Term 1- Distance Week 4

Julie,

Well I don't want these distance posts to become repetitive lists of what I did each week.

I also wasn't going to post what is to follow, but I thought it would be a good representation of what a Duke student goes through as we are now deep into the term and finals are approaching. As a disclaimer all these thoughts were written off the cuff, they aren't edited in any way and I think they explain well the multitude of things that I have on my mind while trying to dial in and focus on each one individually. Please also don't take these thoughts overboard, they were written at a time that I was feeling overwhelmed so take them in that context. With that lead in, I give you scrambled writings.

I feel out of place. I feel like I'm on the verge of being so far behind with school that finals won't go well. I feel like I can't comprehend the material as well as I want and I'm not sure how to overcome it. I feel like I never have enough time to study yet when I do this week I couldn't focus. I feel like I look too much to the future and feel overwhelmed @ the present. I feel insufficient, unprepared, and impossibly buried by all that surrounds me. How does someone handle a job, school, church responsiblities, personal scriptures and prayer, being a father, being a husband, and trying to be helpful to a nine month pregnant wife. Why do I strive to have this baby born so we are on to the next phase of our lives yet I realize things will never be the same or any easier? Why do I feel so stressed with work and finances, always wondering what the current month will bring and whether or not our meager savings will hold out? When will I get the pay I deserve, the job I love, and the means to pay back my loans. Am I getting everything out of this MBA education and truly preparing myself for my approaching career? Will I be able to find a job in the field I love or will I have to settle for something else in order to pay the bills and "get experience?" why do things take so impossibly long to develop and why can't they be realized right now? Am I being a good parent and husband? Do I let everthing else in life get in the way? How do you successfully balance life and all it entails? Why has it been so difficult to find my groove amongst our ward and neighbors. Why can't I find a core of like minded friends to compliment the great family structure I have? This makes me wonder, am I where I want to live for the rest of my life? Do I need to expand my living horizons? Why do I struggle with consistency in prayer, scripture study, personal fitness, discipline with my diet, being mindful of others etc? I never thought my life would really shift the way it has to being so focused on myself and my life? Why do I feel like I am too busy to be helpful to others or keep others in my thoughts and during fast time? When will I learn to be prepared for tomorrow, but live for today?

Anyway, these are the thoughts that encircled my mind on a particular morning. Each could be expounded, some could be misconstrued. But the idea is that I am in a learning process right now that is testing me in more ways that just through books and facts. I've always known I wanted to be part of a program that pushed me to become better than I could by myself--it just isn't easy when you are in that situation and going through the growing pains. 
I hope this gives you a feeling of what it is like to go through the middle grinding weeks of an MBA term. In the end it will be how I respond to difficult times like this that will define me. And that is what I keep in mind.
Love you babe, thanks for your support!

Brock
            

Term 1- Distance Weeks 2 & 3

Julie,

Well I've combined these two weeks because I didn't feel like there was enough "post-worthy" information from last week.

Week 2 as a busy week. I felt like I was on top of things most of the time, but through the middle of week 2 I definitely didn't feel like I had a handle on the material Even after hours of study and review, I have felt like the topics from both weeks have just been over my head in manner of implementation. This is how I usually feel when I approach a new topic, but I began to realize this week that usually I have review sessions to help myself go back over the information or a team to work with or something. In this format... nothing. Granted, I do have my team, but still it is way different when you are doing things over the internet or phone than if someone can help you go through it in person. That is a definite adjustment I am going to have to make.

Saturday I had the Dixie High Golf Tournament in the morning and then the BYU game right after. Because of the golf tournament I missed class and had to figure out a time to watch them recorded. That didn't happen Saturday so by Saturday night I was starting to feel behind. I decided that Sunday I would have to definitely play catch up.

Sunday started Week 3. I had a meeting that night with my team and I had to read a case from week 4 (yeah that's right next week). Here's where I came to a crossroads. I was excited that my team was on top of things (we are currently finishing our case study that isn't due until Sept 25th--today is the 16th). My crossroads occurred with a personality quirk I discovered a long time ago about myself, but I have never been able to fix. Because this case was so far ahead, it was further down on my to do list. As I mentioned, I was already very much behind on my week 2 materials and week 3 had already begun. My quirk or problem occurs when I am preparing for things that are upcoming and plans change. For some reason, I have a really hard time with it. I usually react negatively at first and it starts to really bug me. After my first reaction, most of the time if you give me 5-10 minutes to think about it I realize it wasn't a big deal that the plans change, the new plans are good (most of the time better), and I can handle the change. BUT I can't seem to get over the first initial reaction.

Case in point, when I was younger if my mom gave me some chores to do I was usually just fine with whatever she assigned, BUT if when I finished those chores and she would say "Just one more thing" it would drive me bonkers and I would be mumbling in anger the whole time. Now its not quite the same thing, but my problem this week was the assignment of this case. I had planned to watch the classes I missed, do the assigned work for week 3 and finish/turn in the team accounting assignment that I am the team lead for. Well Kerry is the team lead for this week 4 case study and so she emailed the whole group about how we should have the case read and we should write up our outlines so we could discuss it during the team meeting. When I got her email, my first reaction was a negative one. I was made that this new project that wasn't due for a while was being thrown on top of everything else I had to do, etc. Well like I said, it took me about 5-10 minutes to relax and think through it. Once I did I was able to realize that doing this case assignment now would be best for me and then entire team helping us to get ahead as the last few weeks will be crucial for time to study for the exams. At this point I realized this was a better plan than the one I had before and I was fully on board.

But my question is why can't I just take those changes in stride with such an adverse reaction? What is it that makes me react that way and how do I fix it? I have been aware of it for a long time, yet have still not found a way to deal with it.

