Alright! I have finally stopped procrastinating, and decided to update my blog. Yes procrastination is the reason. Believe it or not, I have had quite a bit of free time on my hands.
75% of the RSM Full Time MBA program is done. Terms 1-3, were essentially 1.5 years of education rolled into 7 months. A lot has happened in the last 7 months and fortunately, I seem to remember most of the important events. I would like to group them into two categories – Academic and Social. This post specifically deals with the academic part of the experience.
After the orientation and the initial welcome sessions (which included a session on Djembe drumming and Pub crawls), the program began with the Personal Leadership Development program, which essentially consisted of sessions on conflict management and the importance of communication networks in managing organisations. I found the latter particularly interesting as Dr. Karen Stephenson, in her Texas swagger, convincingly explained how Hubs, Gatekeepers and Pulse-takers shape the flow of information among different groups within the organization. We were also split into groups who would work together for the rest of the term. Mine consisted of Alex (Australian), Anna(Dutch/American), Yong (Singapore), Sharlina (Taiwan), and Hiroo (Japan). Every group was as diverse as mine!
There also were the Student Body elections. Those who have been reading this blog would be familiar with the fact that I am an entertainer par extraordinaire. Ergo, I successfully, contested for the President of the RSM MBA International Culture and Social Club.
Finally, we come to the subjects. Term 1 consisted of Organisational Behaviour (OB), Managerial Accounting (MA), Financial Statement Analysis (FSA), Quantitative Platform for Business (QPB), Marketing Management (MM) and Management Science (MS).
Professor Bill Collins handled OB very well, mixing theory with cases (which included the usual suspects such as Southwest Airlines) and some interesting anecdotes. I found OB to be very interesting. To be honest, the one thing I learnt about myself was that I found any subject analysing human behaviour very interesting. In fact I have developed a theory about a peculiar form of male behaviour based on my experiences with my fellow males over the years, but more on that later. Of course, this realisation is perhaps skewed by the fact that I got a perfect 4 for this course!
MA was handled by two professors from the Ivey School of Business – Prof. Mary Heisz and Prof. Murray Bryant, both of whom were very engaging lecturers. Prof. Bryant in particular effectively taught us key Accounting concepts, one of them through the means of this song (replace the title with Contribution). Add his enviable general knowledge in the mix and we had very entertaining three hours everyday! The key take-away from this course was how Accounting concepts could be used to make better managerial decisions. The final exam also reflected this as we got to apply the key learnings without indulging in too much number crunching! I personally enjoyed Prof. Bryant’s classes and I look forward to meeting him again in Term 4, as he will be handling Strategic Value Management, one of my chosen electives.
MS was interesting for engineers like me. It was a nightmare for those who weren’t! And the social awkwardness that we all came to associate with Prof Nishant Mishra only worsened the way we learnt it. However, as the term progressed, both the class and the professor warmed up to each other, and we realised that we had a lot to learn from him. Stuff like Monte Carlo simulations and Decision Trees have proved to be very useful to students (like me) who went on to choose Finance as their career concentration in Term 3.
How can I forget the QPB (Statistics) Professor Trevor Wegner, a man who was clearly in his late 50s and yet maintained an amazing physique (I mean that in a very heterosexual way). His unique hand gestures and vocal tones only made the class even more engrossing and entertaining. Those planning to attend RSM in 2012 will know what I am talking about. Of course, this course was mathematics intensive as well, and those with minimal or no math background found it a very heteroscedastic ordeal. But that’s where the cohesiveness of our class came into picture. Most of us chipped in to help out those who weren’t too comfortable. It was never a competitive atmosphere. It was great.
Finally, Marketing. Honestly, I found the subject to be quite fluffy. And the Prof Mike Ewing’s take on the subject only led to me not developing an interest towards anything related to marketing (though I still maintain a soft spot for marketing of hi-tech products, and therefore I have chosen that as one of my electives for Term 4). I am afraid I don’t have many fond memories of marketing classes, except for viewing some really interesting advertisements.
The subjects overall, were apt for a first term in MBA. A key part of the academic experience were the study groups. I must admit that despite being culturally diverse, academically, my study group was engineer-heavy. That meant that we did well in assignments related to Management Science. However, with Anna’s experience in interacting with different groups and organizations, thanks to her background in Royal Dutch Shell External Relations department, and Sharlina armed with a marketing background, we were also able to navigate around the more qualitative/subjective courses like Marketing and OB. Alex’s background in agro-businesses proved to be extremely useful for us when we were dealing with the second group assignment for QPB. However, there was one key challenge that our group faced. Not all among us gave importance to grades and that at times really reflected in the fact that our group in general was quite feedback averse, which meant that there was not much of continuous improvement taking place.
Exams were soon upon us. I managed to do well in most of them, although I must admit, I could have done better. I scraped through with a personally satisfactory cumulative GPA. I wish my study team for Term 1 were a bit more focused on grades. More on that in the second part of my thoughts on Term 1.
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