Winding Down The Semester at Unknown University

It's Saturday afternoon, and I'm in my office writing final exams while the rest of the Unknown Family is one state away at a nephew's birthday part.

So that means it must be the end of the semester.

I have one day of classes left and two exams to give - one in my principles class and one for my student-managed investment fund class. and both exams are well on the way to being written. So, I'm in better shape than I have been at the end of the semester than in a while (I'm usually doing the mad scramble for the finish line). I figure another day's work on the exams and a couple of days grading, and I'm done until the next crop comes in.

It's been a good semester. My principles class went better than it's gone in a long time. I always try to give my students their money's worth, and push them significantly harder than in the other sections of the class. In prior semesters, they'd griped about this to the Powers That Be.

This semester seemed different. Part of this was that I have a much better attitude about life than I had previously. Most people who know me would characterize me as enthusiastic (sometimes to a fault) and optimistic. While the Unknown Son was in the final stages of his illness, I was very stressed (ya think?). When I'm stressed, I get more than a bit sarcastic, and that never plays well with students (particularly when you're really pushing them).

This semester, I was unabashedly positive and relaxed in the class. I also spent much more time early on framing their expectations. So, there was very little griping to the folks in the Dean's office. Finally, I made a concerted effort to make sure the focii of the class were working problems (and making THEM work problems) in class until they couldn't take it any more, and forcing them to participate. The students seem to have gotten the message that an easier road in class is often not the the best option.

Unfortunately, we don't do a common final exam for the principles class at Unknown University. Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that my students have a better grasp of the material than in some of the other sections, but I'm always leery of making statements like this because of biases in my own perceptions (confirmation bias, hubris, and so on). I'd like to see if hard data shows that they know more, or if I'm just convincing myself. Maybe next time I can convince them to go the common exam road.

My student-managed fund class also did better than I expected. I always fear the worst as they're getting read for their end-of-semester presentation to the Alumni. This semester, we made the presentation it at the offices of a major investment-management company. The students did well, so it should help with placement of our grads at this firm in the future. I brought a couple of juniors who will be in the class next semester along to the presentation, and one of them might have made a connection there (with an Unknown University alum who already works at the firm). So, he might have made a major step towards scoring an internship for this summer.

In any event, I've had enough office time for a Saturday. So it's time to head out for some Christmas shopping and then settle in for the big UFC fight tonight. Since the Unknown Family is out of town, I get to do the bachelor thing.

Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer Promotes Bullying! (sniff, sniff)

People of my generation got used to seeing Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer at least a hal-dozen times each holiday season. It was so ubiquitous that asking someone my age "What do bumbles do" would have about an 80% chance of being answered "Bounce".

It was only a matter of time before the PC crowd got a hold of it. Special ed professor George Giuliani claims that St. Nick's behavior in cartoon is tantamount to bullying, and sends the wrong message to children watching the family favorite. In response, he's written a new book, "No More Bullies at the North Pole," which re-tells the story of the triumphant reindeer (I checked - it's not available at Amazon in case you were thinking of getting it).

"Santa has ten policies that are very unfair, and Mrs. Claus sets out to correct those policies, and what you just saw, where Rudolph is being treated very very badly, and that should never happen," Guiliani said.

Here's an interview of this guy on Fox. It's also notable because they have a response from Brad Stine, one of my favorite comedians. I'd say he does a good job of treating the good professor's idea with all the seriousness it deserves.

In case you're not aware of him, Brad Stine is best knows for his routine "Put a helmet on!" here's a clip


HT: Ace of Spades Headquarters

Ah well - enough wasting of time. Back to work. I have an exam to write, a paper to finish, and a presentation to check (my student-managed investment fund group is making their end-of-semester presentation to the fund's advisory board in two days, and this time we're doing it on-site at the offices of a major investment management firm).

update: The Unknown Daughter thought I was kidding when I told her someone had made up a story about Rudolph being bullied. She's finding out that the world is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine. Then she proceeded to make fun of Professor Giuliani. That's my girl.

The Joys of Customer Service at Dailysteals.com

One of the nice things about having a blog is that it gives me a good place to vent on occasion. Today's been a long day - three classes to teach and met with student for about three hours in addition to that answering questions abut their valuation models. So, I'm basically wasting time before I have to leave and pick up the Unknown daughter from Girl Scouts. So, here's a minor vent.

I recently bought a Nook Color from "Daily Steals" (www.dailysteals.com). The price (only $130) seemed like a deal that was too good to be true.

Being a born skeptic, I often tell people "if it seems like it's too good to be true, it probably is." I should listen to myself more often (and not merely when I'm saying "my preciousssss".)

