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!

Canada Day Week

I realized that I haven't posted yet this past weekend. It's been a crazy week and this week will be even crazier. Most of the class went to Ottawa for Canada Day, I opted out, which I feel was a good decision, because aside from the fact that I've been to Ottawa before for Canada Day (and I could go again anytime), what was going to be 2am return time turned out to be close to 4am. There was no way I could've physically done it with 8:30am class 4.5 hours later!

Instead, I went to Fort Henry for their sunset ceremony kickoff. If you don't care much for Ottawa, I would recommend this as a nice little thing to do on Canada Day.

Other than that... we have an econ assignment due soon, BDM assignment due soon, accounting project and BDM project in full force, and both the individual and team essay for HR/OB also due soon. So, as I said, this week will be crazy as well as this weekend. Hopefully sometime during the weekend I will be able to update on just exactly how crazy it is! Our team is great working together though, and I think the team-based approach is invaluable in the sense that there's a strong support system and you never need to feel alone. Even if the workload is cut to a level that's manageable by one person, I would still prefer what we currently have, because it maximizes each person's learning as our teammates present what they've learned from doing their part of an assignment.

On a final note, all the clubs and committees have organized themselves and held the first few meetings. The club execs and committee members are really putting a lot of effort into it and doing a great job.

Housing and Unofficial Start

I've settled nicely into the house I found. I might as well talk about my housing situation here. I was well aware of the intense workload of the MBA program, and figured that I likely won't have much time to prepare food for myself. Since I'm pretty serious about food, my number one priority was to go for a meal plan. I had initially wanted to rent a 1-bedroom apartment or the grad residence, and go for the meal plan that the university offers. But, the university meal plans have assigned time slots for when you go for your meals. If you miss it, you stay hungry until the next meal. With crazy MBA schedule, I didn't want to be confined to these time slots three times a day. Besides, if I were to go for an apartment, I'd have to worry about furniture, since furnished apartments that are within my price range are pretty much nonexistent. And of course, I didn't want to be bothered to think about furniture.

Then I found out about co-op, which offers furnished rooms with meal plans. Great, except the meal plan isn't offered in the summer. The university doesn't have a meal plan in the summer either. Looked like I couldn't escape cooking for the summer in any case, so the next item on my agenda was to find a place for the summer where I can comfortably cook. I could've stayed at co-op for the summer as well, but with ~10 people and one kitchen per house, I doubt it would work out nicely. After searching around on the internet, I found a nice house to share for the summer with a couple of other girl grad students. The AMS Marketplace is where I found this place, I think this is one of the lesser-known sites for some reason. The internal portal provides a list of sites to search for accomodation. In addition, check out craigslist.

A couple of suggestions regarding housing:

• While it might be tempting to try secure housing as early as possible, realistically there's no need. When it gets closer to the date of your intended move-in, more places become available, and at lower prices.
• If you look for a private apartment within a house, be sure to personally pay a visit, or have someone check it out for you. I've heard horror stories of apartments that are not suitable for human habitation.
• You may hear about various rules governing the application process for the grad residence - don't pay much attention to them. In the end, if you apply, you'd probably get in. I know people who applied the very last minute and still got a spot.

In other news:

I finished all prep materials. I'm finding that I'm way ahead of a lot of people in the class in this respect, I guess I have it easy, not having a lot to do for work in the past couple of months.

A whole lot of us met at The Tango last night, it was great fun. I heard that some people also went for poutine afterwards - gotta stay in the loop and join them next time!

Had our first pre-MBA workshop today, on "Basic Math and Spreadsheet Skills for Business Analysis". I was less up for the "basic math" and more for the spreadsheet skills, but the prof spent most of the time doing basic math (starting from 2 + 3 = 5), and went a little fast, in my opinion, with the spreadsheets at the end. I didn't think people needed to relearn math that's THAT basic (since we've all done our GMAT), so would've been nice to spend more time with the spreadsheets, or possibly extend this to beyond one day.

Tomorrow is Finance. I haven't bothered much with looking at my calculator, it's the only "prep" that I haven't done. I figured I'll do it once I have a better grasp of doing the same things on paper first.

Hello Kingston

It is officially May 2nd at this point. May 1st has been a long day - I moved, and fussed around forever to put everything in place and make my room look nice and cozy. I have a furnished room in a house shared with a couple of other people, so everything is immediately functional and I can focus on other things, such as:

• Still half a case to read.
• Study my new financial calculator.
• Locate nearest supermakets, banks, drug store, etc etc

I'll just end it here for now, and will write when I'm not as tired and ready for bed.

T minus 10 days

Since apparently countdowns are a popular theme around this time of year, I'm going join the club.

So I've finally started to pack. Haha. I'm a little delirious at this point. Still can't believe I'm doing this. But only ten days till I move, and my life is going to drastically change.

What's new:

• Signed loan documents and have student account set up with Royal Bank - ready to go financially.
• Finalized housing arrangements - made some atypical choices but I think it'll work for me. (There will be a separate post.) Have place to live for the next 12 months.
• Read all I have to read from the annoying business statistics book, and finished all Excel tutorials.
• Handed in all assignments given by the career centre - forgot if I mentioned this before, we basically had a couple of questionnaires to complete as well as a resume, so that the career centre will be prepared to work with us as soon as the program starts.
• Got a couple of books recommended by the career centre's reading list: Barbara Minto's The Pyramid Principle (but no, I did not exactly spend $125) and Marc Cosentino's Case in Point. The materials presented in these books coincide with my personal interest and intended career in consulting.
• Received schedule for the first week of school, which is similar to last year's schedule.

What's still outstanding:

• Two more chapters of the finance and accounting workbook to go.
• Three more papers/cases to read.
• Would like to get started on economics, since I have no background whatsoever.
• Serious packing!

Now back to the outstanding items.