Hell Period

Period 5 finished 'officially' this weekend and this week is period 6 kicking off. Well, period 5 is not completely finished as we've been some individual assignments and take home's exam which deadline expires this week. I've finished 2 on Monday before starting my 9 hours day of classes for which I had also to prepare readings and case but for which obviously I didn't prepare as most of my felllow mates. What do these teachers expect us to do? Study for exams, finish the huge unfinishable assignments, hands in the take home exams and ALSO prepare the about 100 pages readings per day??? When are we meant to sleep really?
I'm afraid my Maslow's needs pyramids is not scoring very high these days. I barely have time to feed myself. Monday, class from 11.45 to 21.30 with only 15 mins break in between classes which are unexistant as teacher overlap and never finish their class on time so I end up bringing my food in class and having a full meal in the face of the teacher. Some might think I'm rude but I'm hungry and MBA or not, I'll feed myself. Luckilly, Monday is an exception and I 'only' have 3 or 6 hours a day of classes the rest of the week. Yeah! That's looks like hollidays to me!:-)

Question from new MBA: Can I work beside the MBA?

As I start receiving a few questions from prospective MBA students by email, I will answer them online so it can benefit everyone.

Question:
'I have recently been admitted to the MBA program at HEC Montreal for the Fall of 2004. I came across your blog through a Google search. I am trying to gather information about the program, in particular the time structure of a typical week. I am considering continuing some of my consulting work during the program and want to determine whether that is realistic.
If you have a chance, would you please tell me a bit more about the program and how a typical week is structured outside of class (i.e. team meetings, research, et cetera)? How much time should I expect to devote to work outside of class? How flexible have you found the scheduling of team work/meetings?
I thank you for any information/advice you can offer.'

Answer:
If you're talking of the Full time MBA program, I don't think you can conceived to do any work aside from the mba. If you have enough time to sleep, eat and maybe some little time for fun maybe once a week consider yourself as lucky.
I knew that some people tried to work as well but that's almost impossible but maybe if you're a surhuman and don't need to sleep at all then it's ok. There is so much work beside the course (meetings, readings, individual and team assigments) that you won't have time to do anything else, weekend included often.

It's a one year mba intensive and it really means intensive. Just imagine how they manage to fit a two year program in one.

Scheduling of teammeeting are slightly flexible depending of your teammembers schedule and flexibility. Team are composed of 5 people and some like to work early in the morning, others like to start late like myself so they can work overnight and still have decent amount of sleep. It's all depend of the consensus but having to work is not a good excuse not too meet in the full time MBA as you're not actually meant to. Same for people who have family obligations and are reluctant to meet during weekends because of the kids, that's tough as most of the MBA's have no obligations.
Well, family are more frequent in the French MBA program as the English program is mostly composed of International students either single or whom family stayed in their home country so most of the students really dedicate 100% of their time to the MBA and they will expect the same from you.

Good luck and hopefully we'll meet.

Montreal Mirror: "Freebies for overcharged customers
Attention all Quebec shoppers! Freebies await if you keep an eagle eye on cashiers ringing up your bill. That's because retailers in la belle province - unlike those elsewhere in Canada - are forced to hand over a product gratis to any customer who notices that he's been charged higher than the posted price on an item costing $10 or less. Any overcharged item above 10 bucks immediately gets reduced by a tenner."

Interesting... I run a Googlism for HEC Montreal and the result is quite accurate. I thought I'd share this here.
Googlism: "Googlism for: hec montreal
hec montreal is french
hec montreal is affiliated with the university of montreal and is recognized as a world leader in business education
hec montreal is recognized in canada and abroad as a dynamic crossroads of teaching and research in every management discipline and it boasts one of canada's
hec montreal is the business school of the university of montreal"

Golf made easy by Nike

Nike plans to sell non-conforming clubs: "Nike plans to sell non-conforming clubs" Why not? me think. I don't plan to play the LPGA but I would love any kind of enhancements that would help me to get the ball in the hole in a more efficient and fun way and look like I can actually play. At the other hand, it's true that it would affect the authenticity of the Golf but hey what's more important, the fun or the rules?