About two weeks after I bought my Nook, it started malfunctioning - it would unexpectedly turn off, and then wouldn't boot unless the charger cable was connected (I think the "on/off" button might have had a bad connection - once booted, it would stay on, at least for a while). So, I sent them an email, and received an automated response saying

Your email is very important to us. You can be confident that we will adress your questions in a timely manner. A Customer Service Representative will personally respond to you within 1-2 business days. You may also contact our Live Chat during
business hours, Mon-Thu: 9:30-5 ET and Fri: 9-2 ET. We are closed on Saturday, Sunday and Holidays.

Two days go by, and no email response. So, I call their customer service number. I got a recording (that sounded suspiciously like Kasey Kasem - maybe he's doing a bit of work on the side), and ended up on hold for a half an hour.

Next, I tried their "live chat feature, and got a customer service person in a chat session. Here it is (I've done very minor editing only, since my typing-fu is not all that great):

Judith: Hi There! Welcome to DailySteals Live Chat. How can I assist you today?

Me: I am following up on an email I sent abut a defective product (two days ago) -- I have pasted the content into the email into the chat window to make your life easier. Here it is:
I ordered a Nook Color (order ID XXX) on 10/16/2011 (and received it on 10/27). It worked fine for the first few weeks, but it now appears to be defective. It will only boot when the charger is plugged in (and not using battery power only). In addition, it sometimes cuts off unexpectedly. The device information on the Nook says that if the Nook is defective and it was NOT purchased from a Barnes and Nobile store, I should contact the retailer from which I purchased it. So, I am contacting you to see what you can do for me.

Judith: Please send us an email to sales@dailysteals.com so we can have someone look into this for you.

(methinks Judith needs to read the message I just sent)

Me: I have already sent an email (as I mentioned in the chat, I sent it two days ago). I am chatting to follow up on that email. Are you saying that I should send another email to verify the first one? After all, It's been several days, and I haven't heard back on that one yet.

Judith: I am unable to assist you with this via live chat and if you have received an email correspondence, you need to respond to the email

(this sounds like a canned response)

Me: I am not responding to an email. I am "talking" to you because I HAVE ALREADY SENT AN EMAIL AND I HAVE NOT RECEIVED A RESPONSE. My problem is that I have sent an email and I have received no response. Is there a real live person I can talk to?

Judith: When did you send your email?

(again, there seems to be a lack of reading comprehension here)

Me: Please read my previous chat - I sent it two days ago.

Judith: You will receive a response very soon

Me: What does that statement mean? Is that a standard response to inquiries, or does it mean that you have checked into my SPECIFIC request and have verified that my problem is being handled?

Judith: It means that based on the date you emailed, you will receive a response from a representative shortly

Me: in other words, the first case.

Me: An additional question - what does "very soon" mean? A day, three days, a week?

Judith: Either today or tomorrow

Me: Good. If I haven't heard from anyone by then, I will assume that customer service is
not a priority (after all, three days is a long time to wait to receive a response for a basic inquiry). At that point I think it would be appropriate to post this whole episode on my blog - I have a bit more than 1,000 subscribers, and I'm always looking for material. That's not intended as a threat, by the way. It's just that I (and most people I know) value customer service highly. So, buying a product at a "great" price is not a deal if there are easily avoidable problems down the line.

Just for the record (in case anyone wants to contact me), the email is XXXX@XXX.com and my cell phone # is XXX-XXX-XXXX

It will be interesting to see how long "today or tomorrow takes." Ah well, at least I know that if it doesn;t work out, I have the satisfaction of knowing that the thousand or so subscribers who have nothing better to do than read this blog (seriously, people, you need to get a life) will know whiat the downside of "deal sites" are.

/vent

Random Thoughts

It's been a busy month or so since FMA, so I've been out of touch blog-wise, So her are a few snippets:

• We're now in the final throes of the semester (only two weeks left once the students get back from Thanksgiving), and they just had their second exam in my principles class). So, I had about 1000 pages of grading to do (I don't do scan-tron graded exams). But they did extremely well, so I feel good about it. Now all I have left to cover is CAPM and WACC, so I'm right on schedule.
  

• I've been experimenting with online web-conferencing software as an enhancement to my classes. We use a really clunky system called Sakai, which has limited web-conferencing capabilities (only 15 or so concurrent users). So I and another faculty who's also a techie have been looking into using a commercial vendor that will allow us to do deliver online instruction (and review sessions) for 50-100 students at a time. I figure that this (along with my pre-recorded videos) could be the backbone for a fairly thorough and well-done online class.

