Classy

I managed to fit in a couple great classes in the recent weeks. Accounting, an area I had no previous experience in, was a class suggested in preparation for B-School. I also completed my PMP preparation and certification. PMP, or Project Management Professional, is becoming a highly recognized certification. The certification is certainly no substitute for experience, but it does add a nice framework for proper technique. I mainly enjoyed the sections on conflict management. Even the best projects I've been on went through some really periods when people were pretty cut-throat.

My PMP prep class was four days, nine hours each day. The class was pretty intense in terms of memorization, but slim on the application side. There was little to no discussion and we hammered away with learning mnemonics in efforts to memorize certain project methods. For example: "I Plan to Eat Corn on the Cob" stands for:

• Initiate
• Plan
• Execute
• Monitor/Control
• Close

The PMP exam is notoriously confusing. On the bright side, the passing grade is 61% and the questions are all four-choice multiple guess. You can nearly always easily eliminate two of the answers and then take a wild guess based on how much corn on the cob you've recently consumed. Apparently I had my quota of maze and am now a PMP.

Accounting turned out to be quite useful, but also painfully dry. I can't imagine how this is going to apply to school but perhaps it will serve as a nice framework for balance sheet analysis. For anyone who knows accountants or has taken accounting I think there is a special kind of personality that is drawn to this sort of numbers organization... mine is not one of them. For some reason I'm enrolled for Accounting II later this month.