marketing 1120

Tonight was the first day of school for me. This semester I'm taking Marketing 1120 (intro to marketing). The wonderful thing is that it's at the Coquitlam campus (which is like 5 mins away from home). I came home from work, gobbled down dinner, made a big pot of coffee and grabbed my school supplies. Got to school, went to the bookstore, handed over a wad of cash for a textbook the size of a receipe book (man...books are WAY too expensive) then went searching for my classroom. The students in the class appear to be young (like half my age!) and eager to learn. As I sipped on my coffee I watched some of them read the textbook (keeners!) and other engage in mindless chit chat with friends. Everyone seemed eager to chat on their cell phones when the opportunity arose.

The instructor is this cute Indian lady. She tried to crack a joke at the start of the class and I think I was the only one that chuckled (must be an age thing). She then had to tell the class that it was a joke - ah...how embarrassing. As most "first-day" classes go, we went over the "important" stuff such as how we will be evaluated, distribution of marks and the course schedule. I heard the dreaded words "group term project" and groaned silently to myself. I'm not fond of group projects. They remind of the ones where I would basically LIVE with my schoolmates on the weekends trying to get something accomplish and ending up just having the bunch of them waste time by socializing. :-) I'm a social creature but I value my "free" time as well. My eyes did twinkle with delight as I heard the magical phrase "all the course material will be available online". Once those words were spoken, my mind wandered off to more interesting thoughts such as "what I am going to eat for lunch tomorrow?" Somewhere during the lecture I felt guilty for staring blankly at the teacher and not writing down anything (as some of the students beside me were busy scribbling incomprehensible notes into their neatly organized binders). I figured I'd better fein interest and hold a pen in my hand just incase the instructor looked my way. :-) I've become a lazy student over the years and rely too much on technology. I'll just download and print the notes tomorrow.

The class was short and we got out early. I headed to the library to get a new sticker for my student card. Without the "semester" stickers I wouldn't get the "benefits" of half-price parking. :-) I'm cheap. While in the library - the librarian asked me if I wouldn't mind filling out a survey. I said "what the heck"...and filled it out. Because my veins were pumped with 3 cups of coffee from dinner, I was "chatty". I began asking retorical questions like why they had to hand out the survey because some of the questions on the survey were redundant (information that can easily be obtained if you run the right SQL statements on the database - yes...geeky Kim emerges). The librarian - being the helpful person that she is - begins to tell me that they gather this information for a "fact" document. Me (hyper from coffee) decides that I want to see this "fact" document (more out of pleasure of tormenting a librarian then from genuine interest in the document). She takes me around the library and can't find the booklet (of course - who the hell even looks at student stats for "fun"!). I decide that I'm still hyper and want to bug her some more so I began asking her why they can't obtain the information on the survey from the Registar's Office. The librarian admitted that she's never read the survey and gets her coworker to come over and go over the survey with her. So now I'm really amused as I've got 2 people to torment instead of one! So the 3 of us read the survey and I point out the sections that can be obtained from the master database. These 2 people are more "book" people than computer people so I lost them somewhere between database and queries. After 10 minutes with the 2 of them I laughed and told them that I would leave them alone. I don't think they were as amused as I was (as I was being loud and obnoxious in the library) but they were friendly and smiled politely as I left. Ah...school is so fun!