Business Associations -- Part 2

a selfie on top of Mt Tolmie
 ... taken weeks before our class begins ...
the wind is making Rebecca's feather earrings sweep back and forth
I can't keep my hair in my clip.

We are on the second day of class. 

Business Associations, Class 2. 

Rebecca is teaching. 

I am in one of the groups in the class. 

Although I am a visitor to the class, she makes me work as well. I am not sure I like that. 

We are figuring out the how an Income Statement and a Balance Sheet are different. I can read these sheets, but I don’t like to take data out of a problem and make the sheets.

At the top of Mt Tolmie I should be taking
a picture of the 360 degree views.
Instead I am studying what rocks look like
before the ocean begins.

She organizes for everyone to be part of a Hogworth group in the class. Five groups. I may be with the Pets, although I am not sure.  I can't remember anything about Harry Potter's Hogworth.  I hope this won't impact my performance in the class.

Rebecca  makes everyone in the class uncomfortable by having us sit in groups and talk with each other over problems she has distributed. We are all new and don't even know each other's names.  She tries to mitigate our discomfort by playing some café jazz music in the background. She believes that most learning occurs in these groups, though she does lecture as well.  That part of the course is a lot of fun.  Ideas from all over the room bouncing off of the walls.

I think the purpose of the music is to make white noise so that the voices of people in the other groups isn’t that clear for us – more like muffled conversations over in a club, over dinner or sharing a drink.

At the end of the class a student comes to her and asks, “What should we read for next week?”

“Ideally as much as you can. If you are overloaded then take care of yourself and don’t read too much. It is early in the term. If you have time, read away.”

“I am not good with open ended assignments like this,” replies the student.

She wants a discrete assignment.

“Then read chapters 2 and 3. If you have time then do one, and four is a thin chapter which will be easy for you.”

“Alright,” the student says and walks away satisfied.

Rebecca has not handout out the kind of syllabus that most students see in most classes.  You know.  Day 1, we do such and such.  Day 2, we do x.  The signal of where we might be in that regular system only comes at the end of the second class where she says, you have probably already noticed that we are talking about sole proprietorships in this class and the last class.

For a student like me, I needed to see that on paper, not "get" it as we are going along.

But to speak to order of the first kind, she has already handed out a an orange paper on which are listed all of the kinds of business, and then how they differ from each other.  What I do "get" is that I had better see how much of that I can put to memory.

I tell Rebecca, I am that student. I need to know exactly what to read for the next class. I want a precise road map. Tell me what to read. I will do it. I need everything in a box with black line around it. Your first answer would have caused some anxiety in me.

Rebecca smiles and says nothing.

We pack up and prepare to go home, me to her house, and she, to London, Ontario for the week-end.

Arta