Master’s Degree – The Bittesuite

What Makes for Great Education?

I just finished the third of my master program’s four semesters. Even more specifically, I just finished the final exams of my third of four semesters. More excitingly, I only have three more courses and a thesis to write before I graduate from the program. Ecstatic, I tell you.

Anyway.

At this point, a whole lot of education has happened to me, and I’ve been thinking about what’s made certain classes particularly useful. In a word, it’s challenge. But that word is incredibly lame and vague.

More precisely, what makes an amazing class amazing is a combo of two things:

According to the instructor, their role is making students better at things and making students understand things. Their role is not making students know things.
Courses are fora in which we practice skills and ponder ideas. This means we take some responsibility for the getting better at things and the understanding things.

An example from each of my universities has run through my head repeatedly over the past few weeks, so I’m putting them on the Internet so that they live forever. To posterity!

The University of Texas at Austin

Digital Media was a class that hurt brains and egos.

In my undergraduate advertising program, the purest example of this optimal teacher/course combination was Digital Media as taught by Gene Kincaid. In addition to being our lecturer, he also ran his own web consultancy in Austin (my TUM example shares this trait, so I think there’s really something to it). At the beginning of each week, we would find articles in the class’s cloud–new media profiles, buzzword salads written by industry bloggers, ad tech developments, ad standards developments, legal developments, on and on.

Each class was a discussion of the articles initiated by Mr. Kincaid and then dominated by the students. He would ask the class for an opinion on an issue (are reach and frequency still valid ad metrics?). We would vomit our gut reactions at him. He would ask why. We’d break to listen to the cricket symphony while our gears spun into action.

Classes were headaches, and Mr. Kincaid was an intellectual task master. One of my favorite memories was a class day, at the beginning of which he wanted to start a discussion on augmented reality’s use cases (this was 2007-08). Nobody had an answer. He asked “who here read through the suggested articles before class?” Nobody raised their hand. “Okay, everyone out. Class is over.” Nothing feels more like failure than feeling directly responsible for a missed learning opportunity.

Technische Universität München

"The Power of Free" is a magical cognitive bias. — “The Power of Free” is a magical cognitive bias.

The ideal combo in my master program, so far, is definitely Behavioral Pricing as taught by Dr. Florian Bauer. Like Mr. Kincaid, he also runs his own consultancy, but in the Munich area. I really think this has something to do with the effectiveness of his teaching style.

Anyway, Dr. Bauer’s course was a seminar that took place all day on four days during the semester. On the first day, he told us to pair up and draw numbers from a box. The number told us which topic in behavioral pricing we would be teaching the class two months later. Half of the class were assigned topics in behavioral pricing theory (behavioral economics, cognitive bias…), while the other half were assigned pricing research tools (Van Westendorp PSM, BPTO, pricing experiments…).

He then gave us goals. Of course, one was understanding our topic (my partner and I had Gabor-Granger and the Van Westendorp PSM). What was our tool designed to accomplish? How does it work? How well does it do what it says it can do? Could it do anything else?

We on the tools side also had to link our tools to the other tools and the theories discussed by the other half of the class. Finally, we had to consider the tool from the “behavioral pricing” perspective, which meant understanding how the research tool itself might bias its own results.

That’s a lot of critical thinking.

The following three days of class (two months after the first) were days full of student-led lectures interspersed with Dr. Bauer’s commentary, corrections and anecdotes from his work as a pricing consultant. When other students presented, we were reminded of our own research that linked our topic to theirs. When we presented, we knew when to call out prior presentations and foreshadow future presentations. In between presentations, we had Dr. Bauer there to elaborate and make our presentations more real by relating his own experiences. If repeated exposure guarantees learning, then this is one of the most risk-free courses I’ve ever taken.

Accepted

TUM Munich About a year ago, I arrived in Munich, noticed a really interesting-looking Master’s program at a local university, applied for the program (incidentally, the only program whose deadline hadn’t yet passed), and was rejected for reasons unknown. A Master in Logic and The Philosophy of Science would have been extremely interesting, but as it seems, there are other types of people who are better fits in such a program. Afterward, I laid out the state of my drawing board and resolved to finish learning German before applying to a new Master’s program “next year.”

