Marketing, Finance, OCR, Craziness

I haven't posted for almost a month? I mean, I knew I hadn't posted for long, but I thought it was just a couple of weeks.

Since I lasted posted anything about the program and course content, we've started Marketing and Finance courses. Before I even have a chance to write about these courses, this entire module is coming to an end already. Each course will only have one class next week, and exams will take place the week after. The course load in this module has been crazy:

• Ops: 8 mini cases, 2 individual cases, 1 field trip report and presentation
• Management accounting: 2 reports and presentations
• Finance: 2 quizzes, 2 reports and presentations
• Marketing: 2 team cases, 1 giant assignment separated into 3 stages of deliverables with huge report and presentation at the end, 1 individual paper that I've been procrastinating writing for 2 weeks

As you can see here, the theme of the program has really switched to "reports and presentations", which means way more qualitative material. The dynamics amongst students have also changed, as super quant people start to struggle through these reports.

We have received our first ranking. I'm very proud of my team, at least 5 out of 7 of us are ranked within the first quartile.

On Campus Recruiting also kicked off this past week, which is the cause of all sorts of craziness for MBA students, in addition to marketing deliverables. As well as attending company info sessions, which are an hour and a half each, two slots per day every day, applications are usually due midnight right after the info session. Essentially, for an aggressive OCR job hunter such as myself, all evenings since 5pm onwards have become non studying time. The key is to utilize our half days off effectively, and if that's not happening, then a lot of the work would have to be done late at night. It doesn't help that the undergrads are back this week, and as a result of them fighting with us for classrooms, all morning classes in my section have been bumped earlier to 8am.

I would write more but I still have loads to do. Hope to have time to jot down more stuff next weekend.

English

This might be going a little off topic, but I've wanted to talk about this for some time, so I'm going to exercise my power as the owner of this blog, and post whatever I want for today.

I have this pet peeve for obvious and consistent improper/weird uses of English, especially if the speaker/writer has perfect command of the language otherwise. And in fact, this does have something to do with the MBA. Since a large number of students come from places other than North America, it might help straighten out a few things and potentially avoid confusion that may cause other people when they hear certain odd phrases for the first time. Or it might not help. I dunno. I just wanted to vent a little. :p

1. You did not "pass out" from undergrad, and you're not going to "pass out" now.
You graduated. And you will graduate from the MBA. You've probable had a few episodes of passing out, but you don't use the phrase when you actually mean graduate.

2. You did not "give" the GMAT. You took it.
The GMAC gives the GMAT. Not you. You take the GMAT. A student takes exams, giving exams is the teacher's job.

3. You don't have a "query". You have a question.
This does not cause as much confusion, but whenever I see "query", I think of SQL. In the context of normal langauge (as opposed to computer language), you have questions instead of queries.

4. Sign up for "the same".
Again, does not really cause as much confusion as it causes me personal misery. Haha. A classic example: we have an event next week, please sign up for the same. We don't need to sign up for "the same", we simply need to sign up. If we have to sign up FOR something, we can simply sign up "for it". Why not save a few keystrokes.

I feel better now that I've gotten it out of my system. I might even add more items as I think of more. But for now, bed time.

Added Aug 24, 2009:

5. I must be knowing
Classic example: you must be knowing that we have a class tomorrow. I'm not knowing. I just know. I must know that we have a class tomorrow. Correct me if I'm wrong, I think in general we tend to use "be doing" more when the doing is an actual action that we do. Example: we'll be going around collecting money. "Knowing" is not something you physically do.

Added Aug 25, 2009 (the list just keeps growing...):

6. Very less
"Less" is a comparative adjective, which means you don't stick "very" in front of it. What you mean to say is "very little" or "very few", depending on the noun you wish to qualify. For example, "very little quantity" or "very few units sold". Of course, "much less" is perfectly fine to say, but from my experience, people almost never mean "much less" when they say "very less".

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...

Back to School

Exams for the last module were done with last Wednesday, after which I promptly headed back home to Toronto. Nevermind the end-of-module "party like a rock star" party that night, although I've heard good things about it (and seen hilarious pictures).

Returned to Kingston last night after the long weekend. This entire week will be filled with career stuff:

• Today: intro prep sessions on finance and consulting interviews.
• Over the next two days: professionals who help people prepare interviews for a living will come and give a full day workshop on each of finance and consulting.
• Friday: our corporate partners and alumni will conduct group mock interviews, which should be a good learning experience as well as networking opportunity.
• Saturday: AT Kearney case competition. This is just internal to our class, and we're the only school AT Kearney chose to do a competition at. This will again be an excellent opportunity to score some contacts.

In the background, there are two books that we need to read within this week and the next, for the next two modules. They're both interesting reads, but will take some time.

Now allow me to rant a little, which I almost never do. We suffered in heat the entire day today, it was brutal. It was hot, I mean HOT, H-O-T, in the classrooms. Something to do with the air conditioning being turned off over the weekend, and probably having trouble coming back on. So it got increasingly hot in the morning, until the AC came back on in the afternoon, but it would take hours for the classrooms to cool down, so it never really cooled down before the sessions ended for the day. Did I mention it was brutal? It also doesn't help that my house isn't air conditioned, but you know, I cheap out on housing, I suffer the consequences. This is not to say that I recommend not cheaping out on housing. For a generally healthy student in his/her prime years without a rich daddy, cheap housing is worth the suffering.

Exams and Resumes

Exams: 1 down, 2 to go.

Resumes have been live for almost a week: http://www.business.queensu.ca/recruiting/student_resumes/mba/index.php

Back to cash flow statements.

Studying

This weekend is full of studying for exams, which will happen Monday - Wednesday. The consensus seems to be that there is way too much to study and too little time to study it. This is certainly true in my case. It's been incredibly difficult to keep up with individual readings and exercises, because people tend to devote most of their time to team assignments/projects, which is more of a priority than individual work, since no one wants to be the reason for potential sub-par team performance.

So now I should get back to the work that I've been neglecting all month, do as much as I can and hope for the best.

Busy Times

I'm having lunch and finally find myself in a temporary moment of peace AND remembering to update the blog.

The past week has been very busy, as is this week. Classes are wrapping up and we have exams next week. Some of the things that's happened since I last posted:

• The marketing club invited the head of marketing here at the business school to give a short introduction to marketing over lunch. It definitely stimulated my interest in the field.
• A full career day again last Wednesday, mostly on preparing for on-campus-recruiting that will start as early as August and will go on till probably the end of September. This included some logistics and ground rules, as well as tips for writing custom cover letters and resumes.
• The second networking event with the other section of the Cornell-Queens exec MBA students.
• Lots and lots of assignment work.

On Saturday Taste of Kingston happened at confederation park downtown at the waters. The food/drinks are pretty good, and cheap with generous portions too, compared to similar events in Toronto. The other difference is that this is a fundraising event, whereas most restaurants in Toronto probably make a profit out of participating. Recommended for future students, since it only happens once a year and we're only here for a year.

So while this was happening, a salsa dance class for MBA students was also happening simultaneously, and I managed to utilize myself to attend both. I've missed dancing (used to do it in undergrad) and the class was great. It's also only an hour every couple of weeks, and a good opportunity to take your mind off anything else school-related.

This week we've concluded our accounting class, and will have the final BDM and economics classes the next two days. Tonight there's a networking event again with the national and Ottawa exec MBA students, we've been promised good food, which I look forward to!