David Kellam

Well, after a week of procrastinating (it’s surprisingly stressful :P), our group presentation is finally over.
I am in surprisingly good spirits for such an embarassingly woeful performance, mainly by virtue of the fact that the lecturer gave us an acceptable mark (25/30), hence not completely ruining my changes for a solid performance in this subject, but mainly because he actually liked parts of the presentation - namely the discussion and the executive summary. Well, the discussion was me adlibbing on the topic for 10 minutes, and the executive summary was written in about twice that time on the day it was due (approx 1100 words). The implicit assumption that the presentation itself was complete crap is going unchallenged

Anyway, I feel like I can finally get on with my life. I’ve signed up for advertising with YellowPages online, which should kick in next week. A rather expensive expierment if it doesn’t work, but still, got to try different things - “real world” lessons and all. I’m basically at the stage where anything is considered a learning experience. If you think of the potential value in education - of the informal, “I learnt something today” variety… it’s just mindboggling. Just one snippet from a book or webpage could provide an entirely new perspective, or jolt a previous memory, or be the impetus for a great new business idea. It’s just amazing how the everyday things in life just pop out when you only open your eyes to look. Of course, the key is to act

Am still undecided on what to do next semester - I feel like I could do with a break from uni, but then 4 weeks in Europe might just provide that. Part of me wants to get this uni degree over and done with, to provide more focus for the things I want to be doing. Part of me is happy letting things coast along, using the 2 subjects a semester as continual brain exercising. I think the latter approach has merit. I’m too cynical and “over it” to go back to Uni full time. Besides, CentreLink won’t support the Masters-level stuff [although there would have been potential in the earlier subjects, as they do recognise those in courses with exit points, like mine, in some circumstances].

Finally finished Branson’s autobiography - inspiring stuff. The main things that struck me:

• He acted big (thought big) before he was — the power of vision
• He was able to structure his deals & financing so that his businesses could leap to the “next level”, allowing for rapid growth
• He is a brilliant negotiator
• He has never worked for somebody else - his entire world view is about creating value himself
• He is crazy to do all that ballooning
• I wonder how he feels knowing all these famous people- whether it gets to his head…

Well, that’s all for tonight. Hopefully I will have more to report in coming days, as I come back from my procrastination hiatus…

DRK

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 14th, 2005 at 1:08 am and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.