I began looking at other universities in the area. One is the Munich Business School (MBS)–a place where you go to get an International MBA for approximately one trillion euros per semester. The MBA is a degree that doesn’t quite grant what I need from an education, though. Most public among their benefits are that they offer title recognition (“MBA” is a powerful acronym on a CV), really good networking opportunities, and an environment conducive to learning through discussion of professional experience. The last one, admittedly, is really cool. However, the other two are benefits that I believe I can get elsewhere if I’m a little creative about it.

The Munich University of Applied Sciences and the Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich are two others with English-taught Masters programs. They both emphasize two types of programs (in their English catalogue):

1) Technical Programs: Programs in which you learn how to do something very concrete. Examples are software engineering and bioinformatics.

2) Niche business/strategy/management programs: Programs in which you learn to apply business strategy concepts in esoteric contexts. Examples are social care management and management in the hospitality industry.

Software development is definitely in my future, so a technical program is appealing on some level. But, I feel I don’t need a university education to reap the benefits of a technical program. It seems to me that the core offering of a university education in a technical field is a structured learning environment–guided practice, homework, a teacher telling you what you should learn and when. If structured learning environment is not at the core of what you’re seeking, however, then one can develop a technical skill through YouTube, Lynda, Missing Manuals and SaaS platforms like the Unreal Engine, albeit maybe more slowly. What really matters in the technical fields that interest me is the portfolio which the education services.

The other type of program–niche business/strategy/management programs–seem to be pigeon holes that require a lot of certainty in one’s destiny. If I were to go into social care management, for example, I would learn how what I learned in undergrad is relevant to a comparatively narrow professional field. That means that what the program primarily offers is information related to that comparatively narrow professional field–problems the field has to solve, or the structure of a business in the field, for examples. If I were certain that “social care management” is where I want to make my difference, then a program as narrowly tailored as that one might give me a boost.

LMU and MUAS were just a little outside of my consideration set, then (outside LMU’s Logic and the Philosophy of Science program).

TUM Freising What I was looking for was a program that develops skill applicable to a broad set of disciplines (analysis, synthesis, human behavioral research, logical argument, engaging speaking…) at a much deeper, more intense level than my undergraduate programs did. I was looking for philosophical challenge, intellectual challenge and a chance to rethink and develop my values. I was looking for marketing leadership in 5 years, entrepreneurial leadership in 15, and the intellectual versatility to make deciding where I apply myself an option.

What I found a little less than a year ago is the Master in Consumer Affairs program (MCA) at the Technischen Universität München (TUM).

At the most basic level, MCA teaches marketing skills, using European Union public policy to give the skills context in which to be practiced. In fact, the program was created at the request of the European Commission, and they remain its official supporter. The program offers what I’m after in the following ways:

1) The marketing skill it emphasizes above all others is behavioral research–figuring out why consumers do what they do. The entire Marketing discipline is two words: discover and satisfy. As half of the definition of marketing, behavioral research is an extremely important skill for me in my quest to business leadership.

2) Honing skill in behavioral research necessarily means honing skill in analysis and synthesis, the two most advanced intellectual skills people currently develop (the other two being memorization and application). Conducting market research always culminates in breaking down findings (analysis), reaching conclusions and generating a marketing course of action (synthesis). Analysis and synthesis are at the center of my drive to self improvement, so their involvement in the MCA education make me very excited.

3) The EU Public Policy context of the program is the source of the philosophical challenge and value development I’m after. As I wrote my entrance essay, one conclusion I reached about the EU is that the EU Commission seem to be of minds that favor experimentation in social change. They pass directives (strong legal suggestions to member nations) and regulations (legal mandates to member nations) rather frequently in the realm of consumer affairs. These measures and their relatively frequent revisions represent pondering that I really admire: What does it mean to enjoy free speech? How free should speech be? How responsible are consumers for their own well-being? Should companies be able to push social agendas with their marketing? Should companies have to push social agendas with their marketing? The EU Commission is overseeing the cultural, political and economic merging of a large and extremely diverse region of the world. This puts it in a position to (read: forces it to?) question many of the values longer-established world regions take for granted. Tasty ideological challenges await.

