A Babe in the Financial Woods

My Corporations class has popped my business-cherry.

Crass as it is, I can think of no better way of expressing the eye-opening experience that happens as I get my long overdue baptism into the financial world. I kid you not, ignoramus that I am, I didn't even know what a board of directors was! Now I'm up to my eyeballs in discounted values, rates of returns, capital structures, and all kinds of basic terms I should've learned in highschool!

My prof seems to understand well the predicament that newbies like myself are in. Thus he began the class with a wonderful common denominator: Dr. Seuss.

This excerpt from "Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?" is supposed to distill the essence of what this course is all about: the problem of making sure that the people working for you are working as well as they can. Or in corporation-terms, making sure that managers don't pull an Enron and screw over the shareholders.

If only Corps would remain this simple and pleasant...

Oh, the jobs people work at!

Out west, near Hawtch-Hawtch,

There's a Hawtch-Hawtcher-Bee-Watcher.

His job is to watch...

is to keep both his eyes on the lazy town bee.

A bee that is watched will work harder, you see.

Well...he watched and he watched.

But, in spite of his watch,

that bee didn't work any harder. Not mawtch.

So then somebody said,

'Our old bee-watching man

just isn't bee-watching as hard as he can.

He ought to be watched by another Hawtch-Hawtcher.

The thing that we need is a Bee-Watcher-Watcher!'

WELL...

The Bee-Watcher-Watcher watched the Bee-Watcher.

He didn't watch well so another Hawtch-Hawtcher

had to come in as a Watch-Watcher-Watcher.

And today all the Hawtchers who live in Hawtch-Hawtch

are watching on Watch-Watcher-Watchering-Watch,

Watch-Watching the Watcher who's watching that bee.

You're not a Hawtch-hawtcher. You're lucky, you see!