• The little guy is talking up a storm, and is a riot to be around. He loves to get a running start and then do a running headbutt. Unfortunately, he's at just the right height that he hits his dad in a very sensitive area. But it was pretty funny at Thanksgiving when he caught his uncle unawares. It probably didn't help that I distracted him at just the right moment. when he wasn't. Not nice, I know. But funny
  

• Trying to get a paper out this weekend, another one in the following week, and a third one over December break. And then I'll do the usual scramble to get a new piece together for the FMA deadline in January.

Finally, I came across a pretty good quote (by Aristophanes) that will probably make it onto my door: “Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.”

Gotta get to bed. Later.

Tell Us About Faculty Interviews That Went Bad

At the FMA, I talked to several candidates on the market (of course, their opening line was the traditional mating call of the new candidate: "are you hiring this year?"). Since by now they're through the experience, I thought they could use a bit of comic relief. .

I was out with a number of my friends in Denver. The topic turned to "interviews gone bad". Most of them had been in the field for at least a half-dozen years (and in most cases, twice or more that many). So we've all either been on an interview that (as Terry Pratchett would say) "went pear-shaped") or have heard of one - and in some cases we know stories from either side of the table. After hearing a few stories that made me laugh so hard that I almost wet my trousers, I thought this would make a great topic for a post.

To get the ball rolling, I'll share tow of my favorites (I wasn't personally involved in either, but heard them from one or more of the participants):

1) Sleeping Walrus University: My friend John (the name has been changed to project the guilty) likes to (over)partake of the fruit of the vine. One night, he overdid it in a major way. His school was interviewing, and unfortunately, they were holding interviews in the room he was sharing with another faculty member. The next morning came around, and he was hung-over, probably still mostly soused, and completely dead to the world (absent dynamite or a crane, he was not to be roused or moved). So, when the first interviewee of the day came in, the other two faculty members mad ethe best of the situation, and conducted the interview with John asleep in the bed, covered up completely by a mound of blankets.

John is not a slender man (he's somewhere in the Chris Christie weight and body-shape class), so the pile of blankets looked like someone had buried a walrus (or maybe a sea lion)under there. And to boot, John was snoring at rock-concert decibel level. So, every few minutes, an interviewer's question (or the candidate's response) would be punctuated by a loud "SNNNZZZZPPPPFT". I think the candidate might have gotten a campus visit out of it, but ended up taking a position elsewhere.

2) Yes, we believe in full disclosure: An older faculty member I know came on the job market in the late 1970. His most memorable interview was conducted in a poorly-lit hotel room. I know that it's important for the interviewer to feel comfortable, but this guy didn't quit get the concept. For some reason, he felt no need to wear pants, and conducted the entire interview wearing a t-shirt and his underwear (and no, my friend didn;t remember if they were boxers or briefs - he focused on making only eye contact). Sometimes less is NOT more, dude.

If you have other stories, feel free to put them in the comments. Please pass this along to your friends, because almost everyone either has a story of their own or knows of one. By all means, don't use your real name, and try to disguise or change enough details so that they can't be traced back to the parties in questions. I'll periodically promote the best ones from the comments up to the main post (note: I may make a few editorial changes for the sake of spelling, punctuation, extremely poor taste, anonymity's sake, or comic license).

So give me your best (or worst), and let's have some "inside baseball" fun.

Back From The FMA

I just got back from the annual FMA (Financial Management association) annual meeting in Denver. I presented my paper, commented on a few others, set up some possibilities for collaboration (and possibly making so money teaching overseas), and spent a ;lot of times with old and dear friends (and made a few new ones)

I n particular, it seems like the Christian Finance Faculty Association is getting off the ground,. We had a good meeting on Friday with some stimulating discussion and a chance to meet new friend (some of whom we've known for years but didn't realize they were Christian.

We're in discussions about starting a blog, and when It's up, I'll pass it along.

It's Not FAAAIIIIRRRR!

I'm probably beating a quickly dying horse, but I couldn't resist. The other day, I was talking with a colleague about the Occupy Wall Street issue, and came down on the side of the protesters, saying that the distribution of wealth in our country wasn't "fair" (actually, they said "equitable", but they pretty much meant the same thing. So, I brought up another colleague's Business Law class where if the students used the word "fair" in an answer, they automatically lost points.


Fair is one of those words that seems to mean so many different things to different people that it's practically useless in conversation except as a rhetorical tool. When the Unknown Daughter was seven, we decided to expunge the use of the "it's not fair". The Unknown Wife and I told her that we didn't want to hear it, and whenever she uttered the phrase, she'd just have to "put it in THE BOOK". THE BOOK was a little journal with her name on it and the title "It's Not Fair". Whenever she used the forbidden phrase, she had to write it down as "It's not fair that______". She looked at the book, thought a minute, smiled at me, and wrote one (and only one) entry in the book: "It's not fair that they're my parents". She's pretty much never used the phrase since (yes, I have a remarkable daughter).

