Jason M. Hanley :: Custom Software Developer

…and what a storm it was. They sure pack a lot of work into the last few weeks of the program. The Company project was a great success, although we don’t have any marks yet. Seems like forever ago we did that, but it was really only two weeks.

Then we had our individual case exam, and right after that, we picked up the final group integrated case exercise – a “live” case detailing current issues at a company. We’re given 5 days (2 of them Saturday and Sunday) to come up with a 7-page report (with 10 pages of exhibits) and a 20-minute presentation. Needless to say there were a few nearly sleepless nights, but we managed to pull it all together in the end and I was quite impressed with the end result.

The best part of it was driving with Roy to Harry’s around 3:30am after we finished getting the report printed and bound at Kinko’s. The report was due 8:30am the next day, and Harry dropped it off while the rest of us got a bit of sleep so we would be coherent for the 2:00pm presentation.

Today was the final presentation (for the “finalist” groups, of which we were not) and we are now done until January 3rd. I had planned to keep the next two weeks open for relaxation and visiting, but somehow I have already managed to get things scheduled for every single day next week. Oh well.. Perhaps the week after will be a bit more restful

School has entered a bit of a “calm before the storm” state. Last week we did some interesting integrated classes about Risk Management, and this week we finished up a series of lectures on Supply Chain Management. In the meantime, we’ve been ramping up for the Company Project, and final Integrated Case Exams.

The Company Project is due at the end of next week, after a series of lectures on Globalization. We will be submitting a report, and presenting a “trade show booth” about the company at an exhibit next Saturday.

After that, our final week of classes for this term are all about Ethics and Responsibility. Funny how they leave that until the very end Then we have our individual integrated exam. Finally, the next week concludes the term with a group integrated case presentation.

We’ve started into the final phase of the first semester, the integrated component. This is where we start taking bits and pieces from all of the separate classes and putting them together to solve bigger, real-life problems. This week has been about Risk Management. We’ve touched topics like accounting and fraud, company reputation, foreign exchange, and tomorrow we’re going to look at new product development.

All of our individual class exams are done, but that only covers about 30% of our total mark. The remainder is an integrated case exam and group work. In this last month, we still have 60% of our marks remaining. Currently our group is focusing on a large project called simply the “Company Project”. We pick a public company, and have to write a lengthy report supporting either a Buy, Hold or Sell position on their stock, similar to a stock analyst’s report.

So things will remain busy as the countdown to the end of term approaches.

Only have time for a quick entry tonight. Had my Finance exam this morning and it went fairly well. It wasn’t as hard as it could’ve been, but certainly took a good part of the 3 hours allocated for it. I’m currently working on a take-home Operations exam that is due tomorrow at 4:00pm. I plan on working on it long into the night, until my eyes start closing Looking forward to tomorrow when all this is behind me…

So far I’ve spent 6 straight, solid hours of studying and doing Finance questions today. This is on top of at least another 4 hours of studying during the week. And somehow I’ve only covered about half of the material so far. It’s going to be a fun weekend. At least the exam was moved from Monday to Tuesday. That extra day should be just enough to make sure I can at least pass the exam

Last week was ok. Got all the assignments handed in, and our Marketing assignment that had been due Wednesday got pushed back to Friday. It made for having to come in to school on a Friday we were supposed to have off, but the extra time was well worth it. The presentation we did on the report also went well. Our group had the best results in the Marketing game so that made our presentation a lot easier than the groups that had to try and explain why their results were poor. We had a good strategy, but I think we had a little bit of luck as well.

Better be getting back to Finance now…