BUS 620 Managerial Marketing
Managerial
Marketing was actually a fairly fun course.
I find it interesting how marketers cater to a specific demographics,
the research they use to determine why they need to cater to that demographic
and the tactics they use to do so. I
enjoyed this class a lot and it was interesting to see how in tune we are to
the constant bombardment of marketing in our daily lives. I seem to remember hearing on the radio not
to long ago that consumers are hit with 3,000 (or was it 30,000?) ads of some
sort per day. Whether it be driving down
the road past signs, television commercials, radio ads, the t-shirt on the back
of the guy in front of you at the grocery store, right down to the wrapper on
your Big Mac.
The difficulty
of this course was not bad at all for me.
I enjoyed the research and it pretty much consisted of a couple
discussion questions and a research paper per week. However the final week was a little tough as
you had to develop a marketing plan for a company as a final project.
I give Ashford
an A+ for this course as marketing occurs in every type of industry, even law
enforcement (like the “dial 911 for emergencies on the patrol cars) so the
universal nature of the course made it helpful for me to relate to the
material.
Difficulty level
was about a 5 out of 10 for me. Your
results may vary.
BUS 630 Managerial Accounting
Hold on to your
hats here folks. First ask yourself, do
you like complex rules? Do you like to
add and subtract? Do you divide and
conquer numbers? Can you work with
ratios and perform simple algebraic formulas?
Can you take a long, long data sheet and condense it into tiny but powerful
little reports? Do you love attention to
detail and is your idea of “roughing it” an abacus instead of a
calculator? If you answered yes to all
of the above then you will positively LOVE this class.
This class ate
my lunch. I really struggled working
with spreadsheets in the beginning and the long number sets beat my AADD (Adult
Attention Deficit Disorder) mercilessly about.
I started to get distracted by floating dust particles when trying to
work on this stuff and honestly I really struggled to find a learning method
that would allow me to focus on detail for a long period of time without
breaks. I really, really had a tough
time in this course. It wasn’t the
hardest one, but it was one of the hardest 3.
The good part is that I learned something about myself as a manager and
a person, I need help in the area of accounting. I have a big hold in my skill set in this
area and it is something I need to improve upon and I intend to.
This class is a MUST for anyone who wants to manage anything that will ever involve
money, which is pretty much every management job out there for the most
part. So expect to be challenged here.
Ashford University gets an A+ for recognizing
the need for this class and executing the material in an applied real world
manner.
Difficulty level
9 out of 10. Approach cautiously.
BUS 640 Managerial Economics
Have you ever heard the phrase “for whom the bell tolls”? It’s one of those ominous sounding lyrics
that can conjure images of darkness, black clothing, solemn funeral goers and
crying widows. Yet for me it will
forevermore also conjure up Managerial Economics. The title of this course is misleadingly
innocent. I skipped my way wide eyed and
naïve about what I was about to endure, kind of like a cow who is just enjoying
the breeze on his first and last truck ride to the slaughter house. Blissfully unaware at what looms on the
horizon.
Little did I know I was about to be brutally subjected to
applied managerial economic theory using statistical data in all of the
formulaic variations, flavors and colors that they could cram into a 6 week
ordeal. This class taught me the meaning
of the word “economics”. And I’m
something of an authority on the subject as I took MBA Economics at St.
Joseph’s College
of Maine and the two courses were
night and day in their differences. This
Economics course was far beyond understanding supply and demand, but also in
the application of theory to make decisions based upon the concepts of supply
and demand. Look, I’m starting to babble
so let me just say this, the course isn’t nearly as easy as you think it
is. And if you think it’s hard, it’s
tougher than what you are imagining right now.
Now too. Yep, still now.
So just brace yourself, buy a nice comfortable scientific
calculator that you can curl up on the couch with and work from the fetal
position if necessary. Learn how to
graph, learn why you graph and learn how to apply theory and formulas. Good luck.
Ashford University
gets an A- on this course ONLY because I’m really not sure how everything we
learned here will apply in the real world, but just in case someone wants me to
do this for a living I now know “just say no” is not limited merely to drug
use.
Difficulty level 9 and ¾ out of 10 with10 being like
performing brain surgery in a nuclear physics lab on the far side of the moon
while being propelled by a rocket ship.