A Day (Or Days!) in the Life of a Second Year Rotman MBA

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A Day (Or Days!) in the Life of a Second-Year Rotman Student

by Sheila Quiroga

This article will be unfair. Every day in my student life in Rotman is completely different. However, one thing is the same across every day: I’m always busy. Let me get one sample of my busiest days. I must warn you that I’m one of the extreme students who like to do almost everything possible. People kept on asking me why do I do this and “kill” myself. Well, first of all, I’m from the Philippines, which means that my C$120,000 tuition fee costed a ton due to the exchange rate. Second of all, my personal tagline on FB is “Striving for Excellence”. I always remember a brother from my church who said that diamonds are crystals made of pure carbon that did well under extreme pressure. My background is nothing fancy, meaning I’m just a carbon hoping to become a diamond one day.

Note: Second year is all up to you to mold. You can choose to make this as the most chill part of your life or you can choose to overload yourself like what I did.

Leadership Development Lab

This is the best program so far in my MBA. I always leave this class de-stress, having a new perspective in life. The class allows you to explore your inner self and motivations while grooming you to become a leader or top manager. Nevertheless, this program only selects 50 students from all the students who apply. The course starts at 11:30AM-1: 00PM, and gives some written or practical homework, which are not graded. You have to be very responsible and accountable in this Lab.

Courses

A normal student is required to take four courses per term. However, there is an option to take an extra course for free every term. Extra course means that you still have to do all the course requirements and get a grade that will be reflected on your transcript, but the grade would not be included in the calculation of your GPA. I made Creative Destruction Lab as my extra course since it is worth 2 electives. I will discuss my previous term’s courses below:

1. Creative Destruction Lab

I have to meet my founder from time to time and visit him in his office to talk about strategy. There will be times that I have to do a pitch deck to get him investors and also build a website for him.

2. Capstone Course

This course asked for four hours every Friday for around a month. We were tasked to craft a strategy for Cineplex by using its data and conducting our own market research. Then, we had to present our deck to the manager of Cineplex after a month.

3. Service Operations Management

We were tasked to pick 4 case studies out of around 8 to write executive summaries. This was a very quant-heavy course, but this was my favorite lecture course in Rotman as I got a lot of insights in terms of operations. Joe Milner was awesome! I would schedule a one-hour meeting every Wednesday with my awesome teammates.

4. International Strategy

This course asked for journals and final papers. I would constantly read the textbook every other day and update my journals from time to time. The professor asked for creativity in all our submission, so I had to utilize both my creativity and Photoshop skills.

5. Real Estate Economics

This course demanded us to think further ahead of our time as our group tried to tackle the potential impact on the house prices in Toronto and in Montreal once the Hyperloop starts functioning. The course and the textbook were heavy on graphs, but I learned more useful things here than the Real Estate Investment course I took the term before. I scheduled meetings every other week with my teammates for the course deliverables.

6. Strategic Change and Implementation

I took this course as an intensive course during the weekends. I read the readings way before the previous term started, which really helped because there were a lot! Class participation was also the key here, so make sure you jot down notes while reading the cases. The class also asked for journals and a final paper. The secret here is to give yourself 15 minutes to write your journal after every class. I found it a lot more efficient and I remembered everything well.

Clubs

Business Design Club

I’m one of the three Rotman Design Challenge Directors this 2019. This event is the biggest design case competition, more info here: https://www.rotmanbdc.com/rotman-design-challenge/. This event took so much of my time and I felt that it was like a part-time job for me. There were countless meetings conducted, and I had to coordinate with multiple people to ensure everything works well. I would also have to design a majority of the marketing materials and ensure that everything is very organized.

Women in Management Association

As the Vice President for Careers and Partnership, I conceptualized the Creative Women event. During the last term, I had to constantly meet up with different club representatives to collaborate with them and ensure there is progress every week for the event. I also had meetings for WIMA twice a month.

Rotman Graduate Business Council

As the Communications Manager of GBC, I had to deliver newsletters every Sunday. I also had to update social media almost every day to post IG Stories. I also posted memes at the Rotman GBC page to make the first year students happy and know that they are not alone in their agony.

Lean Six Sigma Certificate

While doing all of these courses, I also had to work on my Lean Six Sigma project to get a certificate since I had to finish it by December 2018. I took this training from KPMG, in which a KPMG Partner was the one who directly taught us. It was one of the best training I had. For the actual project, I had to call the General Manager of Fresh City Farms from time to time to schedule meetings and also visit the warehouse. We talked to a lot of employees to know their perspectives and started a culture of collecting data. We then provided some recommendations that were implemented with the help and support of the GM.

Career

I did not have that much time to focus on my career-related tasks in the last term. However, I conducted coffee chats in the first month, in which I had to travel all the way to North York or Mississauga. Once in a while, I will apply to some jobs and revise cover letters for each. There will be weeks that I will be stressed due to preparation for interviews.

Survival Lifestyle

I only have time to cook during Fridays. Due to the convenient location and the fact that Exchange Cafe is monopolizing food services in Rotman, I usually buy food from the Exchange, which, to be honest, serves the worst food ever (based on my experience in life). To compensate for the lack of proper nutrients, I try to make myself not too fat by going for a swim for two days a week at around 8 in the morning at the Athletic Centre. I usually end my day by watching an anime and talking to my partner on the phone every night.

Although this article tries to show how my whole term looks like, I would make sure that I get to progress to each of this project every week. At first, you will think that you have a lot of time since you only have 4-5 classes on your term, but do not be deceived! All of those extra time will be occupied with endless meetings, readings, and home works. This required a lot of focus and discipline in my part.

Your kudos in this article will mean a lot to me and know I helped you in some way! Please leave some kudos!

This is a snapshot of my MBA life, but if you want to know more, please visit my MBA blog for my experience and tips in getting into MBA: https://wondersuite.blogspot.com

Hope you liked this article,
Sheila Quiroga
Wondersuite

Archived Rotman Discussion

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GyanOne · Answer

Excellent first-hand insight! If possible, please also cover the job hunt process and how to plan best for it at Rotman too.

bb · Answer

A Day (Or Days!) in the Life of a Second Year Rotman MBA

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