WGU MBA-HM first impressions and ongoing comments

[dmjacobsen]

The final task for JDT2 Human Resources has been completed and submitted. If this passes, I'll have completed 9 CU's (credit equivalents) in just one month. Fingers crossed! The HR course was definitely as drudging as I thought it would be, partially because of my predisposition to HR and mostly because this 2 CU class was by far more work than my 4 CU Accreditation Audit class. It almost seems as if whoever developed the course realized how much of a joke the course was going to be and intentionally filled it with a bunch of menial garbage.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm enjoying things overall. I liked E-business, and I learned a lot in Accreditation Audit that I thought I already knew, but didn't, from numerous JCAHO inspections. But, really, HR is a big fat suckfest.

I've already gotten my mentor to open up Financial Analysis for me, and will buckle down and start on that next week. Financial Analysis is a "cornerstone" course and will definitely be a booger-bear for me. I will definitely be taking my time with it, especially with my FNP clinical rotations gearing up next week. Will try to keep updating. But, in the meantime, here's to hoping that I am done with HR and moving forward!

[dmjacobsen]

JDT2 Human Resources final task was passed on 6/2. So, that's 9 CU's down in a hair over a month. Not a bad start! I'm taking a short break before I tackle Financial Analysis. As mentioned above, I started FNP clinicals this week, so it's going to be tough to schedule in some time for this course, but I have 5 months left in the term. So, I'm confident I'll knock FA out as well as at least one or two other courses.

On a bright note, I am possibly going to drop my hospital job and work full-time as a critical care transport nurse on the weekends and one day during the week. I do this part time now, but will switch it up because the CCT job is super-easy and I typically only truly work about 2 or 3 hours out of a 12-hour shift. So, lots of free time to work on both the MSN and MBA at work -- something I definitely cannot do in the ER!

[dposborne]

IMHO Financial wasn't too difficult, it was just tedious (FA took me a month to complete and I was working 13 hours a day 7 days a week, out of town on business and in a hotel room using a laptop at the time). You really didn't have to calculate anything as they pretty much provided everything for you to look over, analyze and regurgitate. Decision wasn't too bad either, the first 3 tasks flew by in a week for me, the 4th was tedious not difficult at all, just frustrating. I didn't like having to do the extra work to prove my competence in the subject matter to the taskstream grader. I really felt I could prove my knowledge with out having to provide so much work.

I'm on Organizational Management now. Doesn't seem to be too difficult and a lot of it makes sense so I may get this one knocked out pretty quickly as well. We'll see I guess.

[dmjacobsen]

IMHO Financial wasn't too difficult, it was just tedious (FA took me a month to complete and I was working 13 hours a day 7 days a week, out of town on business and in a hotel room using a laptop at the time). You really didn't have to calculate anything as they pretty much provided everything for you to look over, analyze and regurgitate. Decision wasn't too bad either, the first 3 tasks flew by in a week for me, the 4th was tedious not difficult at all, just frustrating. I didn't like having to do the extra work to prove my competence in the subject matter to the taskstream grader. I really felt I could prove my knowledge with out having to provide so much work.

I'm on Organizational Management now. Doesn't seem to be too difficult and a lot of it makes sense so I may get this one knocked out pretty quickly as well. We'll see I guess.

Wow. I'm not working or going to school nearly that much (13x7), so I'm hopeful that I can finish in a month. I can dedicate one full day a week to it, so fingers crossed. I looked over Organizational Management and it looks pretty easy. The only courses I'm worried about are FA and DA (which you've eased my concerns over). Everything else from here on out looks fairly straightforward and simple, with the exception of the Capstone. I don't suspect that the capstone will be difficult -- I just have to decide what I'm going to do my project on within my organization.

[Rhashad]

Financial is very time consuming, especially the first task. Once you get task one together you'll have a good handle on the course. Decision, well, that's another animal. Its one of the only courses that I had to go through the reading and practice without skimming. Capstone is a piece of cake as long as you have a good group.

