Hopelessly Devoted to Corporate Finance on iTunes U

Thank you iphone for my new teacher!

My friend Michael got me hooked. He is taking a course on App programming through Stamford. I loved the idea of infiltrating  attending auditing courses at universities I never would have had any hope of getting into  top-notch institutions while riding the bus, before going to bed, etc.

What you do is download the free app from itunes (there are other similar things for you non apple people, of course), then you can scroll through all kinds of university courses that have been uploaded from top universities.

I chose one on Corporate Finance, which is completely out of character for me. My justification is that I often find myself hanging around corporate finance types who are like aliens to me and I wanted to create an adequate line of defense for when they criticize my artsy fartsy, superficial way of doing things understand a little bit more about what the hell they are talking about most of the time makes them tick. My course was offered in May 2013 as a 15-week class at the Stern Business School at NYU (Damodaran's web page -- he is my new idol).

I find the course fascinating. I am doing the homework, taking the tests after each lesson, watching the extra webcasts. In short, I am doing all of the things over-achieving school-nostalgic adults do when they have a chance to go back and be a student again, things that I did NOT do when I actually was a student.

It is invading the rest of my life too. I am thinking about stock value, corporate governance, conflicts of interest, markets, risks, managers and lenders, acquisitions, etc. 24/7. If I had my choice I would have finished all of my lessons by now, but I am trying to stick to one session a day. I need time for the information to sink in, after all, and I have to make it look like I still have other interests outside of Corporate Finance (see the stories below-- wait a minute! Maybe I can do my project on Covergirl! Do you think it's a Publicly-traded company??).

My life is exciting again! Halleluja for Hurtle Rates!