One of Those Days When I Love Teaching

I was invited to be a resource speaker at a seminar series for Financial Analysts. I was a bit apprehensive about accepting this engagement because I knew I would be speaking before finance professionals. But I guess because I had the right background, being in the industry that was going to be analyzed and being a finance professional, the seminar organizers said that I was the "ideal" resource speaker. I prepared very well for this by going over my presentation materials (which I finished only yesterday afternoon) several times and anticipating questions that they may ask.


I was actually surprised at the level of interest I got from my presentation and the points that I have raised. I'm glad that I was able to get a lot of questions and reactions, and this resulted to a very lively discussion. I guess it meant that they were really interested in the issues presented. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to bring up relevant issues, share some of my financial expertise, as well as learn from the different points of view that were shared in our discussions.

The above session was held in the morning in Diliman, Quezon City. Today was also the last day of the six session seminar series on Financial Management for Marketing Practitioners, so I had to rush to Manila after. This day really brought fulfillment for me because I now know that the participants learned a lot from our sessions. They were required to present actual business cases where they could apply the financial skills they learned as a final project. The analyses they came up were in-depth and comprehensive. The recommendations were sound and were based on good analyses of the business cases. The participants considered their projects major accomplishments. When we started out 6 weeks ago, they did not feel very confident that they will be able to have good financial skills. After this project, they now feel confident that they now know enough to be able to be good managers by looking at the financial implications of their decisions. I feel proud and happy that I was able to share my skills and knowledge, but happier that I've learned from them as well.