School’s out - German vs. US Universities
It has been awefully quiet around here but that’s what I get from taking two accelerated classes. Squeezing the content of a 14 week semester into a 7 week course, then trying to take two of those while working fulltime has not been my best idea. Thankfully, my university is not too demanding and I came out the other end with a 98% in Global Project Management and a 96% in Applied Math.
On one of my mailing lists, I heard someone comment that the universities in Germany are lacking compared to international universities. I so strongly disagree with that. It may be true if you compare a state university in Germany to Harvard or Yale, but if you compare it to an average 4 year accredited American university, the German Uni (or in my case the Fachhochschule Köln) is so much more demanding. I am smart, but in a German Uni or even a German High School, I was never “straight A” smart. To be honest, I don’t think I ever met anyone in Germany who was a straight A student. In the US, studying in a foreign language while working full time, I am holding a 4.0 GPA.
How do other countries compare? Has anyone else gone to college in the US and abroad? Or is anyone able to compare a German university to a French or Spanish university?
Project Management Bruhaha
Since I am taking my project management class, I have been looking into some of the ideas from my book. I don’t know if I am too pessimistic, but I keep thinking that a lot of the project management principles are a lot of bruhaha. Sure, for a huge project a lot of those things apply but I think for the average project in a small to midsize company, those things are total overkill. There are balanced score cards, the PMBOK, work breakdown structures, communications matrix, project carters and lifecycles, charts and diagrams and tables, critical path analysis, change control, risk registers and risk management plans and what not.
I do believe that most of those play a role in successful project management, but the formalized character of those processes seems to create a huge overhead and I am wondering if anyone actually uses them and finds them useful aside from a certification point of view?
And as a little bonus, here is a nice slideshow I found. Again, I am not sure I am buying into all the big words, but I think it is very well done.
Start Monday with some fun and play Akinator
I just got this link in one of my mailing lists (Thanks Antje), and I am in aw!
Play Akinator - think of a person, answer some Yes/No/I don’t know questions and be amazed 
It’s available in English, German, French, Spanish and Portuguese!
Monday, Monday
Happy week start! I have no idea what is going on but today is one of those days where you simply cannot wake up. I got up, rode my exercise bike for 30 minutes half asleep, got ready half asleep, drove to work half asleep and am now sitting here since almost 8 hours and am still not able to wake up. I had coffee and Vault and instant espresso, but nothing helps. The fact that my day is still a little slow doesn’t help much.
I had such a nice weekend, the first weekend that was so nice and warm that we even had breakfast on the patio watching our cats who put on a nice circus act. If you think people are happy about spring, you should see a bunch of cats who have been cooped up in the house all winter long - it’s not like we make them, but during winter the little pussies just stare out the door expecting the snow to melt in front of their eyes. I also got to sleep at a reasonable time and still, I feel like I have been partying all night.
I mentioned it before, I have two classes this session, Global Project Management and Applied Mathematics and so far I have been able to coast, but that ends now. For GPMT we are using a tool called SimProject, where we are working on a simulated construction project. We have to hire resources, we have a budget and apparently the instructor can throw roadblocks into our way like a budget cut or a strike - very interesting. Unfortunately, we are having problems getting our group of 4 together. We tried yesterday at 6pm but only two people were “there” (in the project chat area) so I sent out an email telling them all to be there tonight at 7pm - not sure what to do if they aren’t because we have to make our first group decisions.
Unfortunately, I cannot even be too mad. If I look back at my own time at university, I am pretty sure a returning adult student would have been just as impatient. Well, we’ll see what happens tonight.
Back to the desk
Boohoo, poor me. All of last week I had been home with a really nasty sinus infection - one of those you just get when you are a kid. At least in my case, I feel that as a kid the flu hit me much harder. I don’t really get “stay in bed” sick too much anymore. On the other hand, when you are a kid the last thing you want is stay in bed - BORING. Anyway, I am back at work and chopping away on the pile of stuff that has accumulated over the last week.
The only good thing about being sick is that you get to catch up on a lot of TV watching, even if you are falling constantly. Yesterday, I actually got to watch The Linguist and it was a light-hearted, interesting documentation. Try to catch a re-run if you are interested in languages!
And on a different note, a new semester session has begun (I am taking accelerated 7 week courses), out with Server Side Scripting, in with GMPT350 Global Project Management and MATH200 Applied Mathematics.