This week felt pretty low key, but i guess any week will feel low key when it follows a week that you study for and take a 14 hour final.
This week we started back up on our CCL and GMI classes that have been on hold since we left London. For GMI, we are preparing for the exam we will be taking the first day in Dubai. It is a macroeconomics class and we are only evaluating it on a survey level, meaning no in depth math or graph analysis like I did in my undergrad classes. Hopefully that means I will be able to navigate the exam pretty well.
CCL had a little bigger requirement. We had a team video due as well as a team business analysis paper. The video was a piece of cake :). Ok, so maybe that's because Brett did it all by himself. The paper ended up being a mess because no one had been assigned to lead it out. Kerry volunteered and delegated out the different parts. I think everyone ended up doing their parts ok, but the other problem is the paper was due Friday night. Without the boring details, we ended up finishing the paper right at the deadline, but I didn't feel like it was anywhere near the quality of the other work we had done during the semester. Hopefully it still gets a good grade.
This week is suppose to be a break between term 1 and term 2, but I've already received all the materials for term 2 pre-reading. That fedex package is kind of mysterious. You really want to know what is in it and what the next term has in store, BUT at the same time you wish it just wouldn't show up so you wouldn't have to find out.
Now that term 1 is over and I am 1/6 the way through my MBA program, I've been reflecting a little bit on what I have learned in this first term. And not just what I learned in Managerial Effectiveness and Financial Accounting. More so what I learned about myself and this journey.
I may have mentioned this in an earlier letter, but when we were in London, I remember someone speaking about life being a three legged stool as a CCMBA student. You have work, self, and school and you need to balance all three otherwise the stool falls. Well at that time, I remember thinking, really my stool is 5-legged. Work, School, Family, Church (callings and responsibilities), and Self (taking care of myself physically, mentally, and spiritually). To really be successful and happy, I think I need to be a good judge of balancing all five and that is what I have trouble with.
When I arrived in London, I felt like I had a good balance of Church, Family, and Work. I even would say I was balancing myself well and was improving steadily. But almost like a juggler who adds one too many balls into his routine, there have been points that I have felt they all came crashing down.
Now that Term 1 is over I feel like I am balancing Family, Work, and School, but Church and Self are struggling at this point. With Church, I don't feel like I am handling my church responsibilities with the Young Men very well. I am lucky to have a scoutmaster like Brandon that plans well and takes his calling seriously. I feel like I try to attend everything I can, but I feel like I am struggling because I am not able to commit 100% of myself to them. I wish I could be doing more to assist those boys and really let them know that I care about them.
With Self, I think this is the number one thing I struggle to keep in balance. I'm not very good at taking care of myself physically and often times spiritually. I will go on streaks where I am doing really well, but then something small will occur that I feel like completely throws me off and I spiral down to where I started or to a point even worse than that. For example, most recently when Cole was born I felt like I was getting myself back on track with my eating habits although I wasn't doing very good when it came to exercising. Well when Cole was born, I thought "I've got so much stuff going on right now I will just not worry about this for a couple days and once we are all home and settled, I will worry about it." Well now it has been two weeks since and I feel like I have downward spiraled to where I don't watch anything I eat and I just become more and more out of shape every day. This is a constant battle for me. Often times I will see an athlete on TV, watch a triathlon, or do something like go to the St. George Marathon and I will think, "I want to be like some of these people that have dedicated themselves to improving their selves and look what they can do now. But then I think, "If this person spends 20 hours a week training for these events, what are they sacrificing? Is it family, work (career success), Church (spiritual)? Do I need to sacrifice something else I am doing really well right now in order to achieve that goal or is there a way to balance it with everything I am already doing?
Can I be a huge success in my career, with my family, as a Church member, as an MBA student, and with my self development physically and spiritually? You here stories all the time of successful businessmen whose families never saw them because they were constantly working, or guys that spend so much time on self development and family that they never become very successful professionally? Can I do it all or I am forced to let one fail? How can I best balance my time and efforts to be the best at each one of these?
Hopefully as I continue through this journey of school I will be able to find out how to better balance all of these parts of my 5-legged stool as I am unwilling to let any one of the five suffer. There must be a way to help them all succeed!
Thanks for your support and love through this first term. Only five to go!
Love you,
Brock
No comments:
Post a Comment