And now the fun really starts!!

So this week I had:

-2 tests 1 day after the other

-Club events

-2 group projects

-“Normal” rotman social events

-Class

It was NUTS. Basically no time idle whatsoever!! The crazy workload is balanced out with super fun social events. You might think “Mike, why are you socializing if you have so much work to do?” Well socializing is part of the job too. Based on everything I have heard, it is really important to get involved at school, and make sure you are out there. For marketing jobs in particular (my career of choice), this is key.

I was always used to striving for A+ in all of my classes, meaning foregoing extra-curriculars here and there if it would help me maximize my grade. So it has been a bit of an adjustment learning how to go out with classmates and just be comfortable with B’s and B+’s. Hopefully it will be worth it!

One super annoying thing I learned though is that the people who want to work in finance or consulting get to do their recruiting in the early part of 2012 whereas marketing recruitment tends to be much later, like March or April. But my internship would start in May!! I’ve been given a lot of pep talks about how I should not freak out if I don’t have a job by April given the nature of marketing recruiting but still, I am 100% sure freaking out will ensue if I am still jobless come April. I am definitely going to try to get a job set up as early as possible so I can worry about other things for the rest of the year.

So many activities!!!

Week 2 left me feeling a lot like Will Ferrell in Step Brothers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSpCk1VWGAI

SO MANY ACTIVITIES!!

We had the Clubs Fair and International Fair this week which left me quite overstimulated. There are so many cool things you can get involved in on campus I really didn’t know where to start! As it stands, I joined the following clubs:

-Management Consulting Association (they apparently have the toughest job interviews so I figure if I can learn how to succeed in a consulting interview, surely I can succeed in any other)

-Marketing Association (for obvious reasons)

-Latin American Business Club (Spanish is one of my life obsessions, so this was a must)

-Business & Technology Group (to get even better connected with the tech space, one of my other huge interests)

-Entertainment & Media Association (An industry I find incredibly fascinating and would love to learn more about on the biz side)

-Rotman Sports Business Club (another industry I’d like to learn more about)

I am probably not going to be able to do everything in every club- probably focus more on 1 or 2 clubs than the rest as the year goes on- but I figure at least by being a member of all, I can go to the events that interest me.

For international opportunities, Rotman has a few really cool things going on:

-Exchange programs with all of the top schools outside North America

-“International study tours” to India, China, Latin America and Europe. These are basically 2 weeks trips to any of these regions where you visit some of the major companies of the region, learn about business practices there, culture, etc. Obviously, I will be applying to go on the Latin America one. ;-)

On the academic side, the workload is as crazy as ever. I can’t believe it has only been 2 weeks. It feels like a semester has gone by already!! The pace is just so incredibly fast that planning (for me anyways) is incredibly important. I have settled into a pretty good routine although that will most definitely change when:

A) clubs activities get into full swing

B) I am faced with our killer exam sched: 5 exams in 6 days Oct 16-21. Hopefully I am still alive and/or still a student at rotman come Oct 22 hahaha

My life summarized in 1 word: Reading

This would be a hilarious commercial for an MBA:

HEY THERE!!

Do you like reading??

Or how about doing almost nothing besides reading??

Oh and maybe a group project every 10 minutes??

And don’t you just hate that thing called “social life”?

Well, good sir, you would LOVE an MBA, then!!

***************

Of course I am joking but the truth is not far off. MBA is like undergrad on Barry Bonds-level steroids (i.e. A LOT). While it is A LOT of work I am actually learning a lot. Everything is very “big picture” oriented which is excactly what I am at Rotman for.

And the profs are fantastic. They come from some very, very impressive backgrounds. You can really tell they know their stuff. So learning from them is definitely a valuable experience.

Also Rotman does a very good job fostering a community within the 1^st years and with the 2^nd year students. So there are always people around to help, or share in suffering and stress.

Next week is the clubs fair. Definitely excited to start getting involved!! Stay tuned to next week’s blog to see what I am doing!