I have learned a lot from being a team leader for the HR simulation. However I feel that it was the members that made this an amazing experience. If I can make one recommendation is that at the first meeting have the group set what their expectations for both themselves and other team members. I feel that it is only through having a strong foundation allows for the establishment of a common team goal. In the end our high expectations caused us to be #1 in Quality & Safety. Although the thing that makes the biggest difference is the knowledge that your group worked well together and you reached your results because of a team effort and not one person alone. I feel that we could have done better, but we will never know. Personally I am happy with the outcome and the overall quality of our group. The simulation on the other hand I feel should be overhauled. It needs to be more challenging and in depth. I feel that the current simulator is to simple and not challenging. Also I would like to see more of the class work involved with our weekly outputs. However the general idea for the HR simulator gives us a decent simulated environment to learn in.

MGMT 250 has been a very interesting class. I feel that is does a great job of uniting the undergraduate business school and giving students an advantage in the work environment. However at the same time I feel that the class could have more student interaction within a real world environment. Why do we have to wait until we get internships to use what we learn? Yes it can be argued that the HR simulation fulfills this role, but I feel that the HR simulation is too simple. However I have learned a lot of new and useful managerial skills that I hope to use in the near future. I feel that MGMT 250 has given me a new incite on what a business needs from its managers and how I will eventually fit in with it.

MGMT 250 has been a very interesting class. I feel that is does a great job of uniting the undergraduate business school and giving students an advantage in the work environment. However at the same time I feel that the class could have more student interaction within a real world environment. Why do we have to wait until we get internships to use what we learn? Yes it can be argued that the HR simulation fulfills this role, but I feel that the HR simulation is too simple. However I have learned a lot of new and useful managerial skills that I hope to use in the near future. I feel that MGMT 250 has given me a new incite on what a business needs from its managers and how I will eventually fit in with it.

The last two weeks were the hardest weeks I have ever had here at Case. It seemed like a never-ending flow of papers, research, group meetings and presentations. Yet, of all of the papers the learning plan was my favorite one to work on. I really put my best effort in to it yet, I still feel it could be a lot better then it currently is. Although when I turned it in I could confidently say that this is one of my best papers I have ever written. I think that the learning plan is a great assignment to do sophomore year of college. It has given me a chance to reflect upon who I am and where I want to be. This is not something a lot of college students do and for that I am thankful.

This assignment proved to be one of the hardest writing assignments of the semester and possibly one of the hardest assignments I have had at Case so far. If I had known the difficulty I would have in writing this paper I would surely have started much earlier than I did. The reason why I believe I had trouble on this assignment was because I am very good at setting goals and making plans however my follow through is no where nearly as good. This proved to be so hard that I had to change some of my goals because I realized some were physically impossible. It was also very difficult for me to plan out my course of action because I realized how much work I am going to have to put in to achieve my goals. In retrospect I believe that this paper truly helped me out because I have realized that while it will be hard to complete my goals they are in fact achievable and well worth it. I also feel that I will fully understand the process of making goals and achieving them once I have helped to establish Case’s lacrosse team. This is one goal that I know I will complete because I have put myself in a situation where people are counting on me and I am not the type of person that lets people down.

The peer evaluations part of the HR simulation turned out to be much harder than I had originally expected. I found that I had trouble both with the online part as well as the part to be handed in during class. In the past when I have been asked to do peer evaluations it has been much easier for me to complete and I have done it many times without even giving it much attention. On the other hand when I began filling out the evaluations for my team mates I felt in conflict because while I wanted to answer them as truthfully as possible I also did not want to give my team harsh evaluations. This dilemma was so great that I ended up having to stop and resume the next day. During my break from evaluating I realized that the reason I had been having trouble was that I had truly enjoyed working with my team more so than any other team I had ever worked with. Once I had identified my problem I realized that the best thing I could do was to evaluate them accurately because it would hopefully help them to improve in any areas where they were lacking.

Now that the HR simulation is over I believe it is time to analyze my experience with it. Looking back I remember many long nights spent at meetings debating how to allocate our companies resources followed by the assigning/volunteering to do different parts of the write up. I fondly remember taking over the reading room on the library and using it as a mock boardroom pretending that this was our office. This simulation proved that contrary to popular belief one can have fun while also learning volumes of information. I feel that if the material that we learned during the simulation had been taught in a classroom I would have retained less than half of what I have learned. My favorite part of the simulation was calculating the numbers in our budget and allocating our budget toward certain decisions knowing that when the quarterly report came back I would be able to see what had been the effect of my spending.

