email. I'll admit that the subtext of the email that everyone else picked up passed me by. Did I get the same email? The general standard of the assignments was described as "OK". I suppose that's not so much as damning with faint praises as simply damning. But  maybe it's the difference between British and American academic cultures. And we are in the UK. (So, what's the US got to do with it?) We, OK can mean "quite good" as well as... urgh... "OK".

Anyway, it's People and Organisations tomorrow. We'll see how that goes.

One Down...

...seven to go. Exams that is. We had our first exam today (if you don't count the Strategy Management "surprise" test, which we probably should as it was worth 30% of the course mark). The exams this week are case study exams. Today was Human Resource Management and we had to write about the recruitment strategy for "NewCo". (That's the petrochemicals arm of BP, which is being soun off next year. They do actually call themslves NewCo at the moment.)  Their head of HR came in to give us a briefing first, which means this was a live and current case.  Unlike the traditional  HBS case!  We have one of those tomorrow for Marketing Management.  It's the GolfLogix (GPS device) case. Of course, just because we can find out what GolfLogix did, doesn't mean that's the right thing to say they should do in the exam.

After Christmas, we have four real exams!

Better get on with some revision.