As I sidenote, I found out I have even more responsibilities as my Health Sector Management (HSM) concentration is starting in October. That throws an additional class with extra reading and another paper to write every term on top of everything else we do. I am really excited about HSM, but this week was the wrong week to find out about additional workload (please reference above story about how I react to change in plans ;)

I was able to get everything under control and by midweek of week 3 I was actually finished with everything assigned.

Finals seem to be quickly approaching. Week 5 is our last week of new material and then finals are during week 6. When I got started with this term it seemed a ways away but now it seems just around the corner.

Sorry that distance sessions aren't as picturlicious as residency. To fill the void I made this video of me studying. I know, I know, no one really realizes what an oasis it can be to be in grad school. Guess I am one of the lucky few. :)

Term 1- Distance Week 1

Julie,

Well I am having an interesting transition from residency to distance learning. While we were in London, they would always talk about transitioning back to home and getting use to having school while also juggling family, your job, and everything else. As I sat there in London, I contemplated this transition and thought "well I was handling everything minus school pretty good before I left and since the workload of school for an entire week will be what we did in one DAY here in London it shouldn't be a big deal."

Although it hasn't been overwhelming, there definitely is an adjustment period associated with getting back to juggling multiple things at once. I think I discovered one of my biggest adjustments is going to be focus. While in London and attending class, there was very little to distract me from the task at hand. Work was put on the shelf, I didn't have my computer or cell phone with me most of the day, and communication with you and anyone else was limited since being in different time zones meant we had smaller overlap of time to communicate.

Now that I am home all of those things are happening simultaneously which for me can tend to be a distraction. For example, if I am sitting here studying at the desk and I get a text message from anybody, I can't NOT look at it. The fact that it is sitting on my phone will eat and me until I actually look at it. Of course the mere fact that I received it is now a distraction of my focus because I am thinking about the text message instead of what I am studying. In the same context, if I do read the text message, 9 times out of 10 my mind will wander to the subject of the text whether it is work related, about the upcoming dixie or BYU football game, or just about what we are going to be doing this evening.

Now I point this out to show that it is no one's fault but my own and focus management as I like to call it, is going to have to be a skill I develop over this time in school. In the same thought another distraction I am dealing with has to do with ideas. While in London I was so isolated, the only thing that would really come to mind is what I was doing in class. But, when I am here ideas are running through my mind as I try to focus on a module of accounting on bonds and leases.

"Our focus today is on leases and off balance sheet obligations..." "hum... I bet I could develop a powerpoint that would standardize as well as increase the efficiency of our most common patient visits like heel pain. If I just used some unique graphics and hyperlinked...."

See my dilemma?

This will all definitely be an adjustment for me (gosh I can only imagine the distraction of trying to study/attend class on Saturday morning when I know there is a college football game waiting for me :).

BUT, with all these distractions I do still have some learning that I have been able to accomplish. In Managerial Effectiveness (ME) we are currently studying incentives and motivations and it has really intrigued me to assess current and past jobs and how incentives are placed. Everything we read summarizes to saw that extrinsic motivations like bonuses, bigger salary, time off, etc do little to achieve the goal it is meant to do. People for the most part must be motivated intrinsically. Also, most extrinsic motivators like that point us to the wrong goal.

For example, in football the goal is for everyone to work together as a team and make the entire team successful toward the goal of winning a championship, BUT players are rewarded on an individual level with salaries and bonuses. So when it comes to winning some players will say "Well I don't care how many times I touch the ball as long as we win" but when it comes down to it they realize that if they don't get a certain amount of catches they won't meet the accelerators in their contracts and they'll miss out on a lot of potential money. This leads them to act in their own interest rather than in the best interest of the team.

The same thing was true of when I worked at Merrill Lynch. I was always frustrated by the fact that although all 9 advisors worked in the same office it was like each one of us was working on an island with no support from each other. As an economist, we are taught all day long how if we combined forces and specialized 2 people each working their speciality will create more output than each person individually trying to do everything solo. I was thought "hey if we could get all nine advisors to work together as an office, we would all end up better off, we would bring in more clients, and the office would produce more revenue. Now Merrill Lynch's goal is to have us produce the maximum amount of revenue, however, they reward us on an individual basis which pushed us to work on these proverbial islands and never capitalize on the synergy of a nine person office working as a cohesive whole.

So my thoughts turn to medical offices. How do you motivate and celebrate employees intrinsically so they are focused on the benefit and goals of the office rather than themselves, realizing that with the success of the office will come the success of everyone individually?

These are questions I am yet to answer.

Managerial Effectiveness is definitely more thought provoking than Financial Accounting. This week's focus in accounting is on bonds and leases (debt instruments). I enjoy finance but when you are trying to learn a subject straight from a textbook and/or a monotone voice on a CD-ROM lecture, it is really tough to grasp the concepts. I am coming along, but it is taking me more time than I would like.

Classes this week were a new experience. Remembering that in London we pretty much spent a half a day in each class, it was quite an adjustment getting use to a class that is only an hour long. I felt like before class had even begun it was over. Usually this would be a good thing, but I feel like my comprehension of the material was less than stellar. Added to that was another distraction--Saturday college football :) Luckily classes are over before the actual games start, but the thought that college gameday is going on the same day as class makes it a little more difficult to focus. :)

Well now that classes are over I guess we are officially launched into week 2. This week my plan is to jump on top of the material right away so that by mid-week I am close to being done with all that is assigned. Hopefully this will give me some time to review past material and feel "caught up" before some of our team projects start in week 3. We'll see how it goes.

Love ya,

Brock