One more thing

The end of week 10, not long to go until the end of the first term as a mature student. The weekend started well with a 10k run and wearing a yellow tutu while doing barcode scanning at parkrun.

This has been an interesting unit. I’ve learned a few new things over recent weeks, had a few things I already knew confirmed and sharpened up and made some new friends as well, an unexpected and welcome bonus.

I’m on track for a good finish to this unit and want to get it out of the way so I can prepare for the Law exam. I’m up to date with submissions and have Steps 7 & 8 complete. Step 7 Contribution Margins can be found here ASS#2 Step 7 Contribution Margin

Yet there is always one more thing to do. Which reminded me of a song that I played a lot during my original student days in the ’90’s. L7 for those unaware are a female punk/grunge group from Los Angeles and this is from their 3rd (and best in my opinion) album Bricks are Heavy

That one more thing is Step 9 NPV and IRR. To be honest this is irritating me. I understand what the expected outcome is and how to get there by calculation. What I’m supposed to put in the calculation from the initial investment and expected cashflow is a mystery at the moment. I’d rather not have to take a wild guess if I can avoid it. I have had a go this morning and used information from the 2018 report and a bit of research. You can find it on the NPV tab in the spreadsheet if you want to take a look. GALLIFORDTRY Company Spreadsheet FEASEY

The calculation is correct, but is it accurate or relevant? At this stage I’ve no idea. So I’m putting the brakes on and doing something else. I’m going to save the question for the next PASS session and see if that gains me some insight.

dilbert NPV

Give me more, more, more!

Budgets! A process where you ask for lots and settle for less. A complicated game where every department fights over the crumbs dropped from the top table of the board, with the every increasing demand of doing more for less!

As the great UK band the Wonder Stuff sang in 1988 (crikey I’m old!) Give Me More More More!

Sorry! Became very cynical for a moment, bit rangry as I wasn’t able to do parkrun this week. Scott Adam doesn’t help with his Dilbert strips either.

Dilbert_EngineeringBudget

Budget setting can seem a bit like that. Hopefully this is an exaggeration and no-one has to really go through this. Though I might have to agree in that Scott Adams was spot on about the sales and marketing departments.

Once a budget is set they can also be a damn good way of understanding the firms expectations, reacting to the speed bumps encountered along the way, along with motivating and rewarding people and teams. All of this and more you will find in Chapter 7. If you want to know what I think about it, you can find it here. ASS#2 Step 5 Chapter 7 Short Term Budgets

Happy Studies folks!

Who doesn’t like a long weekend?

Long weekend’s, I love them. But that’s easy for me to say as I don’t have to work them at the moment. In the UK they’re called Bank Holidays which has an interesting history and Britpop legends Blur wrote a song about it.

In NSW I was essentially always on call so couldn’t really relax just in case something went pear shaped. In the UK at Carlsberg I was on a 24/7 roster. In my 18 months there I think I worked all the public holidays. In my double life as a project leader and student, all I have to worry about is me, and if I want or need to work over the long weekend in either of my roles I can.

I do appreciate how sucky it is when you see an update from family and friends mates and there’s nothing you can do about it. So if you have worked this weekend I hope it wasn’t too hard, you had some benefits and fun from it.

Vac week. What an interesting concept. No lecture videos to catch up on, no PASS sessions and no tutorials. The chance to catch up and hopefully get ahead of the curve. To be honest I tried, but not very successfully when I consider what I wanted to get done.

With the swimming season over the whole family has been around and doing things with them is far more amusing than restating financial details and reading Chapters 5 and 6. Though I have managed to complete the first draft of my LAWS11030 assignment and finish off my ASS#2 step 1, if you want to read it it’s here. Paul Feasey ASS#2 Step 1

We did go up to Rockhampton see child #1 on campus. Students in Rocky, you are very privileged. What a great campus! The halls are great, the food for the res students is amazing, the sports facilities are great and the gardens are lovely. When I went to Uni the only facility we had was a common room with a TV.

We used the BBQ’s in the gardens for our sausage sizzle. Absolutely fabulous. Public BBQ’s rank in my estimation as one of the greatest societal benefits of all time.

Alice is in a great spot to study. I’m happy she’s there, though she’s got a lot on, with balancing an RA role, adjusting to being an adult, having a social life and intense study. Dentistry is not for the fainthearted or lazy. Very proud of my eldest (takes after her mother in awesomeness)

Family BBQ Easter Friday

As there’s no work today I’ve caught up on some blogs. Amazing how we all interpret the chapters in different ways. Maitland’s blog made me laugh, Lisa has managed to break herself, Kyle is working on centrifuges and sugar, and Caitlin has new cows. This all links into Chapter 5 when Martin starts talking about relationships. As a distance student I doubt we’ll physically meet many of our fellows, but reading blogs does give an insight into how we all tick.

It looks like I’ll be getting some more study time in. I had a great run before parkrun on Saturday morning. Just shy of 8k in the dark and the pouring rain. I haven’t run in the rain or in the dark for ages. The Zombies, Run mission was great and I was soaked to the skin. It was awesome. Though it was a bit painful.

morning run saturday 20 april

About three months ago there were indications that something had come adrift internally. After much abuse by Mrs Feasey and my work colleagues I finally went to the doctors and I have an ultrasound next week. This means unfortunately I’m going to have to stop running for a week. Hopefully it’s nothing too drastic and I can get back out soon. I do get a bit rangry (grumpy due to lack of running) if I have too much of a gap.

This gives me some increased study time. Speaking of which, while everyone else is slowly rising in the Feasey household I’m going to have another cup of tea and read Chapters 5 & 6.

