Hi everyone,
Happy Friday! You may remember I mentioned I’m taking a class at MIT this semester – at Sloan to be specific. I just wanted to talk a little more about my class and how wonderful it is! It’s one of my favorite classes.
So the class is called Power and Negotiation and meets once a week (already a plus!) on Thursdays. There are two sections, one from 2:30-5:30pm and one from 6-9pm. I’m in the evening section, which may sound like a bummer at first, but I found I actually really enjoy the break I have during the day between my two classes in the morning (English and History) and taking the 4pm bus into Cambridge. (I have to take the 4pm because of rush hour; if I took the 5 I wouldn’t make it to class on time.)
At the start of this semester, I knew I wanted to take an MIT class, partly for it to look good on my resume, but also partly because I knew it would be a great experience.
To give you an example of how different – and therefore valuable, in my opinion – this class is, I’ll tell you about my first day in it. It was the second day of class because I’d missed the first one due to trying to take another course (Game Theory) that I ended up not liking (and thus searched around for a better alternative and found this one). Apparently there had been homework from the first class, which I gleaned from people’s responses was more or less to alter our behavior towards certain important people in our lives to affect our relationship with them in a positive way. So, on my first day of class, which was everyone else’s second day of class, the teacher asked everyone what results they’d gotten from their behavioral homework. The first person who raised his hand began his answer with, “After my wife and I had a baby,…”.
Yup. A baby. Because he’s married. And in fact, I’d say about a third to a half of my class is married. Yup. Because it’s a class for MBA students. Granted, undergrads are allowed to take the class as well, but it’s a Sloan class after all.
And I’m not saying I have anything against married people. They’re great. It was just such a shift of perspective compared to being in a Wellesley class of 15 unmarried undergraduates. You know? All of a sudden I was wondering what it must be like to have kids at home, and probably be working part time too, and then also be in school at the same time. No wonder the evening class. They’re also at such a different point in life than I am, and it’s intellectually engaging to be around people from such different stages of life than myself.
This is also the largest class I’ve ever been in, with 54 students. (Which is a testament to Wellesley. One of my classes last year had 9 students in it.)
Another aspect of my classmates being at different stages of life from me is that they’re not your typical Wellesley student who just graduated from high school with good grades and good extracurriculars and may have worked or traveled a bit but really, at this stage in life, haven’t done anything really seriously besides their education. By that I mean, one of my classmates is a transgender former U.S. Captain stationed in Afghanistan. Her name is Willow. Another of my classmates, Ethan, is a former Marine. Benjamin Caron de Saint-Ouen d’Ernemont (French, in case you couldn’t tell) is a Fund Manager in Paris for a huge American investment management firm.
Yup. I’m sitting in class with some pretty impressive people.
Now besides the people, the content of the class is also highly engaging and not to mention useful. In short, we learn how to negotiate. That includes being a better listener, understanding the components of a successful negotiation, and practice. Practice, practice, practice. In fact, every Thursday, we are paired up to negotiate a fictional case (which is often based on real cases because our professor is a consultant in real life and has advised the White House, presidents of African countries at war, the FBI in dealing with terrorists, etc.) Yeah, my professor’s pretty awesome, too.
An example of a simple fictional case (because a complex one would take too long to explain here) would be the first one we did. Each individual in the pair is always given separate instructions on the details of their character and their character’s situation. For this first negotiation, I was Jackie, and I was looking to sell my used 2000 Cherokee Jeep. My partner played Paula, a potential buyer. I was given information such as I really needed to sell this car soon because I was leaving on a business trip and Paula was the only person who’d called back from my CraisList ad, etc. But Paula didn’t know my information, and I didn’t know hers (such as the fact that she actually had a lot of money to spend on the car, and also needed it desperately, by that weekend; but I didn’t know any of this until after the negotiation.)
It’s a pretty simple negotiation compared to the ones we’re assigned now, but it was hard for me at the time. I ended up selling it for $3500, which was much lower than what market standards (such as Kelly’s Blue Book) rated for a car of my supposed use, quality, age, etc.
And after each negotiation we journal about it. This is, as you know, a favorite activity of mine, so it’s no chore at all. I also know its value, because when I look back at the end of this semester on my journal entry from the Jackie/Paula negotiation, I’ll be so proud of how far I’ve come. 🙂
There are two takeaways from this post that I hope to leave you with. 1) Take advantage of Wellesley’s fabulous cross-registration program with MIT! It’s kind of a pain at first dealing with the forms and turning them into each school’s respective Registrars, but it’s a very, very small price to pay for the benefits you’ll receive from the MIT class(es). And 2) if you’d like to learn more about the stuff I’m learning in this class, check out Difficult Conversations, by Stone, Patton, Heen and Fisher. Sheila Heen is my professor’s wife. Roger Fisher was a famous Harvard professor who’s work we now study in my class. Check it out if you have time. (Note: I consider it one of those self-help books, which, even if started with the best of intentions, can sometimes be difficult to read all the way through, and so here’s my advice to you: just read the titles and subtitles of each chapter, because they’re the main points. If one of said titles/subtitles doesn’t make sense, then read the paragraph(s) underneath it that explains that concept. That’s how I read the book, and I got it done in a few hours!)
Anyway, Happy Friday again everyone! Enjoy your weekend.
~Emily