Week 41: Electives - Block B (con't)

Week 41 has ended and I find myself in Quebec City on Valentine's Day. My wife and I decided to take a trip to this frozen wonderland to see Carnival (2nd link), the ice sculptures, the ice castle and get a picture with Bonhomme. Also, this weekend is a long weekend. With most people caught up on their assignments and reading they have decided to use the extra time to take a trip or continue job hunting.

The Strategic Leadership paper was due this past Wednesday. Finally that course has been put to bed.

Global Strategy saw us involved in several in class discussions on how subsidiaries should be run and what the roll of the home and host countries plays. The professor also came back with the results of a feedback exercise for use in the class about what was going well and what was not. This was very helpful and I think other professors should look into doing something similar. This week we submitted the final individual case analysis assignment. This just leaves the final team research paper due at the end of this next week.

The Dynamic Pricing course has been a fair bit of work. This past week has seen a lot of work put in by the students. In addition, I here the classes are bit overwhelming for some as the professor makes everything seems quite easy, but when they go to do it themselves it is actually quite complex.

Risk Management continues to be very similar to the Finance Strategy course. One individual has found the material quite similar to the level 2 CFA material he is studying. Combined with the other finance courses this will likely compliment his studying well and put him in a good position to write the exam this June.

Not too much has changed with the project courses, Consulting or New Venture projects. In addition the TriColour Venture Fund was supposed to be getting going, but it seems as though the professor, Elspeth Murray, is a little busy. The students are hoping for some sort of syllabus and timeline in the near future.

This week for fun the class had the point four at the Grad Pub so we could compete in Trivia Night. Some people are taking trips this weekend and those staying behind are looking to take in some curling. Because of the very warm weather in Kingston this past week all the outdoor skating rinks are pretty much melted. Also, we said goodbye to two more of our classmates as they are headed on exchange to the Indian School of Business.

One more week down and one more week until this block of electives is over.

Week 40: Electives - Block B

Week 40 has seen us start the next block of electives, Block B. The weather remains cold, but we have had a few "warmer" days. In addition Kinston has "feb fest" on, which is the city's winter festival with a wide variety of activities to take in (ice sculpting, figure skating, old-timers hockey game, etc.).

Although Strategic Leadership ended in Block A, most of us are still finishing our interviews to write our papers. My colleague found a particularly interesting person right here in Kingston to interview thanks to an article in the local paper. James Hultquist-Morrissey purchased "Zoom" airlines and plans to turn it around. He was a pretty interesting person to meet. The paper is due by the middle of next week and then this course will be done. It is nice to have the extra time, but it has added to the work load of all the new courses.

Risk Management is being taught by Louis Gagnon who is one of Queen's more popular professors with the media as of late. He specializes in derivatives, credit swaps and other forms of financial risk management, which is what the course is about, and given the current economic crisis these topics have been of interest in the media. Everyone is liking the course a lot, but there is quite a bit of work if you don't understand what is being taught since you need to spend extra time studying. From what my sources tell me this course has been a deeper look at the topics covered in the Financial Strategy course in the core of the program.

Global Strategy is being taught by Doug Reid and it is challenging. His teaching style is a little more toward the Socratic method where he helps facilitate a discussion and the works to pull the content out of the students. The professor expects a lot of readings to be completed for each session and you need to have them done to ensure you can follow the topic of discussion. In addition, this is also my first class with a large number of our new exchange students and I am finding their unique perspectives very interesting and educational.

It is also my understanding that the two project courses, New Venture Project and Consulting Project, are also underway. These courses are a little more "self directed" and have students work on an idea they have once the professor running the course approves it. I have also heard of a few students submitting their business plans for their new ventures to competitions. If they win they will have some seed money to see if they can grow these ideas into viable businesses. Some of them seem like they are really strong ideas with good business plans to back them up. Last year a student was able to win several of these competitions and use the money to continue moving her idea of starting a caviar farm closer to reality (see this news story for more information).

Fun stuff going on...this week a large group from the class went skiing at Tremblant for a few days. The point four this week was at "the Ale house" and was a joint venture with the grad student society for a valentine's day themed party. (Aside: There has been a lot of talk about the class leaving the AMS and joining The Society of Graduate and Professional Students.) Last Sunday's "learn-to-curl" outing was so popular there are plans to return next weekend. There are also a couple of networking events this week where our full-time class has had the opportunity to meet the Cornell-Queen's MBA students.

The search for full-time employment has been ramping up for everyone. A lot of us are feeling a bit under the gun with graduation just over 3 months away. The current economic condition is not helping, but there are still people getting interviews and finding jobs. However, our numbers are definitely down from pervious years.