The 2nd year annual report was much different than the first and allowed me to reflect upon the changes my team had made in operating our company during the second year in comparison with the first year. While the overall format was the same the content of the paper changed drastically. In the 1st year annual report I analyzed our operations during the year and wrote an overall summary without much concern. In between the time that the 1st annual report was handed back and the 5 quarter was due my team met and decided on a plan that would help us do very well in the following four quarters. In writing the 2nd annual report I was able to reflect on the team plan and analyze how well we had stuck to our plan. Overall the 2nd year annual report gave me a better insight into what writing an analysis of an annual report is really like and how it can help companies.

The discussion in class concerning the Tom Mendola Case was a very interesting experience for me. After reading the case study I had thought about arguments defending him and in favor of keeping him on the job by placing him back in his original position where he had been regarded as an excellent employee. When we were divided into sections to talk about the case I ended up being in the section given the task of supporting his termination. This was difficult for me because I had to go against my opinions and support something that I had originally opposed. After taking a few moments to clear my mind I set out to look at the case in another light and realized that I was able to make some strong arguments in favor of his termination from the company. This taught me that in the future I will have to be careful when presented with a similar situation because I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt and side with them even though they are not necessarily correct. I also learned that by taking a step back and re-analyzing the situation I can in fact make a strong decision and stick to it without any moral reservations.

From past experiences and the personality tests I have taken in class, I believe I am a logical person who puts more interest in facts and realities than the overall idea and the inner world of impressions. Thus, it is wise for me to understand the importance of the overall idea, so that I may be better prepared to take the CPA exam. In addition, due to my shyness, I sometimes have trouble speaking to native English speakers as well as asking for help. Thus, I must push myself to ask for and be amenable to help when I feel that I need it instead of working by myself and getting nowhere. Thus, I will try to ask other accounting majors who are studying for the CPA exam for help with certain problems I am stuck on. In addition, I hope to become friendlier with the overall undergraduate class at Case, not just Koreans, in order to help my English speaking skills and prepare me for working in America if I am accepted into a job here.

During our last class, we talked about what was the most helpful part about this class and who are the people I want to recognize. Even though I only addressed mock interview and HR Simulation, there are a lot more activities that were very helpful. Learning plan and all of the exercise for example helped me a lot in understanding myself and figuring out what I like and want in my life. Asides from finding out the potential job I can take, I also realize how little time I have to prepare for my career. By writing out learning plan II, I actually planned out what I am going to do and achieve before graduating. These really helps me to forces myself to make my action plan to actions. I hope that I will actually be fully prepared with the career I want and stand out from other applicants who also desire the same job as I do.

Our 2nd half for the HR simulation was very difficult to handle. During our first half of the simulation, our results were great as we spent most of our money on training/other programs and fringe benefits. We did not concentrate on wages at all. As time went by, the difference of wages of our company and the industry's average grew apart. This was very difficult for us as we wanted to increase fringe benefits and also wanted other programs running. Our morale did not increase as much as it did during the first half of the year. In fact, it decreased few due to the level 1 employees complaining for wage increase. It was difficult to increase wages for all different level of employees.

When our team was presented with the problem of having potential layoffs we did wonder if the there would be negative comes and debated having layoffs at all. However we did decide to fire about 10 level one employees this was about 2% of the total employees in this categories. We figured that such a small layoff would not be seen as a big deal and that we were simply adjusting for shifts in the job market. Furthermore we have an appraisal system in place and there by the employees who were the lowest performers would be fired. This is what sold it for us. However evidently firing such a small percentage of your employees, even if they are the lowest performers in the company was not a good idea. We had a drastic decrease in morale and additional employees left too. Maybe this is a flaw in the program, but I feel that the programs should account for this and if anything by firing our low performers our moral, safety and quality would improve. While I like this current simulation I feel that it should take this in to account.