Happy Studies folks.

From desperation comes motivation

In chapter 1 of the study guide Martin makes it really clear that in order to succeed in this course you need to be spending 12.5 hours a week on the subject. I think I have spent more than that just trying to untangle Chapter 4 and that’s before I start on the restated financial statements.

In the study guides I don’t mind a bit of trivia now and again. I do have a passing knowledge of Machiavelli and GK Chesterton, but I’m not going to search out Euclid. To be honest in this chapter these nuggets I didn’t find at all helpful.

A lot of the concepts in Chapter 4 I’m familiar with through experience, having them interwoven with kinder eggs and Ryman Healthcare didn’t help me much. Especially when trying to work out how to play with my spreadsheet.

What I wanted was details of the mechanical process for the spreadsheet, what I got was somewhat different. As I may have mentioned before, if it was easy everyone would do it. So I’ll read the chapter again and watch the video and see how we go.

I’ve got a Law assignment on the go as well and wanted to get at least something on ASS#2 out so I can concentrate on that. So as the title says from desperation comes motivation. What I have attached is probably version 5 of a first draft.

I’m not happy with it. I’m sure it’s rambling, simplistic and misses a hundred points. Take a look, rip it up and tell me where you think I’ve gone wrong. It’ll be a feedback gift I’ll appreciate. I’ll what Studiosity has to say about it as well.

The output of my desperation can be found here. Paul Feasey ASS#2 Step 1

On a more positive note and speaking of motivation. It was a great parkrun this morning with two colleagues from work joining me. Dan worked for me when I was in operations and Kasey is our project accountant. I run with Kasey twice a week and have been encouraging her to get faster, usually by not telling her the pace we’re running at and she’s come a long way since starting regular running in January.

I am really pleased to say that this method of motivation and support has paid off and she ran her fastest 5k at 26:25. Something to celebrate (unlike my draft 😦 )

Happy studies folks.

Week 5 already?

How’s everyone doing?

Week 4 is drawing to a close and I’m quite astounded in how it’s going. I was not totally sure how studying, life, the universe and everything was going to work out. We’re a 1/3 of the way in and it’s going all right.

Couple of things I’ve experienced, learned and been reminded of this week.

PASS sessions continue to be extremely valuable. If you’re not in it, why not? I’m enjoying the interaction and by talking with the group I’m able to better understand the concepts and help out as well. I am trying to say less, honest, but it is a challenge as I’m so used to leading and talking at work.

Warning this is the only negative I have so far in this unit.

PeerWise, to be honest at this stage is losing it’s value. I’m well up on the scoring system and could stop now and still get a pass. I appreciate that we will be at different stages in the reading and I’m deliberately looking for the challenging questions. What I’m finding is that some of these challenging questions are only that way due to being badly written and with no explanation.

If I get genuinely hard question wrong, no problem, I’ll go back and learn from it. But it is frustrating to get a question wrong when it’s badly worded and there’s no explanation.

I have lost count of the times I’ve written provide an explanation in the comments. I’ve now taken to grading questions as fair or poor if there’s no explanation.

Back to being positive! 🙂

Good feedback is really important and to do it properly takes time. I’ve provided feedback and I hope it’s been helpful. I still have a couple outstanding, which I will try and get to. Though it is the weekend, where you’d think there would be more time, however as everyone is home it’s not the case.

Thank you for those lovely folk who have provided feedback on my work and my blog. With the blog it’s always nice to be appreciated and the fact that it’s been helpful is a real bonus.

The feedback on my ASS#1 has been great, but reminds me of an important point. Feedback is not necessarily proof reading. In the words of the immortal Public Enemy (quite frankly one of the best hip hop groups of all time) don’t believe the hype!

In getting the feedback which was really positive in terms of content and style, which I really appreciated, I almost sat back and thought “perfect I’m done” and went to submit it early. A little voice inside said, “are you sure?” So I went back and proof read it again, found spelling errors, grammatical errors and formatting that needed correcting.

If I’d put in “as was”, I would’ve only had myself to blame for not checking and would’ve thrown away easy marks. Rookie error and not good at all.

Which segues nicely to the next lesson. Attention to detail. In my career I should be super focused on the details. If you get times, temperatures and the analysis wrong, you will make bad beer. Quite clearly I wasn’t focused enough on the details and my draft was lacking. But that’s why we do a draft.

The other area of where I wasn’t focused enough on the details was at today’s parkrun. I had an aversion to the numbers 51 to 100 and decided to skip straight to #101. I only noticed when I handed over #151 to the 51st runner. A quick swap and we continued from 101. Not a train wreck, but a bit of a nuisance to sort out at the end.

In my defense I had just run a 56 minute 10 K (my 3rd fastest in three years, go me!) and hadn’t had breakfast, so my brain may have been a little low on sugar.

My faux pas was source of much amusement; that an experienced Race Director who’s doing a degree that involves numbers can just miss a whole set of finish tokens. I will never be allowed to forget this, which is a perfectly reasonable response by my fellow Race Directors, who are here in this pic sorting out my mess.

Park run RD's

Week 5 starts, well now, with Chapter 4. I’ve read it once and there is a lot covered. I can see many KCQ’s on the horizon. We have the additional challenge of restating our financial reports. This will take some patience and keen attention to detail. As it’s another new area for me I’m looking forward to it.

The last words:

positive feedback is great, but don’t forget to remain critical of your own work and take that last look before submitting
don’t forget the details. Attention to detail is an essential part of managing numbers and business (and parkrun) and a skill to master early on.

Happy Studies