What a Semester! (Spring 2008)

Posted at 10:12 AM, Thursday, May 22, 2008

What a wonderful semester indeed! Thank you Jesus! I didn't expect to get such good grades in all courses esp Ethics and Leadership (PHI 300) and IS Security & Auditing (INF 351). You know when I started the semester, I never thought I could get such good grades  If you recall, I mentioned courses I'm taking this semester in one of my ealier entries. I also said I might drop the World Literature course if things got difficult. Well, I did drop the course cos I knew INF 351 and PHI 300 would take up all of my time; thank God, otherwise I might have ended up with lower grades  The other courses I took were Operations Management (QBA 202), Process Modeling and Solutions Blueprinting (INF 361), and Psychology (PSY 101). I had a personal and a group project in most of the courses plus lots of exercises, homeworks, quizes, and exams. Most of the time I had to stay up late (till 2:00am) or get up very early (3:00am) to finish a paper or read for some exam. There was a particular day when I didn't get to sleep throughout the night...It was quite stressful . But at any rate, God has been merciful and has granted me a very good GPA for the semester. I think I'll discuss what each course was like and let you see for yourself how Spring 2008 has been (I've decided to be brief about all my courses this time).

PHI 300 was a very good course and Dr. Osam Edim did a great job teaching it. Almost all the students I know liked his way of teaching, which is saying a lot as students generally like to complain about professors. We were each of us required to present a world leader of our choice; leaders ranged from Ben Carson, Alexandar, Nelson Mandella, to Bin Laden. I chose William Wilberforce; I think he is one of the finest people that I know, I really praise God for such people. Saima chose Susan B. Anthony and Nayyara chose Ben Gaurion. Hamman's taking the course Summer I and he's presenting Atiku Abubakar. Apart from individual presentations, we also did group presentations on failed leadership in different sectors of Nigeria. My group presented failed leadership in Nigerian Banks. We also wrote a mid-term and about 5 critical summaries of different articles including Bertrand Russell's Appearance & Reality and Michael E. Brown's Misconceptions of Ethical Leadership among others.  

PSY 101 was entertaining, really. A lot of concepts were very new to me. Dr. John Carroll also did a great job teaching it. Sometimes we watched presentations by other Psychology professors in other universities. I usually enjoyed that. I think I like everything about the course expcet Sigmend Freud's theory. But anyways, there were good concepts that I learned like I got to understand how psychologists think and view the world. We wrote about 5 exams in the course and did various exercises in class. I took the course as a free elective.

QBA 202 was very enlightening. Dr. Botchway's style of teaching was different from what it was in the previous semesters; I loved it! This time, we did a personal project on Peugeot Nigeria and a group project on Virign Nigeria. We were required to present details about the company, identify problems with operations, and recommed solutions as operations managers. We also wrote a midterm, a final, about 5 quizes, and did about 4 group exercises. All of this work made everything easier to understand. On the whole, I would rate the course with 5 stars!

INF 361 was also very enlightening. Dr. Bollou did not give us too much work in the course apart from one midterm, a few in-class exercises, and a personal project. We didn't cover as much as we should have which resulted in the personal projects not being very strong, but not bad either. However, we did learn a lot of new things in the course like cycle time analysis and capacity analysis among others. The course textbook was helpful in understanding everything. Some of the in-class exercises we did were very entertaining; I particularly like the business games that Dr. Bollou gives us in most courses.

And finally, INF 351 was a very important course cos it was the only course on security that I've taken. Dr. Kah gave us just as much work as he did last semester; however, he was not to strict on us. We wrote two exams and thankfully, I completed both exams in time. In fact I was the only one who completed the second exam within its time limit. Some students said the time given for the second exam was not enough, but praise God, I was able to finish. Apart from the exams, we wrote about 3 homeworks. We also did a personal paper and a group project. I wrote a paper on the Student Repository system (Samuels' Student Repository system) that we have developed for the university. The group project entailed carrying out a IT securiy audit of AUN! It was executed in a very nice way; the entire class was divided into 3 groups and each group was given part of AUN to study in different phases. The entire team got together for analysis and compilation of findings. I enjoyed it eventhough our group (me, Saima, Radiya, and Jennifer) did a lot of work, in fact more than any of the other teams (our team was assigned areas that required more work). Each one of the 3 groups submitted about 3 different reports, not to mention the 7 status reports, documented interviews, and other project management docs. And finally, a final report that was composed of the 3 reports and all the documents created in the course of the project (a 112 page document!). On the whole, I enjoyed the course. I had prepared my mind for a B+ this time cos I didn't want any negative surprises; however, I worked for an A. I can't thank God enough that I did eventually get an A.

So you see, it wasn't very easy, but praise God! I could never have gotten through with such good results! And look at my entry! Isn't it amazingly brief? I think I've acquired better summary skills after writing soo many summaries last semester haha!

PS - Just in case someone browsing this blog happens to need some information about work I completed (e.g. if you are researching on Wilberforce, or Virign Nigeria, or want to understand the Samuels' Student Repository system) you can email me and I'll send you some helpful info depending on what you request. You know when I was researching on Virigin Nigeria, I really needed to get information on the organizational structure of the company but couldn't find enough resources; I feel that the least I can do after going through that disappointing experiecnce is to make my work available so that it can be of help to someone.