Negotiations

Or to give it it's full title, Bargaining, Negotiating, and Dispute Settlement for Managers.

One of the most popular courses to take. To prove it nearly half of the Nielsen Center students took the course as an elective even though it wasn't required and we wouldn't be penalized in any way by not taking it. So far, it's been the only course that I've taken for which I've read something by the lecturer beforehand.

Larry "Chip" Hunter used to be at Wharton and contributed to a book written by professors at Penn and LBS which I read over the summer.

The course took us from basic prisoners dilemma type games in week 1 to a 6-party multilateral negotiation concerning deepwater ports. In a three hour class we'd usually spend half the class negotiating in our roles, then half an hour discussing what had happened, then the rest of the class would be a more traditional lecture format.

Grade wise, I think I'm pretty much a lock for an A/B. The grading is based on class participation (30%), a personal experience journal (30%), an exam (25%), and three "preparation memos" for the more complicated games (5% each).

I think my class participation is pretty good, maybe getting to an A. My journal is pretty solid A/B. My exam result was disappointing and a touch below the mean, primarily because of my inability to read part of one of the questions correctly. Moron. My preparation memos are all As, but they're not worth much.

As I keep saying though, grades don't matter. What counts is if you feel that you learned from the class, and I feel I learned a lot. So I'm a happy.