I have always been fascinated by how learning can change the way my mind processes information, perceives problems, interprets details, and in a large all encompassing sense, the way it thinks. Learning fundamentally shifts the way I think. Learning new words gives me the ability to describe what I am feeling, to relate those thoughts to other thoughts and feelings, and to formulate conclusions with those associations. Vocabulary in a sense illuminates the world to my mind and enables me to actually understand.
The same can be said for ideas. As a student of commerce concentrating in economics and finance, I am constantly astonished at just how great an impact learning a new idea can have in terms of affecting how I interpret the universe. After a number of quantitative microeconomics courses I found myself seeing nearly any large-scale issue, both in my personal life as well as society at large, in terms of supply and demand functions, marginal equilibriums, and various other utility models. After a couple of courses in Industrial Organization Economics and Game Theory Analysis I began to see nearly every scenario involving more than two people as game theoretic equations. Just after a couple of crash course in Corporate Finance, I was surprised to yet again see myself breaking down multiple facets of my own life and the world around me into questions of present value and time valuations.
My point, is that the world rarely changes, but the ideas in our heads, what we have learned, that foundation of knowledge is constantly being tweaked, and more and more ideas are continuously being added. College is by far the zenith of this process. As a college student I am not only learning about myself, who I am, where I belong in the world, but in a more academic sense I am encountering new thoughts and ideas that change the way in which I process my surroundings. The inputs may be fairly static, but the mechanism for assigning meaning to those inputs, our own mind, is completely dynamic.
This realization hit me this past weekend when I found myself subconsciously utilizing ideas we learned about in our previous class, to help me understand my every day life. I saw that my operations management class was changing the way I understood the world, and transitively was changing who I am.
In our previous class we learned about process control charts that help managers see if their process for making goods is out of control. This would indicate that the process is being affected by special cause variation. If the process is out of control, something needs to be fixed; there is a problem that is not caused by mere chance. We learned how X-Bar charts control the central tendency of the process, R-Charts control the variability in a process, and P-Charts control for defects.
This past weekend, I realized on three specific occasions that I used these methods to isolate problems I encountered in a day. The first involved my car. I know roughly how many miles I can drive my car once I have filled up my gas tank, and any mileage above or below, I can explain, to certain extent, by good or poor driving. This weekend however, for two consecutive fill-ups, I got far fewer miles than I anticipated. This level was well below my mental lower control limit, so I knew there was a problem. This prompted me to look into the issue further, and when I did I saw that there was a leak in my gas line that was costing me A LOT of money. I used the same technique when I was planning how many hours of sleep that I NEEDED to be fully functional and capable for work on Saturday morning, and I realized that my lower control limit was about five hours. Thus I knew I should really make sure to get six hours of sleep. When I was solving math problems in a new subject area, I utilized a subconscious P-Chart when referencing my answers to the back of the book and looking to see if a satisfactory ratio were void of “defects”.
Have you noticed anything like this happening to you so far as a result of this class, or any other of your classes? It would be interesting to see how different majors see the world differently. Please share any interesting stories or additions.
I have begun to notice that I analyze just about everything that involves a supply chain process due to this class. Last week for lunch, I went to Chipotle and found myself timing how long I waited in line before I received my order. They got me in and out in about 6 minutes; however I was a bit disappointed by a flaw in their supply chain (they ran out of lettuce). How do you run out of lettuce in the peak of the lunch hour? This didn’t make sense to me! After I paid for my order, I turned towards the customer behind me and realized that they received lettuce. So it wasn’t that they had run of lettuce!
I would totally agree with you, statistical process control, and implementing such charts subliminally is something that becomes more relevant in our ever day lives. There are things that we didn’t realize, but now we do: for example, waiting to make a purchase, or discovering the ‘Bottleneck’ of some assembly lines. Its cool how concepts becomes more encompassed in our lives daily.
I believe everybody should be fascinated and enthusiastic about education. It is the one most important and valuable thing one can get. It enables you see things in different angel and perspective, and also, to think beyond the scope. This class has thought me a lot. If take a reflection of my passed life, I wouldn’t have make some major decisions I did knowing what I know from this class today.
I have noticed this in my everyday life and even thinking back to the holidays. After learning so much about operations managent and forecasting it made me think about all the christmas shopping I did in December. There are so many variables that need to be accounted for during the holidays. Its not enough to just look at last years holiday sales, but you also need to take in account the shape of the economy and try and predict consumer spending habits. I clearly look at things much differently now days.
I believe that everyone changes in some way when they attend college just because it is a natural period of growth. Students are maturing. Our brains are maturing and more able to retain information. The more you learn or more connections you make, the more your brain matures. It is no surprise that we are all learning to apply what we have learned to our daily lives. In essence, I see it as us learning how the world works. We used to think we knew, but we really didn’t. Now, with the knowledge we are acquiring about the way the world works, we are able to make associations with the tasks we encounter daily, and we are able to make better decisions. I would encourage you all to share your experiences and what you have written in this blog post with people who haven’t yet chosen to get a higher education. It may inspire them to seek the knowledge and experience you have shared.
I somehow completely relate to this post. Starting a part-time MBA while working has proven to be very hectic and I am consistently trying to achieve a work- life-study balance. it has been difficult but doable and i owe it all to my Google calendar.
It also amuses me at how I am able to apply my learning experiences to my work and my life- simply thinking of things I haven’t thought about before. For example when we were doing the Paper Puppet exercise, I immediately pictured our (not very efficient) Remittances department at the bank and the outdated and manual operational approaches that are being used.
Truth be told, I think this is one of the most interesting posts I have read so far. It very much portrays my own thoughts towards many a courses I completed throughout my academic journey. When I first started my Bachelors degree majoring in HR management and Marketing, I honestly thought the information I will acquire will only prove useful in a professional or business context. However, upon completing my bachelors and half way through my MBA, I find that everything I learned and still learning is not only useful in the workplace but also in everyday life. It offered me and continues to offer an insight into how the world functions. Also, at numerous occasions I found myself analyzing, interpreting and strategizing different aspects of my life, that I never thought I could relate to any of the courses I studied.