Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Zombie Girl

This semester is so busy that I don't even have time to get my bangs trimmed! I think I'll have to grow out my bangs, unfortunately, until this craziness calms down.

At the moment, most of my focus is on studying for Thursday's Corporate Finance quiz. Fortunately, I have truly talented students to work with as I mentally prepare for this test of my mathematical abilities. I was at school from 8:30 this morning until 9:30 this evening, making today one of my longest days in the HEC building. I hope all of my hard work pays off!


In Marketing, we talked about this video with Zombie Boy. Even though I've already seen the video, I was pretty impressed that my professor knew about Zombie Boy!

Monday, November 28, 2011

Path to Success

Corporate Finance, you will be my enemy these next 11 weeks but hopefully I will conquer you! Today I had the opportunity to study with two different classmates and solve the three questions that left me completely flabbergasted. At least I have a good basis to study for Thursday's quiz now!


This afternoon, we had an information session with Michael Wybo, Director of the MBA program. Topics of discussion were:  elective courses, course registration, Campus Abroad, and supervised consulting field projects. I'm trying to decide if I will apply for the Campus Abroad in Russia; I probably will, but in the meantime I will not look forward to writing two application essays.

After the info session, I met with Carine Nahman, HEC's MBA Recruitment Officer, since I am interested in working in her line of work. It was absolutely fantastic getting to speak with her and she offered some very helpful insight. Since our backgrounds are so similar, I feel reassured that I am on the right career path.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Back to Reality

All good things must come to an end. I had an awesome time this weekend with friends in town from LA and Toronto. Our activities included drinks out on the town, backlight bowling, board games, and a visit to the Dinosaurs Unearthed exhibit at the Montreal Science Centre. Sadly, the weekend has passed and only the memories and photos remain.




Today it was back to reality with some IT and Finance readings. We have a Finance quiz on Thursday, so I did some practice exercises today and actually got the majority of the questions right. As for the ones that I couldn't figure out, I'm hoping to review those with one of my classmates tomorrow morning.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

City Zen

My life is insane! People had told me that P1 is hard, P2 is worse, and P3 is the worst. I honestly did not even believe that could be possible. I thought everyone was exaggerating. But it is seriously true. It's not feasible to go straight from P2 exams into the first week of P3 and not already be behind within only a couple days. The crazy thing is that the profs are requiring us to do a lot of frequent readings and assignments, to be on top of everything every week.


After class today, I met with a friend of a friend to discuss job opportunities at McGill. It was great to have a chance to hear the truthfully good and bad sides of working there. We'll see where this might lead!

When I got home, I had a piece of mail waiting for me from Citizenship and Immigration Canada. I was getting so jealous that Jimmy, one of the other MBA students, had his Canadian citizenship ceremony today, and I still had not heard from CIC. Fortunately, this was the news I was waiting for - my citizenship oath will be in two weeks!

Round 3

Yesterday was our first day of class for P3 and fortunately we started off on a good note with Marketing Management and Strategic Management. Our other courses for the semester will be Globalization and the Firm, Corporate Finance I, and Information Technologies.

For Marketing Management, we have two written team assignments and one oral presentation. I'm looking forward to my team's first meeting on Thursday to discuss our company or brand for the assignments. I've sent my team my brainstormed list already and I hope they see this as a positive step, rather than being frightened of my proactive nature.

Last night, I had the opportunity to go to Else's with my friend Frank (dark and poorly lit photo below). Even though it's so hard to make time during my busy school schedule to see my friends, it is completely rewarding when I do. I feel bad that I am so unavailable for everyone this year (I can't even attend my friend's wedding in July, since it is the weekend of final exams!), but hopefully the experience will all be worth it in the end.


On a separate note, today is the first official snowfall in Montreal! The streets look like a Dickens village. Photos from my apartment balcony below.


Monday, November 21, 2011

United We Stand

Even though we only just finished our last final yesterday, we were expected to attend a mandatory conference at 8:30 this morning with Thomas Bowler, Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Organization for the United Technologies Corporation. I feel like it was probably an excellent networking opportunity for those who are interested in working in the field. Unfortunately, I'm not one of those people and I am still hoping for career opportunities that are less corporate. Oh well.

During the conference, we got emails telling us about our new team formations for P3! Although I am sad to depart from Team E (aka Team Excellent or Team Baba Ghanoush), I'm looking forward to see what the new dynamic has in store. It will be interesting to see how things change, going from a four-person team to a group of five. In the meantime, here is last night's photo of Team E formally ending our 13-week relationship at Candi Bar.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Finally

It is finally time to update my blog! I can't believe all that's happened in these past three weeks. During the weekend of Week 4 during P2, I was a bridesmaid in my friend Shari's wedding. It was a lot of fun and I'm so glad I had the opportunity to go home to see my friends and family and wish Shari and Mike the best in their new wedded bliss.


After the wedding, though, the moment I got back, I was rushed back into the reality of Weeks 5 and 6 of P2. I worked on my team's paper for Managing within Organizations, and met with my group to work on our oral presentations for that assignment, as well as for Ethics and Governance.

Once those were securely underway, it was all focus, all the time on finals. Just a couple hours ago, I officially finished my last final for P2. Four finals in three days. The only thing I have left to do now is a final edit on my individual Ethics paper and then I'm officially done with P2.

I'm looking forward to going to Candi Bar tonight! I definitely need a drink to relax and calm down from this intense finals period. These past three days, I've had an annoying eye twitch, which I've learned can develop from lack of sleep and lots of stress. Uh, yeah, well that explains it!

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

In the News


There were really cool things in the news today! First of all, there was an article that talked about why corporate America needs to train its women to be future leaders. Okay, so it was an article about Girl Scouts, but still, it emphasized the point that more women need to be in executive positions!

Also, there was an article about Pixar, which was timely considering that our Managing within Organizations reading for the week is about Pixar. The article is a perfect thing to note during our class discussion, especially since it points out Pixar's unique culture.

Lastly, there was an ethics-related article on the Harvard Business Review Blog Network. It perfectly sums up the theme for Week 6 of our Ethics and Governance class, which will be coming up quite soon. The article even mentions Google, which is the company my team will be investigating!

As for my day today, I had a meeting with Genevieve Cote in the Career Management Services and had an AEMBA 5@7 where we discussed our student association objectives for the year.