Riz’s Rotman Blog

It’s raining hard today and I had an 8:30. It took me almost an hour to get to school because the subway was packed. I had to wait for 3 trains, then my train just randomly stopped at Summerhill for 10 minutes, and Bloor station was a mess. Picture of a packed subway car and the people waiting for an empty enough train to get to work:

 In addition, have to get my butt in gear for school. Only 2.5 more weeks left… tired and pooped right now. I’m taking a star-trek+french fries+ketchup break and then it’s time to get to work…. mmmmm, ketchup. 

This is an issue I’ve been having recently… Rotman books all the breakout rooms for some event and leaves the students who have ACTUAL MEETINGS AND WORK TO DO no where to work. Given the tight timeline on assignments and the co-ordination issues of setting up a meeting with 6 busy people, it would be useful to not have to worry about having a room to work in. Picture for tomorrow’s room availability:
This is an issue that has been brought up many times and it looks like there is no real viable solution. I’m sure just about every other b-school has the same problem as well.

In conclusion: I know that events are important but at least leave us a few places to work–don’t just mass book everything.

I was asked by Paula to write up some words of wisdom for the Unofficial guide to Rotman. I’m also posting my answers on here. (some of these were brought up in my earlier tips)

Textbooks:

• Don’t buy them until you have to. The store seems to have more than enough textbooks so don’t worry about them running out. Reading them is also usually optional (Google is your friend).

Tips for Study Groups (what worked well/what didn’t work well):

• It sounds silly but MAKE A CONTRACT. Let me say that again MAKE A CONTRACT. Outline meeting rules, expectations for attendance, acceptable e-mail/phone times (e.g. no 1am phone calls), and standard meeting times/days.
• During the first week, after you get the due dates from all your courses, hold a group meeting. At the meeting draw a big calendar on the board and write out all the due dates. Now figure out how and when you’re going to finish all your work. It’s scary when you see all the stuff that’s due.
• Use survey monkey to create anonymous surveys of each group member’s performance. Do some 360 feedback after the group disbands to help everyone improve their work with the next group.

Tips on Courses:

• All courses – Always apply the “does this make sense” or “would a 10 year old laugh at me for this answer” test. It sounds funny but it’s really easy to get caught up in the process, tools, and terminology to produce a solution that would even get you kicked out of Schulich (Harsh Burn! ). Just think about answers for a bit and walk through the logic in your head before you move forward.
• Accounting – Le Yawn. (sorry, I have no words of wisdom here, just bite your lip and do what you gotta do)
• Economics – Very important for Strategy and other courses later on. The basis for a lot of future theory. The lectures are where it’s at so don’t skip class. Reading the book isn’t very useful before class but can be very useful after class.
• Ethics - Write your reaction paper’s early and choose topics that you have some personal experience with.
• Finance – Don’t split the cases up among group members, you’ll hurt yourself for the exam. The cases aren’t too long, every group member should do it on their own and come together to compare (and argue) about answers. This is the best studying for the exam you could ever do.
• Integrative Thinking Practicum – Gah! This class will eat your life if you let it. Focus on the mental model merging stuff they teach you and less about the details of your project solution. Hopefully they reorganize the course this year to make it easier for you to learn about model merging before you finish your slide deck for the project.
• Negotiations – Before you come in make a plan for how to approach the experiential exercises in a way to actually make you learn. For example, be really confrontational and keep info close to the vest for the first negotiation and then very cooperative and freely share information for the 2nd. Use what you learn from the first 2 to try a 3rd strategy for the next exercise..
• Operations – Pay attention in statistics. Engineering degrees help.
• Statistics – Make sure you know how the data was collected for your project if you don’t collect it yourself. This will save you hours (if not days) of rework. Don’t sweat the quizzes too much.
• Strategy – “Trust the tools.” Tim Rowley always says this and he’s right. Don’t go with your gut (yet).