Thursday, December 9, 2010

Statistics

I have just hung up with my Mash Collaboration Quantitative Methods Course class. You may remember (because, you know, I have so many readers) when I talked about it here.

Well tonight, as our Prof wallowed in our wonderfulness, I almost cried. Well, I had some mascara in my eye, but still, our teacher was so proud of us! More than that though, I am super duper proud of myself for staying the course. Math was never my forte, but perhaps that was just an excuse after all?

Introductory Stats is really not so much math as it is being willing to read, listen and think. Like any kind of learning you just have to put in some effort. Most importantly, though, you have to be willing to ask and help when others are asking. Yes, yes, I am plugging collaboration here. Because it works.

I couldn't have done the study if my wonderful colleagues hadn't been willing to work with me. I couldn't have done the course without the other students whose ideas, shared on our wiki site, turned on more than one proverbial lightbulb in my head. Nor could I have done it without the inspiring and enthusiastic professor Greg Scholdt or Steven Herder, the collaborator of collaborators.

Yes, the people above made it almost easy. Perhaps only 1 of my grey hairs can be attributed to this course. And that would be considered statistically significant if you got a peek under my bangs, people!

So walking away I am reassured of a few things. First that collaboration is the answer to the common person who needs a little external motivation to kickstart their internal motivation device. Second that you don't have to be a math genius (or to have ever gotten above a B-, or was it a C?, in math) to tackle Stats. Third that I may not be as brain dead after 9 p.m. as I thought. And finally, I am reassured that mistakes are what learning is made of, and that seeing shortcomings just shows you that there is more to learn and room to grow.

So go. Go sign up for something that scares you. Seriously. Do it. You may find out you are more of a force to be reckoned with than the thing you were scared of to begin with!

2 comments:

  1. Inspiring words Cat? and excellent timing.

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  2. So proud of you for doing this. You tackled statistics and running in the same year...Amazing! You're a force to be reckoned with without these things, but, damn...what will be of you now? watch out. That cartoon character, whose name I have no idea of because I'm just that cool, ha!, is just screaming from the screen. Only you could get mascara, statistics, grey hair and collaboration in the same post so poignantly. Feel inspired. Want collaboration.

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