tail of the dog days of summer

Summer is winding down. The days are shortening just enough to notice and the temperature is not so hot every day. The garden is exhausted: the hydrangeas cannot hold their heads up, the day lilies do not explode by the dozen daily, and the roses are resting for their last hurrah before they retire for the fall. The farmer's market is full of vegetables. They seem to run riot at summer's end in contrast to their beautifully attired cousins.
Strange how the season's slow and graceful exit from the stage is so opposite from our emotions at this time of year. School is starting at month's end and the kids are a mixture of excitement and fear. We are gearing up for the change too: the sudden imposition of regiment, the struggle of early morning rising, the tears of late night homework, the exhaustion of young minds working out the mysteries of the universe. There's still time yet to sit for a moment on the porch for morning coffee or a glass of wine as the sun goes down. Time to walk the dogs after dinner in the warmth and stillness of the evening. Time to pause just for a moment and enjoy the shimmering heat of the dog days of summer.

i got an A+

My first class in Project management ended last Monday and I have been anxiously waiting for my final grade. Really I knew what it would be as the instructor gives out a weekly grade each of the five weeks and it's not too hard to figure out the trend. And yet I checked every day to see if the instructor had posted it.
I always claim to have a liaise faire approach to formal education. I was lackadaisical in my attendance way back when in my undergrad years. At the MBA I took attendance more seriously but viewed the reading assignments as more recommendations than requirements. And yet, I always fretted about that final grade, checking daily to see if it was posted.
I am pretty good at the whole school thing. I view learning as a separate activity from school - you can learn without formal schooling and not learn in formal schooling. The goal of school is to make the grade. And I am very good at figuring out what must be done to earn the points that add up to that final letter. Sometimes it's class participation, sometimes it's homework, most of the time it's taking exams. Fortunately I have the God given talent that enables me to read the entire text the night before the exam and synthesize it enough to ace the test the next day. Whether or not I retain the information is another matter, after all, schooling and learning are not the same thing. And so far, in my project management program I am making the grade.

getting schooled

I'm about half way through my first class in Project Management and must say it's not as hard as I feared. Project Management is fairly straightforward at least at the introductory level. I'm learning a few new terms and some things that pass as "theories" which are closer to Murphy's Laws than the Law of Supply and Demand from my economics classes during my undergraduate days. Still, there's a lot to get right when managing a project and if these simplistic rules assist in that then I am ready to learn, or at least store them in short term memory for the exam at the end of class.
I am enjoying getting to know some new folks - we work on a team just like I did when I went to get my MBA. I'm pleased to report that I have done a good job establishing a good team relationship and the team is operating at a high productivity level already.
While I was initially worried about taking classes again I am pleasantly surprised at the satisfaction the intellectual challenge of learning a new field of knowledge has given me. Bod Dylan wrote "most of the things I worry about never happen anyway" - and I couldn't agree more.