Don't drink and walk on the road

I must start off with a correction – shark diving was NOT in the Eastern Cape. But it was east of Cape Town and Stellenbosch.

Today was another good day with the learners – we started off with an income statement and I had the craziest flashback of Professor Parrino teaching us similar things about a year ago. Suffice to say finance is not my strong suit! For an exercise I had the learners do an income statement for the t-shirt business we did yesterday. One group did quite well and wound up with the correct gross and net profit, although they confused some COGS items with other operating income. Overall quite good though.

After finishing up with the finance we moved on to marketing – I did the marketing overview, Sne taught about advertising, and then I taught about market research. The trading game was quite a hit, the learners really had a good time!

In the afternoon after lunch we went through an exercise of dissecting the business plan of one of the learners as a class (her business was to sell eggs in the community). We started with the four Ps of marketing, and talked a little bit about her strategy (would it be less for less, more for more, or more for the same). I feel like I’m teaching much better this second week – going away from the curriculum more and bringing in some elements that I learned at Babson. As part of the exercise we went through the costing of one unit for a third time, in detail. I will say that I think it is finally sinking in, and some of the boys who are clearly the kids who are “too cool for school” and were joking around a lot the first couple of days were paying rapt attention for a lot of today, which I think is a good sign.

I think some of the kids are finally starting to understand the math behind the business which was probably my main objective for teaching this week. One student, Xolani (and I’m pleased to report that I learned the way to pronounce X in Xhosa, or at least something approximating the way to say X in Xhosa) said after class that he “finally got it.” Today he was a little shaky but now he understands, and they do not teach this in their schools. When they teach things like the income statement it is not in the context of a business, so the learners do not understand. I was so gratified to hear this because I think some of the other learners probably feel similarly. It’s an odd situation because I’ve been doing most of the teaching this week and there are 14 learners so I feel like more of a traditional teacher than last week, and as a result I don’t think I have such a close personal relationship with these learners. On the flip side though, I think I have taught them better. On the car ride back I was talking to Deon who is one of the Stellenbosch volunteers and he was saying that is a common tradeoff – be a teacher or have a deeper personal relationship. Ultimately I came here to teach and I think that’s the most important thing but I do kind of miss the bond I had with my learners last week.

Anyway afterwards many of us went out for a braai (aka BBQ) in the woods (some sort of national park or recreation area). Unfortunately the braai took so long getting heated up that most of the food was not cooked by the time it was getting dark, so we finished up back at the Waldenhof apartments where we learned that one member of our group would win any dancing competition he enters – and he definitely entertained us, we had a great time. Before heading back to the apartments though I had a really good time – the weather was warm, the scenery was gorgeous, and we had some interesting conversations. I will report that I think I’m probably the worst student of Afrikaans ever, I can’t remember anything unless it’s written down! Also the wine had this warning label on it that we all found hilarious – it said “Don’t drink and walk on the road, you may be killed.” Driving, apparently is ok, but walking is very dangerous!

In totally and completely unrelated news today is the tenth anniversary of the Ask Jeeves IPO, which I had totally forgotten about. Good times … I feel very nostalgic for my life back then, sometimes. So a shout out to anyone and everyone who worked with me back then – hope the best for all of you in the years to come, and I miss you!!