Real cases in classes

I am not sure how other schools handle cases in class, but Rotman mostly focuses on realtime cases. I love Accounting classes by prof.Dragan just for this.

Last tuesday, I had accounting class and the topic for discussion was around recognising revenues. Prof told us that Apple had released their quarterly financial statement on monday and asked us to look it up online. The whole session was browsing through each section of Apple’s financial statement and understanding it. It was an interesting case because Apple had mentioned that they had changed their accounting methodology slightly. And that change was on how they assessed “recognising revenues” for their new plan of free iOS.

The most interactive and immersive class so far has been Accounting.

Some of what generally happens in accounting class:

• 3 mins social time where you talk to your classmates about what you learnt or how you solved something
• soothing jazz/lounge music

Startup Hackathon

A week has passed since I had this amazing experience.  The event was kicked off last Friday evening with almost 20 of us pitching their business ideas. It was fun.  There were few phd and UG students as well. Then we voted the top 6 ideas and they were selected for the next step.

People formed teams around the top 6 ideas. It was a crazy icebreaker to form a team of random people whom you met few mins before, to work on converting the idea into a real business.

We were team of 5, working on Vacation trip planner. To kick start the next day, we did a need finding workshop using business design methodology to understand what really vacationers want. After a detailed empathy sessions with almost 15 people we found the common theme that trip planning time > actual vacation time.

We started working on fixing this problem and came up with amazing ideas.  REVCA club had arranged for mentors to help us out. We had 2 mentors who told us to focus on niche market. They were entrepreneurs running their own startups successfully.  It was a valuable feeback and we pivoted our idea to serving only a niche market of customers who spend really long time planning for a vacation – A family guy. So our idea pivoted to “Family vacation planner”

Finance class

Canada had Thanksgiving day on Monday so we had a long weekend.  I was hoping to catch up with resume etc but then came the bomb. We had to submit an assignment for finance class even before finance class began on Tuesday.

Felt lost, but when I looked into what the assignment was about, I got excited. It was to calculate the Value of your MBA ( net present value). That was an awesome start to real world application of finance concepts on PV and FV that I learnt in pre-MBA.

I am not sure if other school do it too but Rotman courses so far has been always about applying knowledge to real world problems.

Foundation term

Two words to describe it so far, “Absolutely Amazing”

I loved every bit of it and told my mom over phone, that it was the reason why I wanted to do an international MBA. Its not just learning its the learning experience.

But it was really an intense term with just 1 month timeframe. The 1st test was in 2nd week. The subjects were real foundations for an MBA, which were Managerial economics, Ethics, Decision making and Integrated modelling. Profs were amazing and especially Prof Avi. I became a big fan of him.

The Journey so far

Its not the destination that counts, its the experience of the journey

Pursuit of my happiness: Thats what I describe about my journey that I am currently going through.

“Its one life. Live your dreams”  has been my moto in choosing this path. I was AVP at the largest Investment bank and was working at Singapore. Enjoyed all delights of life with caring wife, lovable kid and a high paying job.  I walked the same path every software engineer walks until I hit the crossroads. I could continue walking straight and earn more money or change directions and seek adventure.

This is my adventure. My path to happiness.