Submissions, Business Games

I wanted to write last weekend but could not as I had many other things to do - mainly related with presentations. This week I was supposed to be part of 4 presentations - 3 in group and 1 as an individual. One group presentation has been postponed to next week, I am done with the individual presentation, now there are two presentations lined up for the next two days..

Last week was the most hectic I have had here; the main reason being that we are heading towards the end of this core which means more individual submissions, group assignments etc. We (my group) made a mistake of choosing topics that were to be presented towards the end of core - in this core, each group had to make 4 presentations; so far we haven't made any... This means we have to spend a lot of time on presentations when we also have other things to take care of (exam studies, internship applications, usual b-school fun activities etc). Things would have been much better if we were finished with presentations by now..

One thing I like about HEC MBA program is that we get to play many business games - so far we have played 4 games - Negosim(Negotiation Simulation), Accounting, Organisational Behavior, Supply Chain and we are playing a game again this week. Games help a lot in clearing the theoretical concepts and I wish our MBA program had more games.

Right now, I am attending a seminar by Daniel Porot on "Career Design and Job Hunting". It has been an interesting seminar so far (2 hours already) and it will last for 6 more hours.. Gotta pay more attention to the seminar now...

Cover letters

In the last week or so, all I have done is to write cover letters and I am not finished yet. Writing cover letters is such a pain - you want to express so many things but in very few lines. I wrote draft version couple of weeks ago and must have edited it 6-7 times till now.... Must finalize it now and start applying...

This weekend is perhaps the most boring I have had since I arrived in Paris over 2 months ago. Cold weather coupled with the crippling transport strike has forced me to stay inside. I have UK visa appointment tomorrow and might have to take a cab if the strike continues.

Things in school are still hectic. We have 3 submissions lined up for the coming week and another 3-4 the next week. After that, we will have our final exams starting Dec first week..

Time to get back to work...

midterms, sumissions, applications

Received my stats test result yesterday. On an absolute scale, I did not perform as badly as I had feared but on a relative scale the performance was bad. Even after scoring above 75%, my score was below the class average!!! This was shocking - I don't remember the last time I had received lesser marks than the average. I lost marks not for making mistakes but for not writing clear conclusions. This is something I need to learn.

Things have become very hectic now. It looks like this is gonna be the most hectic month of my course. We have to submit around 2 case studies per week; then there are presentations, another mid-term and finally applications for summer internships. I am keen on a career in Investment Banking and am working on my applications these days.

Last weekend, I booked my tickets for Rome and Barcelona for X-mas vacations. We a 15-day X-mas vacation here and I am looking forward to explore Europe during those days.

wake up call

After a gap of over 4 years, I took my first academic exam today - Statistics. The test was not difficult but I think I have botched up. I cannot claim that I was well prepared for the exam but I have to admit that I was decently prepared. I had solved all the types of problems that had been discussed in class; The proff had told us the exam pattern, the types of problems expected in exam and had also helped us solve questions from previous papers. Moreover, it was an open book exam. Then, why did I screw it??

One reason is that I did not take it too seriously. I started preparing for exam only couple of days ago and got into serious preparation only yesterday evening. The other reason is that I did not pay much attention to the subject in class. This was a grave mistake. I could perform calculations for all the problems in exam but had a hard time interpreting the results!!! In such an exam, one can refer to the book during exam to look for formulae but applying the right formula and most importantly drawing the conclusion requires understanding of the basic concepts involved. This is where I lagged.

Anyways, it is good that I got the wake up call so early. It gives me ample time prepare for the next mid-term (Accounting) which is 4 days away. I hope I'll do better