[dposborne]

Just need to remember that the videos for DA pretty much show you everything you need to know...Literally step by step

[dmjacobsen]

Well, it's been some time since my last update and -- as much as I hate to admit it -- I haven't had any progress on the MBA. Real life has been getting in the way quite a bit.

However, in an interesting turn of events, I've decided that I'm no longer interested in being a Nurse Practitioner. I've had a decent amount of exposure to the career path, and have racked up 16 graduate credits in the program with a 3.8 GPA, and have decided to call it quits. Well, not "quits", exactly. I've decided to change my MSN major to Executive Leadership. Following suit, I'm looking for opportunities within my organization to move away from bedside nursing and into a leadership role.

So, having made that change, I'm hoping that my work in the MBA will make some of the Executive MSN courses a little easier, as there are two finance courses in the MSN program. On the down side, many of the credits that I've accumulated won't apply to the new degree -- only 6 will. So, that pushes my graduation date back a couple of semesters. I'm very comfortable with this, though, as I'll be able to tack on the MBA credential before too long -- and well before I'll actually need it. And, if I go crazy and change my mind again after I'm done with this, I can always do a post-Master's NP program. But, I don't foresee that happening.

The game plan now is to hit FA hard before the next semester starts in the MSN program. I'm pretty intimidated by task 1, especially after re-reading rebel100's comments in his own thread, but I've got the skeleton of the paper ready, have watched the videos, and am ready to tackle it. Here goes nothing!

[dposborne]

The game plan now is to hit FA hard before the next semester starts in the MSN program. I'm pretty intimidated by task 1, especially after re-reading rebel100's comments in his own thread, but I've got the skeleton of the paper ready, have watched the videos, and am ready to tackle it. Here goes nothing!

My Task 1 paper was 18 pages with about a page worth of graphs, a cover page and no references page. I wouldn't kill yourself on this one, just be brief and to the point. There is quite a bit of information to get on the paper, but a lot of it is really rewriting what is already on your handouts and then re-emphasizing some key points in your readings.

[dmjacobsen]

My Task 1 paper was 18 pages with about a page worth of graphs, a cover page and no references page. I wouldn't kill yourself on this one, just be brief and to the point. There is quite a bit of information to get on the paper, but a lot of it is really rewriting what is already on your handouts and then re-emphasizing some key points in your readings.

I wish I had taken what you said to heart and buckled down right after I read it. You're right on the money. Unfortunately, I delayed and delayed and just got Task 1 done today. It really was pretty straightforward, just a lot of info to plug in and make basic interpretations about. I've done this before in my WGU undergrad -- get so overwhelmed by a task with this many prompts, only to find out when I'm done that it wasn't really that bad and that it just took time, but not much truly hard work.

One thing I noticed tonight, after submitting the task, was that TaskStream (WGU's grading portal) now shows your place in the grading queue as well as the date for submissions that are currently being worked on. That's great news for TaskStream stalkers like me. It tells me that they're grading things from 7/21, so I can now check back in 4 days instead of checking the site multiple times every single hour until the work is graded.

Now, I'm on to create the skeleton of my paper for Task 2 and call it a night. Will likely not update until I've gotten FA out of the way.

[dmjacobsen]

So, here we are, three months after I started Financial Analysis, and I'm finally finished as of 9/17. This class took MUCH longer than anticipated, mostly because of my own procrastination. It was also full of concepts completely new to me, so it took quite a bit longer. But, that's the whole idea with WGU -- things that you're familiar with, you knock them out quickly. Things that you're not familiar with... well, you go slower.

One great thing about taking Financial Analysis is that I also started my Healthcare Finance course for my MSN in August. What I've learned in WGU's FA course has been a tremendous help in the coursework for the MSN class. I think there will be a lot of crossover in content between the MBA-HM and the Executive Leadership MSN. Normally, I'd say this is a bad thing, but because these two degrees aren't seen as similar from within the industry (versus, say, an MBA and an MPA), it's a pretty good deal as far as the resume goes.

Still, I'm disappointed in how long FA took me. I'm eager to wrap up Social Responsibility within the next couple of days. It's a short course (only one task) and many of the concepts I'm already familiar with. After that, it's on to Decision Analysis.