I have been musing about how to sum up and share the details of the first year of the DBA program. Think the best approach will be to provide an overview of the “path” and then highlight some key learnings/events over a series of posts. Today I want to focus on the present, which is all about statistics.
Thankfully saying the word no longer makes me shiver, but I am more than a little anxious about an upcoming Quantitative Methods workshop and then an assignment. The issue for me is twofold. First, I have an arts background and, although I have completed an MBA, my quantitative skills are very rusty because I don’t need to use them at work. Second, everyone in my program seems to have recently completed an MBA with a focus on statistics and/or uses EXCEL regularly at work. I am feeling very behind, which is quite stressful.
To combat my discomfort I have embarked on an aggressive plan to skill up. I am currently working through two books: Statistics Without Tears, by Derek Rowntree and also Complete Business Statistics by Aczel and Sounderpandian . One is an easy read and the other very difficult, so it is good for me to toggle between them. Additionally, I plan to begin an on-line course called ALEKS in a few weeks. I am also going to summarize key concepts that I don’t understand and have a meeting with my mentor to get some clarity. Finally, I am going to review the papers in my field of study to get a clear sense of the quantitative methods in use so that I can relate what I am learning at the workshop to this research and also ask specific clarifying questions from a context that I understand.
Sooo, if you are thinking this is a rigorous plan, you are correct! My general approach to things that I am anxious about is to aggressively tackle the issue head on. Typically I find this diffuses my stress and things tend to be not as daunting once I get “stuck in”. If anyone has any suggestions or advice please share!