Module 3 Continued

So it's the weekend! Not that it means much, except for some modest sleep-in tomorrow.

We had Tuesday off, which was nice, but the other section had the Monday off, which means they had a long weekend. We had a big individual HR paper due on Thursday ("big" in the sense that it's 50% of the course mark), and for most people it required intensive effort from Monday night to Wednesday night, because we hadn't had much time for it until it was upon us and we had to get on with it. I'm sure most of us were very grateful for the Monday/Tuesday off, I spent almost the entire day exclusively on this assignment.

But not exactly exclusively. We squeezed in some time this week for Business Decision Modeling, both the final assignment and the big term project. In addition, we had an entire day of BDM class today (notice it's a Saturday). The upside of having a class on Saturday is that we get free lunch and Yuri let us out half an hour early.

The accounting project is ongoing and people are really getting into their assigned sections of the project, which take quite a bit of time. I'm not sure if I actually talked about what this project was about, basically we need to read two annual reports and compare them, and write a report. It doesn't help when each annual report is over 100 pages in length.

The second microeconomics assignment is due next week and our team is meeting tomorrow to discuss it. We'll also be discussing a presentation for HR that we'll be doing on Monday. So yeah, not much of a weekend.

Wednesday was full of career sessions, ending with a formal dinner when we all dressed up and were told things like which way to scoop our soup in the bowl. The image management and communications sessions were also very good.

Last night we had a networking event with one section of the Cornell-Queen's Exec MBA students, which was a blast, for me at least. It was good to meet other business students that are somewhat different from ourselves, and not to mention the value of an expanded network. The same event happens again next Saturday with the other section of the CQ students. According to one of Vault's surveys, the number one benefit of attending business school is your expanded business network, so ANY type of networking event is highly recommended.

Clubs, committees and the exec council have been trying to squeeze out time for their non-academic work. It's getting difficult.

I think I'm going to change my blogging strategy a little bit. Basically, sometimes in the middle of the week, something happens and I think to myself "I should blog that", but by the end of the week so much other stuff would've happened that chances are I don't remember all of them. Conversely, crazy as it may sound, I don't always have time to blog the entire week's happenings on the weekend. Therefore, I'm just going to blog little bits and pieces as I go along, and see how it works out.

The folks responsible for marketing our program are also organizing an "official" student blog, with contributions by many students in the class. Stay tuned!

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.

Statistics, Economics, Kingston Venture Tour

Appleseed's week

"Intense" is definitely the word to summarize the week. My perception of time is very confusing right now. Sometimes things are so intense that I'm totally unaware of time passing. At the same time, because everyday is so packed, at the end of the week I usually feel like I've lived a month.

We didn't need to go back to class after the stats quiz, which was excellent because it provided me with the only time slot in the entire week when I could make the visit that I needed to make to the health centre. The two assignments (and the one coming up on Wednesday) had been a lot of work, but also great opportunities for good discussions and to learn from fellow team members. We could've probably completed the assignments individually, but the quality would be nowhere near what we produced as a team.

I am again scrambling to find time to read economics, which I will do right after I finish writing this. Ramzi from last year's class talks about this week's courses here, and I especially agree with what he said about Professor McHale. Hence, the lectures themselves are fairly difficult for me to understand, and as someone who can usually do without reading textbooks, I found it a must to read the books (which, by the way, are very well written) of this course.

On Thursday, we had our Kingston Venture Tour, which Appleseed talked about here. The setup was the same, and we definitely got to see some very cool companies and learned a great deal. The point four afterwards was at the grad pub for their trivial night, which I heard was great. That night I put together the economics assignment and went home to sleep instead, which I believe was the better option for my well-being at that point in time.

This week we also held the election for the executive council. There was a fair bit of competition for every position, and I heard that this was the first time ever when a proper private voting booth was set up. The elections committee really did a great job, and now everyone's looking forward to putting the exec council to work.

You can probably tell that in addition to scrambling for time for economics, I'm also scrambling for time I spend on this blog. I'm hoping to post every week(end-ish), and I have to say that having Appleseed's blog as a reference has made it much easier for me. ;)

First Week of Real Classes

Let me start by saying that last Saturday night we had a kickass transition event organized by members of last year's class, who sent us running all over Kingston on a scavenger hunt, which ended at a pub, where more fun activities happened.

This week has been a full-blown week, with classes 8:30-4:30 everyday and four assignments due. And we did it! Challenging as they are, I'm having a great time doing crush assignments (where you get the actual assignment after lunch, and you have from 4:30pm to midnight to finish it with your team).

Here's Appleseed's account of his week, and I just have a few things to add.

We did not end up getting home at 3am last night! Our team went home after we handed in the assignment at midnight, had a great night's sleep (much needed because of the combination of late nights and early mornings this week), and came for our presentation this morning after 11, which went very well.

I'm loving every moment of my time here at Queen's, even though sometimes it's just struggling to not fall asleep. The classes have been amazing, and I'm just constantly in awe of what excellent teachers the profs are, and what everyone in the class has to say from his or her own experience and perspective. It definitely promises to be one of the best years of my life.

I haven't heard anything official on starting up the .4 club, I'll wait and see. The election for the executive council is going to be very soon (Monday, if I'm not mistaken).

I'm going to go freshen up now for a wine and cheese this afternoon with alumni who graduated 5 and 10 years ago. For the rest of the weekend, I'll squeenze in as much reading for economics next week as possible. I've wanted to read some economics before I came to Kingston, but never ended up doing it. I've heard that the prof is such a pro on the subject that the basic concepts are just second nature to him, so it'll be challenging for those of us who never did anything on the subject.