I haven’t been too active here because I have focused on my primary blog. While I may use this blog for other purposes in the future, for the time being, please see my main blog for fresh content from me:
http://www.AnjuanSimmons.com
This is part of my plan to consolidate my various online social media profiles.
Here is an assignment that I wrote for my MBA Business Communication class. It is about a team building exercise that we did at Disaster City in College Station.
MEMORANDUM
To: John Krajicek, Executive Professor
From: Anjuan Simmons
Date: November 11, 2008
Subject: BUAD 620 – Assignment #6
Professor Krajicek, you really should have been with us at Disaster City last Monday! It was a day filled with exciting outdoor activities that helped us bond with our team members in many interesting and unique settings.
Fun in the Sun
Despite a few days of rain, the day we spent at Disaster City was sunny and warm. Disaster City is located near the intersection of Harvey Mitchell and Marion Pugh so it was easy to locate coming from the Texas A&M campus. After checking in (and signing away our ability to sue should accidental death or dismemberment occur), we all gathered in a tent where we were giving an overview of the day. With a growing sense of excitement, my new team members and I left the tent to go to our first Disaster City scenario.
Growth Under Stress
We were led to a series of real train rail cars that were overturned as if an extremely powerful tornado had tossed them around like toys. The scenario leader asked for a member of my team to be the victim, and I volunteered to play the role. With a measure of trepidation, I hunched down and crawled several meters through the rail car. I was instructed to act as if my right leg was broken and as if I had suffered a head wound. Due to very confined spaces in the rail car, I thought that it would take at least half an hour for my team to find and extract me from the train. However, they were able to do so in about fifteen minutes! I learned that my team members can easily exceed my expectations despite challenging conditions. We worked on other scenarios such as lowering a team member to the ground from the second story of a three story structure, using a series of ropes and pulleys to move several hundred pounds of concrete, and navigating to various check points using a Global Positioning Service (GPS) device.
Military Style Fine Dining
Our lunch was provided in the form of meals that were similar the Meals Ready to Eat (MRE’s) provided to military personnel. Various options were available such as pasta, beef, and vegetarian. Unfortunately, many of the members of my group were unused to eating such a meal. Having experienced actual military grade MRE’s, I appreciated the improved taste and textures of the ones provided by Disaster City. Few of my team members shared my appreciation, but I hope they heeded my advice about not eating too much of the liquid cheese provided with the meal. It tends to cause constipation!
The university campus I attended during my undergraduate studies was placed in the center of a city that is much larger than College Station. Therefore, I was concerned that opportunities for fun off -campus activities would be much lower at Texas A&M. However, Disaster City demonstrated that the College Station community provides interesting ways to grow both as a person and as a professional that would be hard to find at other campuses.
This blog has been upgraded to the latest and greatest version of Wordpress. It’s version 2.7 for you!
This MBA program has been rough. Consquently, I have not had much time to blog. However, I am learning a lot, and I hope to get to a regular posting schedule in the near future. Term 1 ended a couple of weeks ago, and Term 2 seems more manageable. Challenges abound, but I am glad to report that I am still in the program!
Today was the first part of the statistics boot camp. I remarked on Twitter that, while I love math in general (especially calculus), I never liked statistics. However, statistics is a critical part of the business world, and I plan to master it during my time in the MBA program.
Orientation has been a very positive experience for me. I am already familiar with many of the people in my class, and I feel much more comfortable with getting around the Texas A&M campus in general, and the Wehner building is already becoming the familiar spot that it should be to a business student. I have to admit that I initially thought that a two week orientation was a bit much, but it has already proven beneficial even though I haven’t even completed the first week!
Day 3 brought some fun to the orientation. We did various team-building excercises with my team (Beta 7) and another team (Gamma 7). One of the challenges involved touching number in a certain order with only one person going into the area where the numbers were stored. You really had to see it to understand, but I think that my group set the best time for touching the numbers.
We also did a skit about what we learned during the team building exercises. I wish I could have recorded it, but I couldn’t get my camera phone ready in time. I’ll have to be quicker on the draw next time!
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I learned quite a lot from the faculty who spoke today. Particularly interesting was Rogelio Oliva who brought a level of passion and enthiusiam to his presentation on the case method that I found exciting and refreshing. We also had an open panel that included Dr. Oliva as well as Arvind Mahajan, Shane Johnson,and Michael Wesson. The head of the 16-month long communications course was there as well.
Overall, the faculty was very impressive. I also learned that I will be in the Beta Cohort on Team Seven (Beta Seven). My team members and I have a great mix of background and skills, and I look forward to learning more about them in the upcoming weeks.
Beta Seven Team during Lunch - Tina, Anjuan, Ping, and Deepa. Not pictured is Philip
My hope is that we work so well together that we hate to go through the mandatory change of teams during the next term.
We also received a tour of the computer lab (Texas A&M is definitely an Apple house), and I also received my student badge.
I’m happy to report that I just upgraded this site to Wordpress 2.6. It was a very straightforward process which speaks to the strength of the open source WordPress product.
On Sunday night, the MBA Class of 2010 had a reception at the George Bush Presidential Library. The Library is quite a nice building.
The reception was nice with a non-alcoholic water bar. It was the first time that I saw the entire class in one place, and I was impressed by everyone that I met that night.
Today we had the first day of orientation. It was very informative, and I enjoyed hearing from all of the speakers. I definitely have a lot of office visits to make! Fortunately, the Director of the MBA program has two comfortable chairs in which I am sure I will spend my fair share of time sitting.
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