I am about to finish my MBA. Tomorrow I go in to defend my thesis and I admit I am a little nervous.

I am giving a final today to my CIS410 class, and I realize many of them are rather nervous. I was thinking about the many classes I have taken over the years ( 2 classes at a time for the past 18 months while working full time + teaching) and I wanted to share how I prepared for a final.

Take Gene Knorr for example. He teaches Pol & ethics at Keller and his was one of the most challenging and rewarding classes I have taken. It is riddled with specific case information and I was worried about keeping an A in the class. How did I study?

I didnt. Not one bit. Really I didnt. I bet even Professor Knorr wouldnt believe me, but its true. What I did was work hard at all of the quizzes, understand what I did wrong and why I got points taken off and tried to adjust. I listened carefully to the material in class. I researched extra information on each case we studied. Usually not using the book, but rather the Internet on my laptop during class. Google is a great learning tool as is scholar.google.com.

So I took a lot of notes? Nope. The notes I took where in relation to due dates and pointers teachers regularly give. “Make sure your executive summary is no longer than 2 pages in length” – that sort of thing. Rarely did I take notes on the subject and then I NEVER – NEVER reviewed those notes. And I use Onenote, I really do. But I realized if I hadnt absorbed the material, I wasnt going to cram it in.

Now this isnt chemistry or mathmatics, so there is a lot of theory and abstract thinking in an MBA, so many times I had a grasp and I was able to apply that grasp to any course I was in.

For a programming course I would just stay up until 4 am every morning programming until I couldnt do it anymore – but I still didnt “study” in the traditional sense. Dont believe me? Ask my wife!

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