My Appraisal Project is Complete

I've been slowly working on this appraisal project every week since the beginning of the semester. We're approaching week number 12 of the semester. Today, everything finally came together. Granted it took me about 12 hours today to complete the report. For me, installing and learning the new computer software to type my report into took most of my time. The next most time consuming part of it was making value adjustments for the three comparable properties compared to my subject property. With each adjustment, I had to explain the reasoning behind my adjustment.  After finishing my appraisal report, I gathered everything I needed for the report folder, including general and specific data. I hope the countless hours that I put into this project pays off because it's worth 20% of my overall grade in this class. My unprofessional and un-licensed opinion of value of my grandma's 50 year old house is $172,000.  I used the sales-comparison approach to come to that value.

Although I hated working on the project because it was so time consuming, I'm glad that I can now look at an appraisal and understand where all of the values come from. It should come in handy in the future when I own my own house. Yeah, I actually learned real-life, useful information. That doesn't happen very often.

Tomorrow, I've earned a complete day off from school and work. I plan to sleep in, clean, run, write, draw, watch Netflix, and maybe even go to a movie if I don't nap for too long. I'm going to enjoy it because my next day off won't be until after finals on December 9th.

I Didn't Fail My First MAR 3203 Exam

MAR 3203 is my Supply Chain Management class. It's a core class for all business majors and there are around 900 students in my class. UCF only offers this class with one professor, so I had no choice but to take it with this seemingly unqualified professor who used to be an airline pilot.  According to Rate My Professor, students agree "his tests are impossible," "he's HORRIBLE at teaching," "the only C I received in my entire college career," "study and pray to alluh [I pray to my God]," "don't bother watching his lectures because they are a waste of time," and I can now confirm "he is the worst professor ever"!

I knew going into this semester that I would be spending the bulk of my study time on this class. This class has completely consumed me. I watch the lectures on double speed just to catch anything that might be valuable, but usually he just vaguely talks about what we'll be going over in the future, what he went over in the past (which is nothing other than mention what we will go over in the future), and he conducts surveys from the classroom live that eats most of the class period. I read the entire chapters we're supposed to be going over in class, and I do the online homework that I teach myself on. I just hate that I paid to learn from this guy and I'm getting zero value out of him. I worked my butt off since the beginning of the semester to teach myself the four chapters on the exam I took yesterday because I knew it was going to be "impossible."

The mean score on the exam was 112 out of 180, a measly 62%. That means well over half of the class failed the exam. When over half a class fails an exam the main reason is that the professor failed its students. It's sad that as hard as I worked I only got 150 out of 180, an 83%. I don't credit the professor at all, I taught myself 83% of the material. Normally, an 83% would irritate me, but I'm so happy I didn't fail the exam because I went into it expecting to fail. Even while taking the exam, I thought I don't know where these questions are coming from. There's no way, I'm going to make it out alive. Alive being above 70%.

First Day of Fall 2014 Semester: Portfolio Analysis and Management

My first class of the semester was Portfolio Analysis and Management.  My professor, Dr. Honghui Chen, has a heavy Chinese accent, but I think within a few classes I'll get used to understanding him. This is a senior level class and I could already tell that it's going to work my brain in different ways. There are moments in these upper level classes that I wonder how the heck I've come so far. They are daunting sometimes, but thankfully I'm willing to prepare in order to succeed. I'm learning to better ponder in class questions before coming to a conclusion because my first conclusion is most likely too simple minded for these complex questions. I sat in the front row like usual and Dr. Chen called on me to answer a couple questions. I shined with my knowledge of international finance and exchange rate triangular arbitrage, which I learned over the summer in my international financial management class. I stumbled with the rest of my classmates on a question that was almost like a riddle, which involved finding the shortest distance between two points on a cube. Overall, he made the first class so much fun that the hour and fifteen minutes flew by.

After class, I went home and took a five hour nap. My head hurts so bad that I wish it would fall off. Medicine doesn't seem to be helping me through this cold. I had every intention of running around campus after class, but my head was pounding too much to go through with it. Seriously, tears fell from my eyes on and off all day today from my sinus pressure. I couldn't control it.  Perhaps I'll be up for it after class on Wednesday.

Semester in Review

Wow, it's May already! I have challenged myself to blog every day in May. Don't worry I'll understand if you can't keep up. After all, it's unlikely I'll run out of things to write about. On the first post of the month, I'll bore you with my review of this semester and each of the three classes I took.

First, Quantitative Business Tools II, as I've called it before ECO 3411 was downright horrible. I'm still not sure what this class was supposed to be about. Was it statistics or was it economics? I don't even think the professors knew what material to teach or how to teach it. I managed through the semester with a professor change halfway through. They both sucked equally. I spent the whole time wondering if the knuckle heads were ever going to start teaching something. They never did. I didn't read the book the professors co-authored together because it was even more unbearable than the class itself. They spent most of the lectures bragging about how this isn't how your typical Quant II class is taught at other institutions and they made it sound like that was supposed to be a good thing. I don't think they ever proved their point. I got through the semester by teaching myself from the sample projects, homework, and practice exams. I even carried over some things I learned from Financial Models and applied it to some of the stats we did using regression. I'll be doing a post about the regression model tomorrow, so get excited. I learned nothing from this class. It was a waste of time and money.

