CSR, Management Accounting, Ops Management

So, long time no post! Since Lots have happened since I last posted at the beginning of the month:

As I mentioned last time, we kicked off this month with a week of career stuff. Wall Street Prep and David Ohrvall came to give one day workshops on finance and consulting interviews, respectively. Both were excellent for those interested in careers in finance or consulting.

Saturday after the career week was our first case competition, with A. T. Kearny. Everyone who participated had fun, but at the same time we also realized how much further we still need to go before we could realistically compete for an MBA job at A. T. Kearney. Basically, the case they gave us was an example of what they use for their second round of interviews, where the candidate is given ~45 minutes to read the case and come up with recommendations, after which the interviewer comes back into the room for a presentation from the candidate. For our case competition, we had teams of 7 with 2.5 hours to work on the case, and it was still obvious that there was room for improvement. We really need to double up our case prep effort, which is actually recurring feedback the school keeps hearing from recruiters - that the students are smart, but just don't prepare enough for the interviews.

After the career week, we had a one-week module on corporate social responsibility. It was interesting, because the focus is not "how to be a good corporate citizen" per se, but rather aligning a company's CSR strategy with its corporate strategy. There were some good case studies and great videos, as well as three presentation opportunities for each team, which was an excellent amount for a 5-day course. The only side that was perhaps not so good was that each of us needed to write a relatively long individual essay worth half our grades. Not many people were fond of it, and half the class scrambled to get it done between 2am and 5am the morning it was due.

I also had my first encounter with a prospective student this week, who sat at the back of the class during our final presentation sessions. We chatted briefly during break, and I told him about all the good things that impressed me here at Queen's. I don't say this often anymore, but I do still pause once in a while, look around in amazement, and give myself props for ending up at such a great school. Then my train of thoughts would drift to getting a job afterwards and case interviews, and hectic life resumes.

This past Friday the MBA office organized a sunset boat cruise around thousand islands, which was really good. Gotta love the value-added stuff here. The next day, a whole bunch of people went skydiving and had a blast. I considered my severe motion sickness and chickened out, but went to the salsa class instead, which was fun.

This week we started a new large module with four courses. The ones that we've had so far are management accounting and operations management.

Management accounting is taught by Professor Clinton Free who's a good and engaging teacher, Australian, and a cricket player. He helped the faculty win a cricket match with the exec MBA students, and have now extended the invitation to play to our class. The course content is also very interesting, and it has to do with making good accounting choices within an organization. We do lots of interesting examples in class and there are lots of calculations, so I feel right at home, and Clinton's been impressed by my ability to work the numbers without a calculator. :p

Clinton also did a pitch on the CMA designation, and encouraged us to take advantage of the Queen's MBA-CMA combined program. Which actually prompted me to go to the CMA info session today. I had never thought of doing a CMA, but now I'm thinking. Clinton makes a lot of references to the consulting career, and says that this is a good designation to have not only for accountants, but for consultants as well.

Professor Paul Roman teachers operations management. He's part of the reason why I'm here, because it was his class that I sat in a year ago, and I thought he was one of the best profs I had encountered. He still is, along with pretty much all other Queen's profs! The course content though gets a little difficult for me at times, since we've talked a lot about manufacturing and production lines and such, which I'm totally ignorant of. It doesn't help that this class is always in the afternoon, when my brain is the slowest. But I definitely want to learn this stuff, and it'll probably be one of the most practical and useful courses for my intended career as a strategy consultant.

Now need to get back to reading...