Chocolate Dreams

Last night I had a nightmare that I was about to take one of our open book, open computer final exams but my backpack was gone and I had nothing to go into the exam with. Fortunately, I woke up before full panic attack mode set in.

Happily, I completely forgot about my nightmare once I dove into my delicious brunch at Le Cartet this morning. Interestingly, they sold chocolates from Chocolats Genevieve Grandbois (the company our HEC Montreal Challenge consulting project is for) and Weiss chocolate! I should probably mention that Le Cartet had one of the best brunches I've ever eaten in this city. Speaking of morning meals, I recently read that dessert for breakfast can help you lose weight. This seems like a cruel joke, especially to someone who will soon be heading into a high-stress exam period.

It's hard to find a fine balance between managing schoolwork and taking the necessary steps for my post-MBA career. Today I took a break from school to apply to a job at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Job applications are so time-consuming! I just hope that spending time during the MBA program to apply for jobs isn't for naught.

To Russia with Love

Even though the weekend has only just begun, it's already been fun-filled! On Thursday night, we had a 5@7 at school (photos above), then a mixer with other Montreal MBA students at Newtown. It was great to see some new faces and hear about the different MBA experiences at McGill and Concordia.

Then, yesterday, I found out that I was accepted for the Russia Campus Abroad program with a $1500 Global Citizen Scholarship! I've already found a roommate for the trip and now I just have to work on booking my flights. The Campus Abroad in P7 is going to be an amazing experience!

In terms of schoolwork, this semester we have to read The Goal for our Operations class and I am slowly but surely making my way through this 300+ page book. It's really hard to focus, though, as I'm busy thinking about Russia, the end of P4 (22 days away, but who's counting?), March Break plans, and likely competing in a business proposal competition. At least I can't say that my life is boring.

Outside Involvement

Now I know why at least one of our professors has not yet released our grades. Our Globalization professor Martin Coiteux has been busy with a research study that shows that Quebec could soon be the poorest Canadian province - in only 10 years. Labor productivity, which seems to be the culprit in this study, was what we studied in Week 1 of our Globalization course. More information about the study can be found here.

We are slowly making our way through P4. At least we don't have any final exams in the month of February. We have one Corporate Finance II quiz next week, but fortunately, it's only worth 10%.

In other news, today I spoke with Julie Ricard, Business Development Manager at Concordia University's John Molson School of Business (JMSB), regarding joining the Association des MBA du Québec (AMBAQ). I have not yet committed to it, but I am pretty sure that I will accept the offer to become a volunteer with the organization. It is a great opportunity to network, get involved, and break into the wider academic community here. Before I get back to Julie, I will speak with others at school to see if anyone else might be interested in getting involved, too.

Chaos Theory

This is a really hard time of year to trudge through the MBA program. I think everyone is in need of sunlight, sanity, and an escape from the core courses. It doesn't help that we're already into our third week of P4 and yet we only have two final letter grades from P3. Usually our professors are much quicker to update our final grades.

My group has an HR assignment that's due on Thursday, but we've only barely started. Actually, the way that my team works is quite amazing. We seem to do things in pure chaos, but somehow in the end produce successful results. It's a style I'm not quite used to, but for P4 I have decided to go with the flow. Anyway, our HR team assignment demands that we compare the HR strategies of Zappos and Novo Nordisk. It was quite timely that I caught this article about creating brand evangelists through social media, and of course, Zappos is heralded as an ideal.

There are some companies/names that always come up in the MBA program:  Apple, Amazon, Zappos, Southwest Airlines, etc. However, I was caught off guard when our Strategy professor noted the film Pink Ribbons, Inc. today! A National Film Board (NFB) movie being mentioned in an MBA class. Wow! I was temporarily reminded of the good old days studying Cultural Studies at McGill.

Pretty in Pink

I love documentaries. This morning, I went to see a fantastic documentary called Pink Ribbons, Inc., which exposes the truths behind the pink ribbon breast cancer campaigns. I should also mention that I had previously worked with one of the writers Nancy Guerin back when I interned for the children's television show Mystery Hunters. From a business perspective, the film did a great job of showing the effects of capitalism, globalization, CSR, and bottom line demands.

When it comes to having a global perspective, The Globe and Mail reported that university leaders want more Canadians to study abroad. In about six days, I should find out if I've been accepted for the Russia Campus Abroad program for P7. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

In the meantime, I am happy to report that my team has been accepted for the P8 Supervised Consulting Field Project. Even though the project isn't until July, the deadline to have our teams accepted is February 17, so I'm glad that we were able to comply with the criteria (two Canadian citizens and two non-Canadians, multicultural, and diversified academic and professional backgrounds) and be in agreement regarding the type of project we'd like to work on (Marketing). Too bad we're not quite at P8 yet!

Weak Week

What a week! This was my first full week of P4 classes, and WOW, it was seriously brutal. During the majority of my Operations class, I tried to figure out who my professor reminded me of. I finally figured it out:  William H. Macy.

Thankfully, I already have plans throughout the rest of the semester so I should be preoccupied with other activities besides school. I had previously thought that the HEC Montreal Challenge with the chocolate factory would save me this semester, but even that is turning out to be a disappointment. Four weeks left to go!

Case Competition

The bad thing about writing a blog is that, during times when I have the most to post, I have no time to actually update! Since I last posted, I have done the following:  completed my P3 final exams, celebrated with a bottle of Moet, received the case for my Rotman CSR case competition, trained for the competition, went to Toronto to compete, and started my P4 classes.

To elaborate on the competition, we received our case (The Clorox Company) on Monday the 23rd and immediately met at school to read the case and start brainstorming as a team. The entire week last week, we spent nearly every waking moment practicing, being coached, reforming our recommendations, etc. On Saturday, we presented our case at the University of Toronto (Rotman), but sadly, we did not make it to the finals. Since the winning team was competing against us in the first round, they were obviously so strong that we were knocked out from the beginning. We did, however, receive great feedback from the judges regarding our presentation; they simply did not buy our recommendations.

While in Toronto, I had the opportunity to meet up with my friend Aimee who watched the finalists with us. Then, later in the evening, we had dinner with another HEC Montreal case competition team that was returning from Ivey.

 
When all the fun and games were over and it was time to return to our new P4 classes, we had a rude awakening - we had to catch up. The bad news is that P4 seems to have the most uninteresting classes yet (HEC Montreal Challenge, Strategic Management II, Corporate Finance II, Operations Management, and Strategic Human Resources Management). The good news is that there are less than five weeks left until the end of the semester.