Turkey and MBA's

For those of you Canadians who may be coming to Toronto but have family near by, a tricky decision comes at Thanksgiving. What is traditionally a relaxing holiday, in undergrad is usually before or after a couple of midterms (ie some stress but manageable), and when working means one less day of the week.... becomes a "fake holiday" and hopefully you get to eat some turkey.

I have family in Ottawa, and while I really did want to see them, I also had to manage the balance of getting a lot of work done this weekend. You see, the whole Wednesday off thing, means that holiday Monday's classes just shift to Wednesday, so its not a lighter week, just more work to do in less time.

Plus, I have to mention, we have a paper due on Thursday and three midterm, two finals and a paper due next week. Now - hopefully we are all caught up and totally on top of things and have long since written amazing A + papers, mastered every bit of course material and are prepping for some light review next weekend in order to get straight A's on our exams.

One thing the Rotman MBA stresses is understanding that we see the world through our own eyes, and it is not reality, but our own reconstruction of reality. So in theory that model is entirely possible. If you are that student, I beg of you, please tell me (and my peers) how you do it. Because the general pulse i am gathering (and feeling myself) is that:

1. Hopefully paper number 1 due Thursday has a complete draft, with a couple of edits and reviews to ensure strength in content, for a quick re-read on Wednesday and then submitting the final paper with plenty of time for technical difficulties. (most of my colleagues are comfortably on this one)

2. Ideally - paper number 2 due next Tuesday has a healthy outline, maybe the workings of a introduction and some sketching of how you are going to build and rebuild the paper a few times. (some of my colleagues are well beyond this stage- but I bet most are just about here)

3. Course material - each exam will have different levels of comfort for each student, depending on their own strengths, education and how much that class has caught their attention to date. We don't really know all the details, and are relying a little too heavily on conjecture from second years to determine whats the most scary exam and which ones should be more manageable.
(most of us are focusing on one or two classes - Econ and Accounting for me - that we feel farthest behind on, but have the most potential to be successful if we get caught up)

Keep in mind, that the pace of these classes are much more rapid than anything you'll have experienced (likely) so getting behind in reading by two classes (like two lectures, not weeks) can mean you are behind 2 or 3 chapters.

The quizzes to date are a good way to force us to stay on top of things, but we have been warned (and so I pass the warning on to potential incoming students) the quizzes are not necessarily indicitive of the exams.

This week is the last week of classes - and then we have exam week, I will be sure to post some overall thoughts on Q1 next weekend, while they are fresh in my mind....