I had a conversation with the director of our program and spots for next years class are filling up fast! 64 spots are filled compared with 32 at this time last year! There has been some talk about how to accommodate more students (ie 2 classes of 50 students), but who knows what the administration will decided. I do know that they will not let anything compromise the quality, which is good for the students, but it puts the administration in difficult situation. I think expanding the program to that size would be ideal. It would still be small enough that everyone would know each other, but the increased size would allow Queen's to attract speakers and employers that require a larger audience before they will come a school. Only time will tell what they decide. (Update: article from The Star (Toronto) on rising MBA applications in general)

(My apologizes to the visiting student whom I talked to on Friday. I did try to find you afterwards, but you disappeared. If you have any other questions please e-mail me and I would be happy to answer them to the best of my ability.)

Week 39: Electives - Block A (con't)

Week 39 has ended and so has Block A, the first block of electives. It has been snowing quite a bit this week. Feels like at least 2 feet has fallen in the past couple of days.

The Marketing course is over. Most people seem to have liked it. It was nicknamed "story time" since the professor liked to share his learnings with the students through stories.

The Strategic Leadership course is over. It was pretty good, but most of us felt a lot of the topics covered would have benefited all and should have been covered in some of our career planning sessions earlier in the year. The course was nicknamed "group hug" since the instructor like to frequently reference the "good" feeling of hugs.

The Financing New Ventures course is over. Everyone I talked to seemed to have a different opinion, but overall people liked it. The biggest comment was that the course was an interesting split between structured and unstructured delivery. The course required a structured curriculum, but the guest lecturer who delivered it was a very unstructured teacher. Mainly because he was a VC from industry and not a professor from the halls of academia.

The Corporate Valuation course is over. Everyone found this course to be extremely demanding, but we all agree we learned more than a ton. Last night almost everyone was working in their groups well past midnight to complete the final case. There was even a few individuals who did not sleep at all and still made it to class at 8 AM. As if that wasn't enough, we still have a review session tomorrow and a test on Sunday morning. Looks like those of us in this course will not be letting loose this weekend.

The school has also picked the team to attend the UCLA case competition. Queen's placed in this competition last year and is returning again this year at the beginning of April. To ensure a solid team is ready, the faculty hand picked the team.

The class is still planning several fun events coming up. Fit-to-lead is going to be taking a bunch of us curling on Sunday (yes, this is during Superbowl, but you can't have everything). Furthermore, there was a winter BBQ at the Dutch exchange students' place last night, a social gathering at another classmates pad tonight and likely an "I'm done Corporate Valuations" gathering on Sunday. This might seem excessive to those on the outside, but really it is about getting together with some of our colleagues who are leaving us for exchanges next week. In particular our Social Coordinator is headed to Mannheim and I'm sure everyone will miss her.

Next week we are starting Block B of the electives. There is some work and reading to be completed, but it all seems very reasonable after the workload that Corporate Valuations required.

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.

Week 37: Electives - Block A

Week 37 is ending and we are seeing the end of our first week back in classes. Kingston has taken a turn for the colder as temperatures have been dropping to -25 C (-13 F). I'm guessing the exchanges students, all 21 of them, that have joined us are finding the temperature a little surprising.

The electives that are currently being offered in this first block are:

• Corporate Valuation & Mergers and Acquisitions
• Marketing Strategy
• Financing of New Ventures
• Strategic Leadership

I'm currently in Corporate Valuation & Mergers and Acquisitions (taught by Bill Cannon) and Strategic Leadership (taught by Tina Dacin). Both are good courses. The Corporate Valuation & Mergers and Acquisitions course is quite a bit of work, but I am learning a lot. The Strategic Leadership course is a little more relaxed, but there is still reading that needs to be completed.

From what I have heard the Marketing Strategy course taught by Ken Wong is pretty good. People are enjoying it and the work required isn't too demanding. The same is true of the Financing of New Ventures course taught by Elspeth Murray.

The exchange students seem to be friendly and settling in nicely. Not all of them are from other MBA programs and therefore are only taking certain select courses. I'm sure they all had a blast at this weeks point four which was at a local bowling alley.

In addition, I have heard that some of our classmates have had some interesting adventures already. One in particular had to vacate the dormitory they were living in when a fire was started in the parkade.

Overall the work load is considerably less compared to the pace prior to Christmas. A lot of people are looking forward to taking some of their free time to look for work. In addition everyone seems happier and more relaxed.