Week 46: Electives - Block D (t-minus 5 weeks)

Week 46 is over and spring has pretty much arrived. There is barely any snow left, but the temperature still continues to hover just above or below zero. This week I heard the familiar sound of Canadian Geese returning from their hiatus to warmer climes, which has always been a sign of the changing seasons for as long as I can remember.

With only 5 weeks left a lot of us are trying to coordinate our move out of Kingston and some people have started to pack-up their desks. The end seems to be coming way to quickly.

This week saw the class complete the first week of the penultimate block of electives. The courses offered are International Finance, Consumer Research and Managing Innovation.

The International Finance course this week has covered foreign exchange rates and international trade. Topics included how countries measure trade, decide on currency exchanges and the underlying arbitrage laws that keep everything in check. Although the math is very simple and the concepts are fairly straight forward, it is amazing how complicated this topic can get very quickly. The professor is pretty dry, but very knowledgeable and passionate about the topic. The workload is quite light compared to other finance courses. Couple of chapters and some cases to read for every class.

Consumer Research started off with a lot of bland theory, but has since picked up now that the class is focusing on the analysis of the data. Initially the course focused on how to design questionnaires (ie yes/no questions vs. pick one of five options vs. 1 to 7 scale for strongly agree to disagree questions). Then it focused on applying statistics to this kind of information with a lot of statistic theory. Now the class is bringing laptops to class and using a program called Systat12 to analyze the data. The professor is entertaining and has a dry sense of humour that the class is finding engaging.

Managing Innovation also started this week. I haven't been able to get an update from someone in this class, but I will and either edit this post or just include it in next weeks posting.

This week the point four was at Tir Nan Og, an Irish pub, for karaoke night. This was also the last evening with one of our classmates who is headed to France on exchange. A lot of the exchange students have taken this block off and have decided to travel. Some are going out to the west coast to Vancouver and others are headed to New York City. This weekend the MBA hockey team has their first playoff game and fit-to-lead has arranged a trip and tour of a "sugar bush", which is a maple syrup production site.

There are still a few prospective students coming for interviews. It is close to the start date, but apparently there is still room for a few more students. Strange to think that all of us in the program were in their shoes only a year ago.

On the job front, I am aware of two of my classmates that have received offers and are in the process of negotiation the final details. Both are good offers that represent a step-up from their previous positions with good compensation. This has been encouraging to a lot of us and is proof that even in economic conditions such as these there are opportunities to be had.