Blog Post 8: Class Reflection

“If you were born after 1980, you’re fucked.” — Nicco Mele

This final year at USC came and went so fast, I barely felt it. Because we are given more flexibility as to what classes we can take, so it becomes harder to buckle down and pick one. When we got the flyer about this course I was intrigued…it sounded too good to be true, and it was.

I know you are looking for constructive criticism, but I really want to take this moment, of blog post, to thank you for pushing me out of my comfort zone. From the conversations on money and payroll, to opening up to strangers about our little crazy ideas, this class challenged me to think critically about the world and to reflect if this whole entrepreneurism spiel is really for me.

One of the main lessons I am walking away with from this course is that I should really have some experience in that field instead of jumping into something and winging it. Entrepreneurs have a way of being glamorized in the press. This class showed us the other side that so often gets neglected: the truth. It is not for everyone, and most people will fail. But failure should not be the end all.

Three ideas to consider for the next class are to give the students more time to brainstorm, to have us build our business plan/pitch with every lesson we discussed and interact and to talk a bit more about the process of getting funding. Getting more face time with our classmates could have helped us better shape our ideas. Secondly, I think it would have been a great idea to have the class work on each step of our business pitch as we learned the lessons. Maybe the blog posts assignments then could have been a brainstorm post on how to incorporate the lesson into our idea. This way towards the end of the class students could have a better idea of where their trouble points are and where to com to you for more guidance. Lastly, it would have been nice to learn more about how one goes about getting funding and the terminology. This is an issue I personally had when brainstorming and researching for my pitch.