To close, let me give you two sites to peruse. In the first, We are The 99 Percent, the Occupy Wall Street Crowd posts their grievances, and in the second, We are the 53 Percent, some others post their responses. Feel free to chime in on either side.

Honey, I'm Home (With a Jab at Occupy Wall Street)!

Financial Rounds went dark over the summer - I spent the time working on research, playing with The Unknown Wife and The Unknown Kids, and riding my bike. But now, I'm back. At present, I'm working madly to make some last minute changes to a paper to be presented at the FMA (Financial Management Association) annual conference in Denver. I'm doing it at the last minute (as usual), so I can't post much right now.

But this video pretty much screamed out for attention. It's a great parody of "The Times They Are A Changing", by Bob Dylan - one of the classic songs of my youth. It takes some pretty good jabs at the "Occupy Wall Street" crowd (not that that's all that hard), and points out how much capitalism has improved almost everyone's lot over the last century or so. Embedding seems to be disabled, but it's SFW, so click on the link and enjoy.

Here are the lyrics (See if you can spot the reference to the classic economics essay I, Pencil) :

Come gather round people
come and join your hands
we're taking Wall Street
and we're making demands
and we're heeding the call
and we're crying for help
only 1% of us have wealth

but first we need posters
we need to make signs
but to do so it seems
that we need some supplies

We need poster board
I can't make it myself
but it's 10 cents a sheet
at the store it's on sale
an example of economies of scale
it's so evil

They're saying that freedom
has done little to stop
Corporations from keeping
the wealth at the top
But at what point in history
would a kid and a king
both have clean water to drink?

George Washington was
the richest man of his age
But he lost all his teeth
at a very young age
Because they didn't have Scope
and they all crapped in trays
we're not wealthy?

now there's fountains on streets
from which clean water pours
Four dollar generics
at all big box stores
a sultan and student
both have iPhone 4s
it's not fair

Come gather young people
come on everyone
and I'll tell you a tale
of a fortunate son

He's born in a country
and given vaccine
and rendered immune
to all kinds of disease
the Kardashians are on
all his TVs
it's not perfect

Banks don't need bailouts
on that we agree
so let's start up a group
and let's take to the streets
because if we do that then
you know what that means
we're racist.

HT: Ace of Spades

Man Bites Dog and Couple "Forecloses" on Bank

Here's a classic role reversal story - a couple foreclosed on a bank! It started about five months ago when Bank of America attempted to foreclose on a Florida couple for non-payment of their mortgage.

The problem was, they'd paid cash for the house. So they went to court, and eventually won (they showed that they'd never had a mortgage with BOA).

The judge awarded them legal fees, but after five months, BOA somehow never got around to paying the judgement.

So, the couple's attorney got the sheriff, seized their assets and padlocked the bank branch building. The attorney gave instructions to remove assets like computers, desks, copiers, and any cash in the tellers' drawers. After about an hour of being locked out of the bank, the bank manager handed the attorney a check for the legal fees.

Talk about turnaround.

Read the article here.

update: It wasn't technically a "foreclosure" on the bank - it was actually a default judgment for unpaid legal fees and court costs. But close enough for the irony.

How Much IS A College Degree Worth?

Here's an interesting chart from Lifehacker. It shows the median salaries (along with the 25th and 75th percentiles for various majors. It's taken from a report created by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce called "What’s it Worth? The Economic Value of College Majors"

Here's an interesting part from the press release Georgetown put out:

The top 10 majors with the highest median earnings are:
Petroleum Engineer ($120,000); Pharmacy/pharmaceutical Sciences and Administration ($105,000); Mathematics and Computer Sciences ($98,000); Aerospace Engineering ($87,000); Chemical Engineering ($86,000); Electrical Engineering ($85,000); Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering ($82,000); Mechanical Engineering, Metallurgical Engineering and Mining and Mineral Engineering (each with median earnings of $80,000).

The 10 majors with the lowest median earnings are:
Counseling/Psychology ($29,000); Early Childhood Education ($36,000); Theology and Religious Vocations ($38,000); Human Services and Community Organizations ($38,000); Social Work ($39,000); Drama and Theater Arts, Studio Arts, Communication Disorders Sciences and Services, Visual and Performing Arts, and Health and Medical Preparatory Programs (each at $40,000).

This isn;t surprising - with the exception of Pharmacy (which is also pretty rigorous and exacting), they're all fields that require a lot of math. To quote classic Barbie, "Math is Hard!". So there's a smaller supply of grads (and there's a pretty good demand for these grads, too).