Obstreperous

Date: 07 August 2008 03:22:01

obstreperous (adjective)

1. Attended by, or making, a loud and tumultuous noise; boisterous.

2. Noisily and stubbornly defiant.

My new word for today: my manager used it to refer to me, at which point I asked her what it meant as I had never heard it before. She told me, using definition 1 above. It could be true. :)

And what a wondrous word it is.

A great lecture last night on Systems Quality. A great class too. As often happens, I got talking to a wide range of people, including two Germans over from Cologne for a semester -- where I also learnt a bit about the German university system, including the Diplom and the fact most Germans at uni get what would be considered a Masters elsewhere: the Bachelor having previously not been available widely -- as the Diplom compared to a Masters. This is changing / has changed I believe, inline with European integration, and Germany is moving towards a system that gives Bachelors and Masters. I also spoke to a fellow I had spoken to last week, as well as two women who are doing different courses and had a lot of interesting things to say.

Our lecturer was great and the topic, What is Quality?, was very interesting to me: I am not sure if I particularly enjoyed it, and gained from it, as it was inline with my thinking [people before processes; co-operation before competition]. Perhaps. But also very interesting. Particularly learning about W. Edwards Deming [a huge figure in the area of systems quality, who made Japan what it became after WWII; I had never heard of him] and seeing a video about a company that moved towards people-oriented procedures to improve quality.

Tuesday's lecture on Project Management was good also. By next week I need to have planned the topic I will do for the second assignment [a research paper] and what I will speak for 20 minutes on later in the semester. I am considering a topic to do with Project Management and Culture, though I haven't really decided yet. Not only do we get to choose a topic we get to choose the statement we will base the research paper on: interesting, and a good idea I think -- but I'm struggling to come up with my statement!

I really am enjoying this course, thanks and praise be to God.