My major for BS is in Industrial Management, which is a unique two year BS program that OIT offered the students with associate’s degree in any field. The degree, to be precise, is Industrial Management with Industrial Marketing Specialization option. The IM (Industrial Management abbreviated) had three options. The other two were Industrial Operations Specialization and Information Systems Specialization. I usually refer to my BS degree Marketing concisely. I know that is not quite accurate.
The degree required about twenty mandatory courses in so-called “business fundamentals.” They included every aspects of management such as a course for financial management, a course for marketing management, and so forth. Then there were two (only two) marketing specialization electives. I chose Advertising and Legal Environment of Business. I also had to take 5 social science electives. I had to take senior project classes for two terms. Statistical Methods and Industrial Psychology were mandatory, too.
Above all, IM degree with marketing option demanded two senior level classes. One was Marketing Research, and the other was Industrial Marketing (Case Studies). The school, however, was considering to demolish the option and to live with two options. It determined to do so after the last several students currently pursue the option finish the degree. I was one of them.
The instructor in the marketing field, Mr. Ward, was a well-known killer. Marketing Research was a method-learning class, where he had few chances to bang on the poor students. Industrial Marketing, however, was a notorious class that kicked numerous flanked students out of the classroom. I did not afford dropping the class. I decided to take the class twice not to miss the degree. I audited the class first. When auditing the class, students, of course, had to pay to sit in the classroom but got no grade out of it. No matter how bad the exam results turned out, auditing students did not have to worry about the GPA.
Industrial Marketing class was a harsh class, indeed. Students had to defend their case analyses against Mr. Ward’s poignant comments, criticism and questions. “If I’m your boss, do you think I’m gonna buy the competitor analysis in your report? Do you? Do you? Uh-uh! No-no!”
My English skills got far much better back then than when I came to the United States. It was obvious that the English skills I had had and what I had learned about business was not enough to survive the class. When auditing the class, I jotted down everything that happened in the classroom. I submitted term paper like other students did, and I got very productive and guiding comments in harsh words. I collected other students returned papers and copied every page. I witnessed one third of the students there dropped the class through the term. I heard the students singing “Top of the World” until Mr. Ward walked into the classroom. The song was like, “And on the top of the world looking down the stupid, banging on everything they write and say.”
A year later came my turn to be looked down and banged on. The rumor that the school was to stop offering the option was already well spread, so as the Mr. Ward’s reputation. In the first class meeting, only three students appeared in the classroom including myself. The other two were a black guy and a seemingly old man. The black guy was a football player and he did not appear ready to experience a harsh questioning. The old man was a famous person who reputedly had several degrees at OIT through several decades. He was a native American. He could not walk without a cane. He could not hear without a hearing aid in his ear. This person, like the black guy, apparently missed the chance to catch the rumor about the class somehow.
If I could call myself a “minority student” in a sense, three minority students, comprising the absolute majority, started to take the class. The first case was given that I knew all about the tricks. As I suspected, the black guy, without thinking of utilizing my experience, was completely defeated and dropped the class. It was probably the third class meeting.
In the fifth class meeting or so, the old man became absent. Now I became the only one student who the instructor knew that knew all of the materials he had. He proposed me to bring in any material I wanted to discuss over. I followed his advice and brought copies of business magazines and other periodicals like Harvard Business Review along with the theme of discussion. Now that I acquired the initiative of the “Top of the World.” The preparation over a year facilitated me to obtain the position.
The class was really fruitful for me. I could choose any marketing issue and could prepare for it. I did not have to worry about my English vocabulary lacking. I could learn something in the fields that I felt that had not been covered with his original materials in the previous year.
In the middle of the term, I learned that the old man had been hospitalized since he became absent from school. He died before the end of the term. He registered in only one class, Industrial Marketing. I was the only one classmate of his. I attended the first and last memorial service in the United States so far.
This is how I became the sole survivor of the infamous harsh class that was to be closed down. As taught in the cases in the class, laying prudent strategies and materializing them do reward one who is convictive about them.