Week 38: Electives - Block A (con't)

Week 38 has ended. Winter is still in full swing, but it did warm up for a few days. However the temperature has dropped again.

All the courses are in full swing. As we are all discovering some are more work than others. The finance course on corporate valuations is more than a lot of work. This week saw us put in some very serious hours with a lot of people working on their team assignments until 2 AM to hand them in at 8 AM on Friday. I definitely know CAPM, DCF, Consultant's, FSASVM and many other valuation methods better than I ever thought possible after completing this assignment.

The Marketing course seems to have a lot of reading, but almost all the learning takes place in class. I'm not in the course, but from what I hear most people are enjoying it and the work load in fairly low when compared to the finance course.

The Strategic Leadership course is the other elective I'm taking. It is pretty good, but there is a fair bit of reading if you want to stay ahead of it. In addition we have had to do some self reflective assignments which aren't necessarily difficult, but I have always found these types of exercises challenging and therefore have had to invest significant time.

The Financing New Ventures course started with a bang, from what I have heard, but since the drop date it hasn't been as engaging. Apparently the instructor for this course is also teaching the cohort of students from the "Cornell-Queen's MBA" program and therefore hasn't been able to properly prepare material for the students taking this class in the "Full-time MBA" program. I haven't been able to confirm it, but some of the students mentioned that earlier in the program they were told the "Cornell-Queen's MBA" program gets priority for professors and resources because the school is trying to ensure the quality perception of the students graduating from that particular program. The end result is that other course for other programs suffer. I will have to keep asking around to see if this continues.

The class is still keeping up with point fours. This week we hit up the outdoor skating rink at Victoria park. Those of us with skates brought them and everyone else when and rented skates. A lot of people came out and I was very surprised to see how many "first time skaters" were out! We also had some sticks and pucks around to get a shinny game going. To day one of our classmates has secured his parents house just outside of Kingston for a day of skating and tobogganing. Should be a blast even if the temperature has dropped.

Overall people are finding the course load not as heavy as the first part of the program, unless they are the small minority of us who decided to take the finance course. Also, people who have not secured a job are starting to get a little concerned. I know a few people who are starting to consider if they should be taking up their former employer's offer to return if they have one, despite the fact they entered the program specifically to make a change. With the economy on a downturn who knows where we will all end up working. All is not lost though, there is still several months until we graduate.