Second, Legal and Ethical Environment of Business, aka Business Law, aka BUL 3130 was a really interesting class. It was all concepts, which is okay I just prefer to deal with numbers and math and money. I didn't get the professor I registered for because he passed away a few days before the semester started. R.I.P. Dr. Lako, I heard you were one of the best at UCF. The professor I had flew by the seat of his pants. He lectured 3 hours every week without any prompts or power-point. My writing hand got conditioned to taking notes for three hours. Although if I could do it again, I'd use my computer to type the notes like a savvy high-tech student. He's a practicing lawyer so he was able to give real life case examples from his experience. Two life lessons I learned from this class are to never co-sign for anyone and to always get a prenuptial agreement. Other things I learned about were contracts, the UCC, consumer protection laws, property law, businesses and their formation and their advantages and disadvantages. People are crazy, this world is crazy and our laws are sometimes even crazier. Cabbage heads, which is what my professor liked to call jurors, will most likely be complete, unpredictable idiots. If you don't believe me, I'll give you a case example that will blow your mind. Just ask.

I saved my favorite for last, Financial Models, FIN 4453. The professor for this class was one of the best I've had at UCF, Yoon Choi. He knew the material well, was a natural lecturer and was even unintentionally funny. He's been published in financial magazines and has attended meetings with top financial experts that are famous in the finance world. He's brilliant and his passion for the subject definitely was contagious. I'll be posting some of my favorite models I learned in later posts. I learned simple and multiple regression, solver function, matrix algebra, sharpe and Jensen ratio to value a mutual fund, and style analysis. These were juicy with numbers just like I love. It was challenging and great!

C's Get Degrees, Too

           Do you remember me telling you about those waves of exams? Yeah, well I just found out that I survived the second wave, which took place right in the middle of my trip to New York! I surprised myself in ECO 3411 by getting an 88% on the second exam. I'm surprised because I know for a fact I am not learning anything from this class. Oh, and the professor who taught the class before spring break had some kind of surgery so now a different guy is doing a worse job at teaching it. The new professor has changed the schedule of what we'll be going over the rest of the semester. He's changed all of the power points, which I already had printed out. I'm over it!

           The next exam I took during the second wave came the day after I got back from New York. I didn't study on my trip. Sure I read a little of my Financial Models book on my flight out until I fell asleep. I got home Sunday, March 23rd a little before 11:45pm and went to bed only to wake up to study at 6am. My Financial Model Exam was at noon on Monday. I studied my butt off to learn all of the formulas I thought I needed to know. The exam was 5 pages of free responses where I was asked to fill in certain excel formulas to complete models using cell references. This would be cake on a computer, but it seems trickier since I have to hand write the formulas. Two of the five pages were complete curve balls to me with material over the "real option model." I'd never heard of it before, so I bull shitted the best I could by making up formulas on these two pages that were worth 24 of the 60 points. I walked out of the exam expecting to fail. I was okay with the idea of failing because I knew my NY trip took away from studying, but it was worth it. I was also okay with it because I feel like I am learning the most in this class, so I know I can make it up on the next exam. I just wanted to get higher than a 52% so that I would still be passing the class. I ended up getting a 47/60, which is a 78%! That's a passing grade!!! I laugh because I know I didn't know that much information on the exam. There's no way I could have guessed right on that many free responses to get 47 points out of 60. No matter, I've never been happier to get a 78% in my life!

          The third exam in this wave of exams was for business law. I got an 89%, which means I have to get a 91% on the final if I want to pass the class with an A. Honestly, I'm okay with getting three B's this semester. I knew I wouldn't maintain my spot in the top twenty of all the finance students. I've already got into Phi Kappa Phi honors society that requires you to be in the top 10% of all undergraduates with any declared major at UCF. So, I'm just going to enjoy the rest of my UCF student experience without stressing about getting A's. Lately the professors don't do their job well enough to learn 90% or more of the information anyways. I'd rather take a nap instead. I need more energy because I'm to the point of feeling like it doesn't matter... C's get degrees!

First Round of Exams Complete for Spring of 2014

          Every semester, exams usually come in waves or rounds as I like to call them.  This semester is no different. Each of my three classes will have three exams each. I survived the first round of exams this past week. I took an exam in all three of my classes in less than a week of each other. Rounds two and three will be the same way.

          I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage all of the information I had to learn at once. I was especially uncertain of how I was going to pound out the hours of studying between each exam without time to recover between them.  Somehow I did it! I survived the first round of exams in Business Law, Financial Models and Quantitative Business Tools II (Statistics) with a 90%, 88% and an 86%, respectively. I knew by taking three classes instead of two that my grades would probably be affected. Of course, I wish I scored an ‘A’ on all of them.  However, I know how much work I have put into juggling these three classes so far and honestly I’m happy with the results.  I’m one credit hour shy of being considered a full time student this semester. Plus, I’m working 30 hours a week. Oh yeah, and I’m training for my 4 half marathons in March. I’m trying to make some time for friends and family, but it’s difficult.  I’m already exhausted from this semester. I’m looking forward to spring break just to catch up. Some days I wish I could buy more time so that I could get all my work done. It’s like I’ve found myself in a sprint at the beginning of a marathon. The marathon represents this semester and the sprint represents the unrelenting progress of these three classes. Round one down and rounds two and three to go! I need a nap!