Riz’s Rotman Blog

A few nights ago we held the annual Rotman No Talent Night. It’s a show put together by students where they show off their talent (or lack thereof). Just a note that it was loads of fun. Great jokes. Something to go to next year for sure!

This quarter is brutal. There’s a crapload of work but the material isn’t nearly as interesting. This is even worse than Q3. My thoughts on the courses:

•  Global Managerial Perspectives
  • Has some interesting tid-bits but there’s lots of reading and long lulls of boring talk.
  • Uses cases in an econ course?! Gah?!
• Operations Management
  • Lots of work. The case assignments are given when we haven’t fully learned concepts and you spend a bunch of time trying learn ahead. They’re trying to cram too much into this course, just about every class goes late.
  • Maybe it’s because I’m an engineer but I find the concepts unbelievably simple. I would, however, appreciate more proofs of the equations rather than just being told “trust me.”
• Integrative Thinking Practicum
  • The classes are useless so far. I haven’t really learned anything. There’s lots of hand waving.
  • The assignment is challenging and interesting but just adds to the loads of work.
• Leadership & Ethics
  • A sneaky trick to try and make you think you only have 4 courses this quarter but this class requires double the class hours than the normal courses and has double the work.
  • Ethics is interesting but I’m not sure what I’m actually learning.
  • Leadership has its moments but is usually very dull.

Any-who. That’s me complaining.

So Q4 has started with a bang. The main course of intrest is the Integrative Thinking practicum. The basic idea behind this course is as follows:

• Your project group becomes the executive team (CEO, CFO, etc.) of a firm.
• Your project group reports to a board of directors composed of business people from the Toronto area.
• Your objective is to write up a business plan and presentation to give to the board which is targeted towards getting some VCs to invest in your business plan.

That’s about it. You aren’t given anything else (save some random data which is just a mess). We have 3 weeks to do the whole thing along with all our other classes/commitments. It’s going to be a ridiculous amount of work but it sounds lots of fun.

The other courses seem pretty standard and I don’t have much to say about them yet except that the first ethics class was LOTS OF FUN! We discussed this Queen’s case.

The GBC elections are in a few days. I decided not to run for any of the positions despite strong encouragement from many people. Although being a social rep was fun I’ve become very discouraged by the lack of participation by my class. The workload and life outside of Rotman seems to put a severe damper on people doing anything social as a class; it feels like you’re pulling teeth every time you try to get people to go to an event. I figure I’ll just enjoy the events and help out when I can next year. To all who are running, good luck.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve posted and there are a few things to blog about WRT Q4 but I’m super busy right now (YES! It’s only the first week!). I’ll be sure to put some stuff up soon but for right now I’ll just leave you with a quote from David Ogilvy from the case I’m currently reading:

 Develop your eccentricities early, and no one will think you’re going senile later in life.

Right on.