After I graduate from Case Western Reserve University, I hope to find myself working as a Certified Public Accountant at an accounting firm in America. I see this as a goal to be reached in two years because I will take one year off to go to a CPA exam preparation school in Korea. In addition, I will take the exam in Vermont because the credit requirement to take the CPA exam is less than other states, thus, I will not need a masters degree. I have taken Accounting 201 and 300 in order to fulfill my Accounting Degree. In addition, as these are the core courses of accounting, I have taken extensive notes so that they may prepare me for the CPA exam. Also, these were my first classes in America. Thus, it was a very difficult time, as well as a time where I learned a lot. I became more self-reliant and began to ask for help from former accounting student who were Korean, as well as Professors of accounting and my advisor. Thus, though these courses helped me finish core requirements, they were also stepping stones to learning how to receive help as an international student. In addition, I am going to join Alpha Beta Psi, an accounting fraternity as an extracurricular on my undergraduate resume. Although there are not a lot of Koreans in this fraternity, I hope that by joining I will impress American companies when I apply for a job. Thus, even though it feels challenging for me to do as a native Korean, I hope to join the fraternity.

The overall experience of this class is unforgettable and original. This class was my first solely lecture and discussion based class with no exams, but a lot of papers and discussions. My basic thought of management was just hiring and firing of workers. But this idea changed after leaning in this class. There was so much to management than I thought. HR simulations, blogs, individual learning plans, mock interviews, and many more, I learned so many different aspects of management. Also, this was the class that I started to really feel confident in discussing with classmates. Since this class requires a lot of group presentations and discussions, talking was much necessary. Overall, this class was one of the best experiences I had this whole semester, and I will persist to keep up with management courses by taking MGMT 251 next semester. Happy Holidays!

The blogging experience in our MGMT 250 class was very memorable and brilliant. There were times that I was chased by the deadlines, but posting the blogs always helped me collect and organize what I had learned in our class. The blog was the place for me to express my opinions and thoughts, which I could not easily pursue in the class. Now that I reminisce about this experience, there are so many things that I did not cover. But I still feel very proud of myself maintaining this blog. Reading the comments left by fellow classmates was unforgettable experience as well. I sometimes even waited for someone to leave a comment in my blog. Overall, I appreciate this blogging experience very much and it will be unforgettable.

The MADS Apparel company finally came to an end with the writing of final report. Our group consisting four people, divided the work equally to finish this assignment successfully. We talked about every action we took during the simulation, including the outcomes and the goals that we have achieved. My part was to find relationships among the HR programs and observe the outcomes. I figured out that there is a direct correlation between the accident rate and the safety program budget when compared with industry averages. Having a safety budget near industry average will yield an accident rate below the industry average. Overall, this HR simulation in this semester was an incredible experience to have. Also, our group was very well correlated with each other that it was much more interesting and enjoyable.

Writing a final learning plan was very pleasant experience for me. I started this project very early, which I had a lot of time to think about my future. I started out by explaining everything about myself, from where I was born to where I am right now. Then I wrote about the near future goals that I wanted to achieve, which was to graduate from Case Western Reserve University. My ultimate goal is to become a president and CEO of a company. I wrote down every step I will take to achieve this goal. As I was writing my learning plan, I never felt so proud of myself planning out my future. Overall, writing an individual learning plan was definitely one of the most valuable opportunities that I had experienced in this MGMT 250 class.

Tom Mendola case was discussed in our class few weeks ago. This case was about a high school dropout who was an unproductive worker. He was warned several times by his superior and was even transferred through the departments upon his own request. However, these adjustments were not good enough for Tom Mendola. He was still lagging in his quality of work and had no passion. Finally, the superior decided to fire Tom. But Tom pleaded for his job, talking about how much his family was depending on him. Making a decision in this case was very difficult. However, I believe that the repeated poor performance is good enough reason to let him go.

My personal goal is to overcome my shyness and to become closer to the undergraduate population of Case, especially the native English speakers. By doing this, I will also develop skills that will help me accomplish my career goal. All my personality tests from this class has stated that I am a very factual based person who had good leadership skills but that I needed work on my conduct in interpersonal relationships. Thus, I believe overcoming my shyness will help me establish better relationships with my peers. In addition, with the goal of learning English better in mind, I feel that I will be motivated more to speak to class mates and ask for help when needed.