I’m going to stop here, for now. Long story short, though, TUM accepted me into the MCA program last Thursday, and I’m really excited about it. My next few posts will cover what the application process was like, what preparing for school is like, and maybe a few of the more dramatic moments in the past few months. If you’re thinking about getting a Master’s degree in Munich, or are just curious, then I look forward to seeing you again, soon.

The Drawing Board, Explained

Last week, I wrote about the plans I’ve made since receiving the notice that I didn’t get into the Logic and Philosophy of Science Master’s program. They revolve around three important decisions. Remember them?

Learning to speak German is the most important thing I’m doing right now related to my career
Getting my Master’s degree in 2014-15 is more important than resuming my career with a conventional full-time job
I want to start making money again, soon

If you don’t remember them because you didn’t read that post, then you can send your apologies to ohgodforgivemeryan@gmail.com. Go on. Send them.

What I didn’t do in that post is explain why I made those particular decisions. So, that’s what I’m doing right now. “Why” is approximately infinity times more important than “what,” in any case. Maybe that’s your point of view, too. And here we go.

Learning German is the Most Important Thing I’m Doing

While everyone in Bayern under the age of (I think) 50 had to learn English in school, English is not the way most people operate day-to-day in Munich. For them, it seems a bit like it is for me and about 7 billion other Texans. That is, many of us learned Spanish, but we would always prefer English and, in fact, would rarely have the opportunity to use our second language. The result is much the same, as well. Some in Munich speak phenomenal English (as some Texans speak phenomenal Spanish), but many need to focus their minds while speaking and listening, requiring that conversation remain somewhat slow and basic. It’s that symptom that everyone who learns a second language understands: until you live among native speakers for at least a few months, speaking a second language is a bit of a mental chore. I happen to be in that “native speaker” situation, while the German friends I meet here are not. So, I should learn German so that I can meet, practice and speak with the Germans.

More specifically, though, learning German will 1) let me function in German culture, 2) open up maybe 100 extra Master’s degree options which are only taught in German and 3) make me a viable candidate for employment at a “smaller” company, at which German speech appears to be the norm, intra-office.

*****Tangent: Why do I want the option to work at a “smaller” company? I’m young and want to build a unique structure of marketing knowledge before I seek a team management position. In general, smaller companies have weaker bureaucracies than larger ones, and they’re less convinced that they have all the answers already. At the smaller companies I’m talking about, the goal is to figure out how to win. Their antithesis is the large company at which the goal is to keep doing what wins. I believe you learn more (about marketing to consumers) in a shorter period of time at the smaller company, so that’s where I’m thinking I’ll head, next. All that said, “small company” is just the name I’m giving that archetypal corporate culture–the literal size of the company isn’t important otherwise.

Earning a Master’s Degree: More Important than Full-Time Work

Every single day, I feel anxious about my absence from the Marketing arena. Is Aurasma any more useful now than it was 4 months ago? Could I use SnackTools to develop an effective microsite-ad-widget campaign really quickly for a product I manage? Can I create a video for a B2B company that lasts longer than 2 minutes and retains 80+ percent of its viewers? Can I find or create a human personality to represent a company or product that people in my target audience actually admire and follow (really follow ideologically, not one-night-stand-style Twitter follow, or politically motivated LinkedIn follow)? And then there’s the mountains of consumer data companies can access with their Web Analytics suites. I miss SiteCatalyst.

With a company’s resources (and audiences), I could be answering those questions, swimming in consumer data, and honing my marketer’s edge. If you’re in my position right now, then you know that option sounds astoundingly tasty. But it’s not the best option, yet.

The best option is going back to school, and two reasons make that the case. The first is that I’ll be competing with Master’s graduates in the future. The second is that academia has a way of giving a marketer ideas that the corporate world struggles to offer. The first reason is obvious, so I’ll just take a bit of space to explain the second one.

