Spring 2016 Semester Review

Grades are in… and I am no longer a student. :D Here is a quick review of the classes I took this semester.

FIN 445 – Adv. Investments
This was hands down the best class of the semester. I had the same professor that I had last semester for the first Investments class, and he is the best professor I’ve had. He has a lot of experience throughout his career that he was really able to integrate into the class. He’s just one of those people that can walk into the room and easily by the smartest person there, but is still very humble about it.

We had about four tests and five projects, so it was a really heavy workload, but unlike most classes, I found all of the projects really beneficial. It was the perfect culmination of all the different concepts, valuation methods, and lessons from all the different finance classes I’ve taken. It was a lot of hard work, and it didn’t help that it was three hours a week on a Wednesday night, but I would have recommended anyone in the business school to take his class. I’m actually a little sad that I won’t be taking him any more. *tear*

Credits: 3
Final Grade: A

MGT 471 – Strategic Management
Sigh. This class was terrible. In a matter of two weeks, we had gone through four different professors. I’m not sure what happened, but the department definitely just scrambled to find someone to teach this class, and he was truly terrible. He had never taught before, was definitely unqualified, completely unorganized, and gave absolutely no clear instructions or feedback. We didn’t even receive a syllabus until a month and a half into the semester.

You know it’s bad when the professor says, “Just think, in a few years this class will just be one bad nightmare.”

To top it all off, a large portion of my grade was a twenty minute group presentation. I had six people in my group, and if I was lucky, two of them would show up on any given day. So I ended up doing almost the whole presentation. Another guy offered to do our recommendations for us, so I let him. The day of the presentation, he didn’t show up and he didn’t do the recommendations, so needless to say, it was the worst presentation I’ve ever given in my undergraduate career and we got ripped apart in our Q&A because I literally just pulled everything out of my butt in about 0.2437 seconds.

The professor never lectured and he would just spend all class talking about himself and what he does on the weekend. There was actually one class where he brought in these chia seed muffins and read us the ingredients on the label. :|

He didn’t even lecture over any of the content that was going to be on the final. But then he told us that he had already told us everything that would be on there, and “we would be fine.” LOL JK.

My favorite part of the semester is definitely when the course and professor evaluations come around, because trust me, I don’t hold my opinions back. :horns:

Credits: 3
Final Grade: A

FIN 350 – Introduction to Insurance and Risk Management
I did not really want to take this class, but I needed another finance elective and it was the only one that really fit my schedule, so I took it. This was a really difficult class because it was largely based on law, so it felt like a law class. There was a lot of contract analysis and a lot of laws and court cases and precedence. Blech.

My professor was really good, though. For such a dry topic, he tried to make it interesting. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, haha. The class also wasn’t super organized, but it was okay since we didn’t have a lot of assignments and such.

We did have a huge report at the end of the semester with vary vague guidelines, which was frustrating. Did he want five pages? Thirty-five pages? I honestly ran out of time with it and could have done more, but I did complete about sixteen pages, so I think it was enough.

Credits: 3
Final Grade: A

CIT 105P – Foundations Of Computing // CIT 106P – Computers Uses & Impact
This class was so easy, it was wonderful compared to my other three. I took these only because my advisors failed to tell me until my last semester before graduating that I needed 8 more credits of general electives. Thankfully, these were online and, since they were so easy, I finished them up in about a month.

These two classes mainly focused on creating word documents, excel spreadsheets, and power points that followed certain guidelines, so it was really a piece of cake. We also had to do some small assignments over the internet, and a couple papers, but nothing that I wasn’t already familiar with.

Credits: 8
Final Grade: A

Conclusion
Overall, not a horrible semester considering I was taking 17 credit hours. I managed a 4.0 GPA for the semester, which means my overall GPA is a 3.93! Woot! I definitely learned a lot more in some of my classes than in others, but I’m just so glad to be done.

I’m a bit sad this is my last “semester review” post, at least for now. But who knows what the future may hold? 8)

5 thoughts on “Spring 2016 Semester Review”

  1. Sounds like a pretty decent semester!

    I always hated when you had those really bad teachers, but once in a while you’d get someone super awesome. =3

  2. Wow, I can’t believe you had to endure such a headache with three different professors for the Strategic Management class. That sucks honestly! I don’t think I’ve had to endure that problem at all. Only time I did was in high school for summer school.

    I almost got away with a 4.0 this semester, however, I lost interest in one programming class asp.net (it’s a requirement for me to get my degree). Needless to say, I passed it with a B. Still, I did not like the class that much. This semester is probably my better of all the semesters I’ve had besides the first semester. The first semester I walked out with 3 A’s and 1 B. This semester, I walked out with 3 A’s and 1 B again. Not bad eh?

  3. Congratulations, that is a really awesome result. That horror story of a class is absolutely terrible. It must have seemed like such an incredible joke that it could even be happening that way. Gah. Glad that you shared your feedback, bawahahaha.

  4. Wow, sounds like your last semester was a mixed bag. That’s great that Adv Investments was such a good class in both professor and usefulness. It makes the hard work in it worth it!

    Though, that’s too bad Strategic Management was so bad. That’s crazy how many times they switched professors. It sounds like they really didn’t have one for it if they gave you guys one that had no experience and didn’t really teach you guys anything. Group presentations like that are the worst too D:

    Whoa, I would freak out if I found out I was 8 credits short so late. I’m glad you found easy online ones to fill them up! Congrats on getting all As in your final semester!

  5. Congratulations on your A’s, Becca! It sounds like you had some interesting finance classes! Funny thing is that I’m taking a Strategic Management class as well. I can’t believe your class had so much problems trying to get a stable professor to teach! Even though your presentation didn’t go as well, at least you still did good overall!

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