My Semester in a Nutshell

I’d like to make up for it by sharing with you the highlights (and lowlights) of the past few months. And boy, has it been a doozy.

To recap:

I decided to take an Operations Management and a Corporate Finance class this semester. Although the Operations Management class wasn’t too demanding, Finance more than made up for it. Every week the professor had me solving countless practice problems and each class was 2 1/2 hours of intense concentration. In fact, on the first week alone, I was assigned 70 practice problems! Yikes!

Classes were not the only priority. I also had to deal with my job, which was demanding 48 or more hours a week, and taking up the valuable brainspace I needed to save for my classes. On some days, I would work, drive straight to class, come home to study, and head right to sleep, with minimal time carved in to eat and shower. It was insane!

Midterms were all but a disaster, as explained in my previous post. I found myself with too much to do and not enough time to do it. With all the homework, projects, and work responsibilities I had to juggle, studying became a huge challenge, and in the end, I made a C on my Ops Management midterm while scoring a shocking D- on my Finance midterm. I just knew that if I had managed my time a bit better, those scores could have been increased dramatically.

Fortunately, my Finance professor allowed us to redo the problems we missed for partial credit, which brought my grade up to a C-. I also got a bit more serious about managing my time more effectively. Thus, as the semester drew nearer to a close I was able to complete my projects, assignments, and studying much more successfully. At one point, I had to deliver a presentation and study for my Ops Management final all while working 52 hours in a week! Because of my increased attention to time management, I walked into the next week feeling exhausted but accomplished everything I needed to.

And now, I have made it to the last week of classes. I still only managed to pull a B in my Ops Management class and have yet to take the Finance final, but I am much more confident I will do well. I really feel like last semester’s nightmare classes prepared me for this semester, as I still felt constant pressure but was able to withstand it a bit better. All I had to do was plan ahead and press through, and here I am today, a much stronger, battle-tested individual.

And because of this experience, I know I’ll be prepared for what lies ahead.