Academia is brimming with enthusiasm and idealism. Enthusiasm and idealism foster creativity and experimentation. Creativity and experimentation sometimes lead to success and sometimes to failure, but always to a sharper mind.

Think about it: in a normal business class, you’re given a project like “develop a marketing plan to reintroduce this fledgling local TV station to its market.” Then you go figure out how to do it with your team. Only your team. You guys get to go through all four stages of team development without “preemptive mediation” from outside your team (that means managers try to help you avoid the storming phase). You get to challenge each other’s ideas using marketing logic instead of the logic of internal politics. You get to create an entire pitch on your own, so the client has to wait until the idea is ready before they can get scared and reign you in prematurely. Then, you actually get to pitch your plan.

Oh, and then you get blunt, unadulterated feedback that doesn’t have to care about morale.

And if you don’t do as well as you wanted to do, then you can learn why and apply it to your next project.

The professional world struggles to offer that kind of no-holds-barred development to its inhabitants. That is, companies sometimes need to bar a lot of holds. If my marketing experiment (read: project) fails, and the culture around my boss would look down on him for it, then he is going to feel one hell of an urge to peer over my shoulder and nix those of my ideas that he didn’t expect. So, the easiest way to learn at a company is to learn from the company–do what its employees have been doing for years and learn how well those methods work. After you do that, learning whether or not there’s something better you could be doing for the company is a major challenge. It’s a fun one, but nevertheless major.

******Tangent: Come to think of it, that “learning from the company” bit makes hopping from company to company a pretty rational lifestyle. Once you learn how your company wins, and you stop learning more, then you move to the next company and learn how it wins until you stop learning more. You can get a lifetime’s worth of good business ideas that way.

So I’ll go back to school. A year of classes followed by a year of work/thesis will be a fantastic mental exercise. Then, I’ll go back to the business world, where plan-execute-analyze-improve applies to pitching program ideas to coworkers more often than pitching products or services to customers. And by that time, the ideas I’ll be pitching will be better than they are now.

I Want to Start Making Money Again, Soon

The rationale behind this decision won’t surprise a single one of you. I came over here with an appropriate amount of savings, but over time I’m feeling anxious as my savings only decline without offset. Roxana is employed, so the worst case scenario isn’t catastrophic, but it would still take a significant emotional toll on me.

That means I would feel uncomfortable in a scenario that has Roxana bearing the entire financial burden of the relationship. She, angelically as usual, assures me that I’m worried about something stupid, but I nonetheless can’t shake the awkwardness.

So, I’m looking for a part-time job doing something in Marketing (read: something with a company’s customers). Since I don’t know German at a professional level, yet, one of my first stops is the Munich Arbeitsamt–the employment office. I want to ask them what kinds of jobs and employers in the city prioritize English and don’t mind if the employee is in the middle of learning German.

So those are they–the reasons behind my decisions. I’ll keep you in the loop on how everything goes.

The Drawing Board

As I wrote a few months ago, I’ve been trying to get into a Master’s program at LMU Munich called “Logic and the Philosophy of Science.” Two amazing people provided recommendation letters, I submitted a “published article” of mine, I tweaked my resume for an academic submission, and I ran down my inspiration in a cover letter. And then I waited a couple of weeks.

Well, I didn’t get into the program. It’s a real shame, because what I would have gained from it would have been really useful in carving a unique path through the rest of my life. Not many people apply a Master’s in Logic and the Philosophy of Science to the business world. At least, they don’t according to LinkedIn.

What I received from the program coordinator was an e-mail that said he regrets to inform me that I wasn’t admitted, and that he’s sure I understand that he can’t discuss application specifics with individual candidates (maybe if I can transcend my individuality, then he’ll tell me?). That sounded like a lot of generic blah blah, so I e-mailed him about the rejection, anyway.

“I appreciate that you cannot comment on my application specifically. Might you be able to offer me a few descriptors of the ideal candidate? I will be able to use the information to strengthen myself for my future.”

I thought I was sly. Of course, if he tells me about the ideal candidate, then I can cross check that profile with mine and figure out why they didn’t let me in. It didn’t work, though. I sent that e-mail 24 days ago and haven’t received a response.

