Riz’s Rotman Blog

I was recently given access to the student part of R-world. I was pleasantly surprised by the extensive collaboration/portal/document features it includes. Some notable features:

• Academic and social event calendars
• Personal schedule
• People search
• Central repository for all course material
• Forums
• Workspaces (very useful, you can create a workspace and define people who have access to the workspace. It allows you to pass documents around and discuss issues etc.)
• Classifieds
• Resource booking (i.e. break-out rooms)

Although the interface is similar to the one I saw as in the earlier in the “accepted student” version of R-world it appears that all the components used in the “student” version are totally different. Things are more modular/organized/prettied up. It appears that most of my previous issues have been resolved.

I would post a screenshot but it would take a lot of work to blank out all the information I want to keep private. I might post one later.

Note: It would appear that “R-world” has been renamed to “Rotman world” (that or it was always Rotman World but I never realized it).

Yesterday was the “Taste of the MBA” day (link to Google cache). The idea was to give students an overview of what the MBA will provide and the types of things that we will be learning. I found it really fun and interesting. It was also very well planned an executed—kudos to Nadia for all the work.

After the events quite a few of us made it out to the bar and just hung out. There are a lot of really, really, really smart and fun people in the class. I’ll admit, I drank a little too much too but I made it to my 8:30.

Today I attended the first of the pre-courses. I’m going to reserve judgment on the courses until I’ve had a chance to see how the courses impacts my ability to take the term courses. What I will say is that I feel the pre-courses are helping me to get back into the school/learning mindset.

Today was my 2nd last day of work. Today I exchanged goodbyes with the senior architect—someone who’ve I’ve worked very closely with for the last 10 months.

Everyday for the last week I’ve felt like I’ve deconstructing the life I’ve built in Kingston these last 6 years. Each evening I feel like a few more bricks of my life have been removed and nothing is being built to replace it. It is unbelievably saddening.

I’ve already said goodbye to many of my friends, now many of my coworkers, soon my entire life will disappear and all that will remain is a van full of furniture and my ambitions for the future.

There is no real point to this post. I just felt that it is important to note how difficult it is to tear down the life you’ve built in order to start something totally new. I know many other students have it worse—some are moving around the world, to a country where no one speaks their native language—but I imagine that the experience of departing is similar.

Saturday will be the last day that I call Kingston ‘home.’

I just “finished” the online finance course. I say “finished” because I fast-forwarded through most of it. Here are my impressions:

1. If you know nothing about markets, interest, math, or excel, there is value in taking the course.
2. The professor did a very good job of presenting the material.
3. The course has a lot of info about things that we are obviously going to learn in the core finance course and (I feel) should not have been tested material in the initial “tests” we were given to determine if we should take the finance pre-course.
4. I would have learned just as much and been a lot happier with a list of topics, a quick set of formulas, and a link to a free excel tutorial. Basically, for me, I just needed a refresher on some of the concepts I had forgotten since my undergrad math/stats course.
5. Thankfully this was an online course, I was able to fast-forward through most of the things I already knew.

I’ll have a better idea of the value of this course once I actually start the program. I’ll post my impressions then.

Right now I hope that the other two (non-online) pre-courses will provide me with more. Just to save you upper-years some time: I know, I know… you told me so.

P.S. I move to Toronto in a week!