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The Other Key to Finals Success: Stop Sassing Back!

May 5, 2005 / posted in B-School / 1 Comment

I have this attitude problem: if I don’t agree with what The Man is saying, I’ll express my opposition through homework and test-taking. That’s right, I’ll rebel by expressing my opinions in soundly-formulated, grammatical, written arguments. Watch out, I’m a wild man.
Needless to say, this has not, historically, been the path to good grades for me. When I was in in fifth grade at Quaker School in Baltimore, the class went on a field trip to see the new National Cathedral in Washington. After the field trip ended, our teacher, Mrs. Locher, assigned us an essay on what we thought about the Cathedral. Now, my parents are big Francophiles, and we’d often traveled to France during the summer; by the time I was in fifth grade, I’d been to many of the greatest Cathedrals of France. Being a little know-it-all, I thought the National Cathedral was quite the Johnny-come-lately (completed 1990, vs. Notre Dame completed 13-something), and looked it too. Sadly, I was unimpressed, and I said so in my one-page essay written in cursive with a pencil.
The next day, Mrs. Locher asked me to speak with her after school. In the large fifth-grade classroom, she and the other fifth-grade teacher, a tall, skinny man with a tall, skinny tie, suggested to me rather strongly that I might rewrite the essay to be complimentary. A review, she explained, was supposed to be positive; I should be appreciative that the Cathedral hosted us (I now realize that all of the essays were going to be sent to the Cathedral in a show of thanks). Being, again, an insufferable know-it-all, I explained that I’d seen many cathedrals and I didn’t think too much of this one. That was clearly the wrong answer; I was given the option of rewriting my essay or getting a failing grade. Being a grade-grubbing, insufferable know-it-all, I rewrote the essay, although without much heart (what I wouldn’t do for a check-plus!)
That day I began to learn the lesson that discretion is the better part of valor. But, from time to time, I need to learn that lesson again. Like with my Management of Organizations midterm; didn’t do to well on that. I did well on the multiple choice questions and well on the essays, but I tanked the short answers. And why did I tank the short answers? Well, the short answers happened to be on a few topics that I thought we’d missed the meat of in class; so, instead of bringing in the readings and showing that I’d mastered the material, I advocated — with no support whatsoever (how much support can you have in three sentences?) — the positions I’d earlier advocated in class discussion.
Well, naturally I didn’t get many points for that. Any reasonable professor would have expected some evidence I’d done the reading and understood some of the theoretical framework. Welcome to B-ville, population: me. So, clearly, an alternative approach was needed for the Final, unless I was happy being nearly two standard deviations below the mean. The solition was clear: I needed to re-learn that old lesson; I needed to not sass back.
So, at the top of every page on the final exam, I wrote in big, tall letters, “Don’t Sass Back!” And, every time I started thinking about going off on a tangent and not bringing in the readings and theory and class discussions, those big tall letters brought me back to Earth. (This is not to say that I didn’t express my ideas; I did, just only in those placces where I could use the class learnings to support them). I stayed on-target, and I feel great about the final product.
I just wish I’d remembered to erase those “Don’t Sass Back!”s. That’s going to really confuse some poor TA.















Wrist Fitness: The Key to Finals Success

May 4, 2005 / posted in B-School, True Life Stories / No Comments

Coming out of our Globl Strategy final on Monday, and then our Management of Organizations final today, my poor classmates were cradling their wrists and complaining of all of the pages and pages of answers they had to write out. But not me. No, I trained long and hard for tests just like this through two solid years of High School AP History.
“Brooks Lakin’s”:http://us.ratemyteachers.com/ShowRatings.php?type=0&tid=4172 AP History was the hardest class in the school. Mr. Lakin regularly assigned 50-100 pages of reading a night, and, worse, he expected you to be able to discuss the contents of that reading and comment on them in a useful manner. And he would cold call. His classes were small, but intense (and not just because of those shirts that Rebecca would wear).
But what really stood out about AP History were the tests. The magic words to get any test in any other class to be rescheduled were “I have a Lakin test that day.” Often, “I have a Lakin test the next day” worked too, so feared were the tests even by other teachers. And for good reason. In two and a half hours, Mr. Lakin fully expected you to show that you had read and:
* Apply multiple readings to different issues
* Tie readings together in ways that hadn’t been discussed in class
* Remember important facts, details, and names
* Develop and support original opinions
* Spell correctly, use proper grammar, and express yourself clearly
These tests were hard in their very structure. But the questions were even worse. They were interesting, incisive, difficult. Lakin tests opened with short answers and concluded with a couple of essays; the short answers could have been completed with an essay and the essays with a chapter in a book. And some people wrote chapters! Jess, one of my best friends, regularly filled more than 25 single-spaced handwritten pages with his clear, looping script; I think his record was about 35 pages. David, class president, co-Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper (with me!), basketball star, soccer star, and future Harvard MD, would fill ten pages — squeezing two almost-illegible lines into every college-ruled line of the page. I regularly wrote from 16-24 pages.
So, when it comes to filling six or eight pages in a two-hour test in business school, that’s not scary to me. Carl Voigt’s no Brooks Lakin.















Dear Neighbor Across the Alley From My Kitchen

May 1, 2005 / posted in Dear So-And-So / No Comments

At first, I thought that the all-hours late-’70s arena rock and hair metal was, well, eccentric but amusing. I mean, who really ever gets enough Boston? And a little Styx, now and then, is okay.
It did go a little over the top on weekends, however, when you’d crank up the Led Zeppelin. Now, I appreciate Zepp’s blues-charged rock as much as many other people out there (although I do prefer the rock-tinged blues of, say, an Albert Collins or Stevie Ray Vaughan), but the volume at which you chose to listen to Messrs. Plant and Page was, perhaps, a bit excessive.
So, you’ll understand if I wasn’t too put out when you moderated your musical indulgences. However, your choice to replace music with AOL Instant Messenger was a surprise — not least because you apparently hooked your computer up to the very same speakers you used for Zepp. Believe me when I say that, thanks to what you shared with me, I’ve learned that you haven’t really appreciated AIM unless you’ve heard the “new message” sound that it makes pumped out of speakers that go up to eleven. For every single message. Of a 30-minute conversation.
I just wanted to tell you how very, very glad I am that you finally gave up AIM. You’re right to take back your life from the Internet, and try to find friends “IRL”:http://www.answers.com/topic/irl?method=6. I just wish you hadn’t chosen to communicate with those friends over your Nextel push-to-talk phone, with its distinctive, signature “communication complete” beep. Although, I am impressed that you must have so many hundreds of free minutes every month to talk so incessantly. I must ask that you either:
# Get an ordinary cell phone so I don’t hear those beeps anymore.
# Speak up so I can at least hear the juicy bits of your conversation too.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.















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