MOVIES FOR MANAGERS

A NOVEL APPROACH TO LEARNING ABOUT HUMAN BEHAVIOUR & INTERACTION

ELIZABETH P TIERNEY

Published by NuBooks, an imprint of Oak Tree Press, 19 Rutland Street, Cork, Ireland

www.oaktreepress.com

ISBN: 978-1-84621-125-6 (PDF)

ISBN: 978-1-84621-126-3 (ePub)

ISBN: 978-1-84621-127-0 (Kindle)

© 2012 Elizabeth P Tierney.

All rights reserved. This eBook may not be reprinted or distributed in electronic, print, web or other format without express written permission.

ONCE UPON A TIME …

More years ago than I care to remember, I was sitting in a research seminar class at Fordham University at Lincoln Center in New York City. In a moment of madness, five years earlier, I had decided to enrol in a certificate program that would enable me to become a school administrator. I do remember believing that, if I had such a license, I might actually be able to make a difference to schools, teachers and/or kids.

When I was awarded the certificate, I then thought that it was only x many more courses and a thesis, and I would have a Ph.D. Having gotten that far, I thought I might as well keep going. It seemed a good idea at that time.

I had completed all the exams and the course work except for one class – Research Seminar. It was here that we were all expected to come up with a topic for a possible dissertation thesis. And we were all – the entire class – embarrassingly stuck. Week after week, my classmates and I would come to class having tried to rack our brains to ask an interesting, researchable question. When we formulated our ideas and presented our concepts, the professor listened, asked a few probing questions and then shot us down for any number of reasons, including: the concept was pointless, the scope too narrow or the subject matter too “done” – although his language sounded more impressive than my translation.

As the semester wore on, I wondered, as I am sure we all did, what had prompted us to enrol in this masochistic endeavour, and how we had all found ourselves so heavily invested in terms of time and money into an apparently hopeless and never-ending quagmire of failed dissertation proposals. I looked through the course catalogue to find the statute of limitation, the regulations governing the number of times a student was permitted to re-enrol in the research seminar – for a fee, of course. We were definitely stuck. With no thesis topic, there was not going to be a thesis and, without the thesis, there would be no orals, no defence and no doctorate.

Alice in Wonderland