Microeconomics, HR, The MBA Ultimate Challenge, and The MBA Bug

Last Sunday morning we had an MBA mini version of the amazing race, where teams signed up to complete a series of physical and mental challenges, ending with a BBQ lunch and prizes. Everyone who participated had a blast. The school really goes out of their way to try and make the MBA experience as fun as possible, and events like this are a big part of this experience, so it's definitely worth it to take part. These are the things that stay in your memory.

This week we kicked off the other two courses of the module: Microeconomics and HR. Microeconomics is taught by Professor Bo Pazderka, who's an excellent teacher and makes the material interesting and easy to understand. Up to this point there has been quite some overlap between the materials in this course and the previous module's economics course (supply/demand diagrams, elasticity, etc.), but for someone who's not very strong in the subject, it doesn't hurt to go through things a second time.

HR is being taught by Professor Shawna O'Grady, who also spent three extensive days with us on team building back in the first week. Shawna presented some interesting materials, and the class has also included a couple of mock interview prepared and conducted by students whose names were drawn out of a hat, which were entertaining to watch. Thus far we have covered recruiting and selecting talent and employee retention.

In addition we continued with our accounting and modeling courses.

For the past couple of weeks, more and more people have become sick, with either what's known as the "MBA Bug", or something else. Today we learned that the "something else" included something rather serious. The administration has been taking huge precautions in terms of having people stay home if they're sick and doing everything they can together with the faculty to ensure that those who miss classes don't miss too much. This includes videotaping all lectures, having profs run extra review sessions, and securing tutors. Desks in lecture halls are cleaned daily, and we're getting individual teamroom desks cleaned today. Hand sanitizers are everywhere. Hopefully we've really constrained the spread of the bugs.

Accounting, Modeling, Career Stuff, Plagiarism, Clubs, Movie Night

Module 3 began this week with major differences in the scheduling for the two classrooms. (More information about the classroom split can be found here, and we are indeed rotating quarters.) There are four courses in this module, my class had Accounting and Business Decision Models whereas the other class had quite a bit of HR/OB and not as much BDM. It is also where I start to notice major differences between this year's class and Appleseed's documentation of last years class.

Financial Accounting
We had professor John Moore for the warm-up, and he continues to be a great teacher. There were a few complaints about some of the first day's class being repeats of the warm-up, but they quickly disappeared by the next day. Besides, with a subject like accounting, it never hurts to listen to the lecture twice, unless you already knew it, in which case you wouldn't have gone to the warm-up anyway. I can't stress enough, for anyone who's coming to this program in the future, that if you have no background in the subject matter, it is very important that you read the accounting workbook before classes start. It took me some time to absorb the material, but now that I've at least read it, I can concentrate on doing more practice problems as opposed to struggling to understand things.

Business Decision Models
"Business Decision Models is taught by Yuri Levin and will cover optimizations models, simulation models, decision analysis and revenue management&dynamic pricing. So far this course has been comprised of symbolic logic with basic math that we then turn into models in excel and use "solver" to complete. Yuri is quite interesting and has a very strong understanding of the material."
- Appleseed's blog (he didn't have this course until module 5)

Career Advantage Program
On Tuesday we had a whole day of career stuff: networking presentation in the morning followed by students giving "pitches", and feedback on those pitches. In the afternoon we had an "industry panel" with whom there were also "networking opportunities" afterwards. Overall I found it useful because there's a lot of information on consulting. On the other hand, those who don't particularly want to do consulting or finance, and don't have a clear goal in mind, will likely need to do more research on their own.

Plagiarism Session
This morning we had a 2-hour session on plagiarism. It was presented by Professor Steven Moore and was far more interesting than most of us thought it would turn out to be, with a lot of good information too. I won't elaborate here, because then it wouldn't be as interesting. I will simply give kudos to professor Moore for making a great session out of what would normally be a boring subject.

Clubs
This week most of the clubs met and had their elections for the club President/VP/etc. People have some very good ideas about what they want to do for the clubs, and we're eager to see them in action.

Movie Night
Last night's point four was a movie night in no other than our regular classroom. There was a great amount of junk food and it was nice to do something in the classroom other than having a class. We watched Russel Peters' Red White Brown, and half of Wedding Crashers before the projector screen crashed on us. It was a good time for me to stop, because I made it home just in time for my 8 hours of sleep. Some people went out to a pub later on and stayed quite late.

This weekend will be full of modeling assignment / accounting problems / economics and HR readings. Prioritizing is definitely of vital importance.

End of Module 2

Appleseed's post

This week we wrapped up the module 2 courses, and had the economics exam on Thursday and stats final quiz on Friday. The fact that they were both open book made it significantly easier for me, and I'm already starting to dread the exams for the next module, at least one of which is explicitly stated as closed book.

After the quiz on Friday morning, a lot of people started getting out of town, myself included. Several carloads of Torontonians went back home for the weekend, and a few cars headed for Montreal, where it's either home or just a nice place to spend a free weekend in.

Next week many of the clubs are holding elections for their excecutives. The next module consists of four courses and spans over six or seven weeks. There are LOTS of readings for the human resources course, which I should be doing right now.

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. ;)

Statistics and Economics

This week has been very different from the previous week. Appleseed recounts his week here.

I have almost exactly the same experience, and it was definitely a switch of gears as far as course contents are concerned. I should really read more of the economics textbook - it's difficult to find time to read everything!

Had fitness assessment done. Had first meeting with a career centre lady, which was very helpful - I'm looking forward to keep working with her towards making myself more presentable.

The social aspect has also been going strong, although I've missed out on more than a couple of social activities. I naturally need lots of sleep, so I'm almost either awake and doing something school-related, or asleep. Hopefully I can find a way to fix it somewhat so that I can be less anti-social. :p

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.

Orientation Week

This week is the official start of the program. It's been so overwhelming that it feels like much more than a week has passed. I am tempted to just link to Appleseed's experience of his first week here and skip writing about it myself, but there are a few things I would like to add.

Appleseed's first week

I too am very tired from this week, but unlike Appleseed, I don't get to sleep in tomorrow, because some of us have our team facilitator meetings at 9am. Queen's assigns each team a professional facilitator, and a brief introduction can be found here. I am truly impressed of the amount of effort put into the two distinguishing factors that sets Queen's apart from other business schools: the team approach and the level of personalization. Teambuilding is such a conscious activity here, there is so much time (and money) invested into getting our teams to the high performance level. I'm very excited and look forward to working with my team. In addition, although I've heard a lot about the personal service that the students receive here, it's not until I experience it myself that it truly dawned on me. I'm sure everyone really appreciates having everything delivered to our desks (binders/textbooks/documents/gift baskets!), and it just impressed us to no end when one of the ladies in the program office sent us all an email, asking the six people who bought their textbooks from the bookstore to bring their receipts to the office to get reimbursed. How did she even know? I would never have imagined being a student and receiving this level of service.

I would write more, but I've written the highlight and I should really get back to my readings for next week. It looks like next week is going to be one of the busiest weeks of the entire year: it's the first week of "real" classes and we have four assignments due, with a team presentation on Saturday. Go team!