That’s just an inescapable bummer of competition for which people determine the results subjectively–most of the time, you have no idea why you win or lose. Maybe my article wasn’t published enough, maybe my background isn’t non-business enough, maybe my goals aren’t academic enough, maybe 500 better versions of me also applied for the program, or maybe the guy in charge got ripped off by a car salesman named Ryan one time. I’ll never know. The program is like, two years old, so I can’t find alumni, yet. Maybe I could get to know a good sample of current students, but there would have to be 0 other useful degree programs out there for me to devote that kind of time.

Anyway, this post isn’t about solving the rejection problem. It’s about what I’m doing now that I’m back at the drawing board.

Here are the decisions I’ve made:

Learning to speak German is the most important thing I’m doing right now related to my career
Getting my Master’s degree is more important than resuming my career with a conventional full-time job, right now
I want to start making money again, soon

And here is how those decisions affect the way life plays out for me over the next few years:

Learning German is the Most Important

This one’s easy. I keep taking German classes, keep speaking German when I’m with Germans, keep watching TV, and keep refraining from skipping the German-language ads on YouTube. I’ll be done with class in January or February (depending on how long Winter Break is, and what our January trip to Mexico will do to my class timing). That puts me right in the beginnings of university application season and internship application season. Mmmhmm.

Getting a Master’s Degree: More Important than Full-Time Work

Right now, this means I’m looking for scholarships. In practice, these are living stipends, since university education in Bayern is free. But, they’ll make wages and hours less important when I seek an internship, so I can focus on skill building.

In a month or two, I’ll be working earnestly on my applications for admission.

In January, I’ll apply for more Master’s programs. The local universities are Technical University of Munich and, of course, LMU. I’ve identified three programs worth pursuing so far:

Consumer Affairs: Described in a way that sounds like “psychology of consumption.” In any case, it’s a program that teaches marketers how to get to know consumers more effectively. Delicious.
Economics: If your background is in business, and your future is in business, you can’t go wrong with Economics. An understanding of the ways in which the world around a company can effect that company’s business can only help an aspiring business leader.
MBA: Yep, I’m considering it. My heart is changing, because I’ve started to see this degree in a light similar to the one in which I saw Logic and the Philosophy of Science. That is, one of the best ways to practice philosophy is to discuss philosophy with others who are interested in discussing it. I’m believing that might be a similar trait of business management.

I’ll have finished learning German formally by this time, so I’ll also be investigating German-language Master’s programs. Ja wohl!

I Want to Start Making Money Again, Soon

I’ve been here 4 and a half months, and I’m becoming tired of spending my savings without ever replenishing them. So, while I’m looking at scholarships, I’ll also be looking for part-time work. Corporate internships and temp jobs are pretty much out of the question, because obtaining those would require a level of dedication (sending out a million CVs and networking so that 10 people give me interviews) that would preclude learning German and applying for college. I’m not really competent in German, yet, so that leaves the jobs that only need people who speak English. Namely, I’ve considered these so far:

English Teacher: Following in the footsteps of every English speakers who’s lived in another country, ever, I could teach my mothertongue to eager youngsters and jaded oldsters alike. There seems to be a respectable demand for people like this ,here, but I may need to get certified (spend 250 EURO on a CV line), and I’ve heard that working hours are unpredictable and occasionally really disappointing.
Tour Guide: I can be a supremely enthusiastic showman in front of groups of tourists! And I know some Chinese, so at least 95% of my clientele would be in for a pleasant surprise. Bonus points for this one, because it would let me exercise my marketer chops.
Transit Authority Information Rep: You know–one of those people at the big train stations who tells terrified out-of-towners where to go?
Guy Who Throws Luggage Onto Airplanes: The bottom of every totem pole is always interesting, and as part of a repetitive process, I could figure out a thing or two about process management. Who loves Gantt charts and bottleneck analyses? This guy.
Garbage Man: I’ll do it. You watch me do it.

So, that’s the state of things in a nutshell. Whew–glad I wrote this stuff down.