This past weekend I was lucky enough to be a part of the Rotman delegation at the MBA Games. What are these MBA Games I speak of, you may ask? Well it is a weekend of competitions between the various MBA schools across Canada. This year there were 19 schools. You can check out the website for the Games here.
The winner of the Games hosts the event the next year (although I think if there is a repeat winner in back-to-back years, the event goes elsewhere the next year). This year the Games were hosted by the University of Alberta which meant we were off to Edmonton! I had never been there before so it was fun to check out a new city.
You guys can read what our itinerary was on the Games website so I won’t repeat that here. Instead I want to give you a sense of the challenge and fun involved (for me anyways). A common theme across our whole team (and everyone at the games) was energy, enthusiasm, athleticism and brains which made every event extremely fun and intense. (so if you are a quiet person this competition is unfortunately definitely not for you)
The scavenger hunt was essentially a photo-taking contest across the city (i.e. find the famous wayne gretzky statue). I was kind of jealous of my teammates who got to do this event since they basically got to do a tour of the city for free.
The case competitions were crazy:
-8:30am- the teams were given the case
-8:30-11:30am- the teams had to develop a deck with recommendations for a case solution and support for those recommendations (an especially big challenge on 4 hrs sleep).
-11:30-12:30- lunch breach
-12:30-2pm (I believe)- each team was required to do a 15 minute presentation of their deck to a judging panel along with Q&A
-2:30-4pm (I believe)- finalists present again and a winner is announced
My team was unlucky and drew the 1st presentation in round 1. So I experienced something I never experienced before- going into a presentation without having practiced even once. However, me and my teammates are all all-star presenters so we actually did quite well!
The athletic competitions were also pretty intense. While I did not compete in them, me and the rest of those not competing cheered non-stop…I never thought I’d get so emotionally invested in my classmates’ innertube water polo performance… haha The picture I posted is from us cheering on our inner-tube water polo team.
It was really DeGroote at McMaster University’s year this year…Despite our best efforts, DeGroote won almost every award (athletics, spirit, academic, etc). So next year, off to Hamilton we go.
The weekend was completely exhausting- I am still recovering today- but it was absolutely worth it. A great bonding experience, great opportunity to practice your skills from school and a chance to get some laryngitis in (on account of all the cheering).
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