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A couple days ago we got to go on a company tour. My business law class of about 40 people went to a place called Replay. This company is a really trendy and upscale fashion company that would kind of remind you of deisel (which is HUGE here by the way). Anyways, my law teacher actually works in their legal department, so it was kind of neat to get to go and see the inside look on what it was all about. I may not be interested in working in the fashion industry, but I thoroughly enjoyed learning about it. We learned all about their different lines of fashion, including a line called "We are Replay" which consistents of only 300 articles of clothing. Obviously its the more trendy and authentic items. On average, a jacket costs about 700 euro, which translates into about $1000 American dollars. CRAZY! And the coolest part about it was that we got to go behind the scenes and see the process of making the clothes. We saw an actual line of clothes in the design room, and then saw fabric being hand sewn together and all of the steps in between. Pretty sweet, huh? And then we learned about counterfiting and got to see hands on how to tell whether a pair of jeans from Replay were counterfit or not.
I found this company tour really fascinating. My friend Jared who is a Finance major, recently decided that he really finds an interest in the fashion industry and wants to pursue a job within in. (I laugh because his career coach told him he should go into fashion and I think she said it mostly stereotyping the fact he's gay). ANYWAYS, when he went to Replay he fell in LOVE with it. Kudos to him, because he approached my teacher about a possible internship with Replay and she basically said he would have no problem and that she would set it up. SO Jared now has an internship in Asolo (the town next door) for the summer!! He's just going to stay here and not leave. How cool is that!?! So now Heidi and Jared are all set with jobs...and it makes me extremely anxious to find out from P&G or just ANYWHERE for that matter. I need a job! haha.
Yesterday, however, was not such a great day. I was actually in a really great mood to begin with because I came up with this idea to buy a four square ball and get a tournament going on campus. Sounds stupid, I know...but I have the mindset sometimes of a 7 year old and I think it would be awesome. Besides, I generated a lot of interest in it from others. Well anyways, I was in a really great mood...which is important because I had 4 classes back to back from 1015-630. LOOONG day.
Well, I got to my business law class and got my exam back. I got a C+...which is what I expected to get. I understood all of the concepts and everything, but I couldnt communicate my thoughts properly, and it turned out not in my favor. It was a crazy exam too...it was a case study and I ended up writing 7 pages in 2 hours. BUT I did my best and thats all you can ask for ya know?
So after getting that exam back I walked into my business policy and strategy class. I think I mentioned this before but the professor's name is Dr. Ringleb, and he's the one who runs this entire program. He has owned like 13 businesses in the past, has 4 degrees, is extremely wealthy, and basically loves himself. Everyone on this campus kind of laughs and jokes about him trying to brainwash us and how he is "watching our every move" and all this stuff. It's hard to explain to people who don't know him, but take my word for it...he's kind of a big deal. Everyone refers to this place as "Camp Ringleb".
So anyways, he's my teacher...in a class of 7 students. You can imagine how much pressure there is with not only having the owner as a professor, but only having 7 people and NO way to even remotely not pay attention.
Okay so here's my story. Last thursday we had an exam. Now, the exam was basically to take a company named Luxottica Group and do a strategic engagement for the company. I know you probably don't understand that, but there is a certain tedious process that you have to go through with researching the company, figuring out environmental trends going on and how it affects the company, looking at value chains, the competitive environment, etc etc...to figure out strategic assumptions for the company and what they need to do. Bottom line, it's a ton of work. So prior to the exam, Dr. Ringleb assigned us the company on Tuesday, 2 days before the exam, and told us "If you don't do everything ahead of time, I dont see how you would be able to finish the exam". SO what did Molly do? She worked her BUTT off for 24 hours straight on researching the company, going through the steps, and coming up with strategic assumptiong tailored to Luxottica. After 3 classes on thursday I walked in with all my information, and to my surprise Dr. Ringleb dropped a 50 page PACKET on our desks, and that was our exam. He threw in a ton of essay questions and more articles and all this random stuff. It sucked. I worked so hard, so I transferred my answers to the packet and did my absolute best in the hour and a half we had to finish it.
So that was the exam. I walked in yesterday, and Dr. Ringleb hands back our exams. There are no marks on them. The first thing out of his mouth was "Either you guys didn't put effort into these, or we need to lower the intelligence of this class". BASICALLY, either we didnt try, or we're stupid. I couldn't believe it. With how hard I worked, I knew I had given it my absolute best...I just knew I did. He told us that he expects us to grade our own exams and then send him an appraisal on what our grade should be. He also said he graded them, and there is one B and the rest D's and F's. And if we grade ourselves higher than what he gave us, it says a lot about our integrity. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!?!? I asked him if he was going to give us feedback for improvement on what each of us need to work on and basically he said no. SO I have to evaluate myself and I have no way of getting feedback from someone who is supposed to be my "teacher". I can appraise myself all I want but without an outsiders perspective I will only get so far. I think that's ridiculous.
For a few seconds during his little speech on us being stupid and being failures, I thought I was going to cry. I even actually thought to myself "Why go into business when I can just become a great stay at home mom??" And for me to say something like that obviously is a big deal to me...because I dont think that has even happened to me. I came back to my senses and thought, "Molly, you dont give up. Don't ever let anyone try and bring you down. Take this as a learning experience to make your self better, and be everything in a leader that he's not."
I finally spoke up and said "Dr. Ringleb, I need to be completley honest with you. Out of my 18 credit hours here, this is the class I work the hardest in. I put the most effort into this class and I stress out more about this class than anything else. I put an extreme amount of effort into this exam in the 24 hours I had to prepare, and either I am just so far from being right on, or there is some confusion in the classroom as to waht exactly we are learning". He then proceeded to tell me effort doesnt count, and blah blah blah.
Okay so I'm going to stop venting...because this journal entry is really long. But the bottom line is everyone was heated. There is so much confusion in that class on what is expected of us...and hopefully he finally realized that something needs to change in his teaching style. The fact that the 7 of us in that class have no idea what is going on and what he wants us to do tells you something about the nature of the course. And to be honest, we are all intelligent people. I have not come across anyone on this campus that lacks intelligence (which is a first for me...haha). But in all seriousness, I'm not going to let anyone tell me I'm stupid. I gave him the benefit of the doubt because I believe in the good in people. But after hearing him speak and finding out more and more about who he truly is, I got heated (which takes a lot). I don't respect people who talk down to everyone and are so selfish that their opnion is the only right one. WHICH pretty much defines him.
OKay I'm done. Sorry you had to listen to that!! I gotta get working on his 20 hours of homework he just assigned before I go to Florence this weekend with Jared.
CIAO!!!
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