It’s almost 2:00 AM on a Monday night, so I thought the above title was rather fitting.  I remember seeing it in someone’s Facebook status during a particularly hectic week right before midterms last semester, if that was you, please email me so I can give you credit!

This is the week right before the long weekend (Family Day is this coming Monday, so Queen’s is closed), following that is midterm week, and then finally “Reading” Week.  Lucky me, the due dates seem to all come up a lot faster than I realize.  For this week alone, I have 2 essays, one each in Geography and Sociology of Information Technology, 1 group essay in Human Resources, 1 assignment in Finance II, 1 case brief, a group essay, and an in-class presentation in Ethics and CSR.  Earlier on this evening, I finished writing a press release for the Queen’s Entrepreneurs’ Competition and slogging through some rather dull readings (it never ends!!!).

Tomorrow morning, I’ve got meetings starting from 9:30 AM straight to class, and then meetings straight on through the night.  Commerce never sleeps?  I’d say that’s pretty darn accurate.  Am I complaining?  Never!  In all honesty, I love this.  Without a fast-paced and hectic schedule, I’d be staying in bed all day…

With respect to the exchange news that Kat blogged about below, the Comm12 Exchange Facebook group apparently got over 200 of those 267 to join within the first 24 hours after offers were extended. Just goes to show the level of camaraderie that develops among classmates here, and how much excitement the exchange program garners here.

On to other news, Queen’s Commerce has already sent out a few offers for the Class of 2014, which is quite early. I held back from talking about this until today because major scholarship winners were announced today =), and despite our small faculty size, Queen’s Commerce is always well-represented among the winners. So, I suppose this can be considered the first major wave of acceptances to go out, and I extend my sincerest congratulations to the new wave of potential commerce students.

For those who weren’t selected, I think getting the nomination itself is quite the honour and remember that those who are impacted and benefit from your involvement in the community truly appreciate everything you guys do.

And finally, there’s only one more week of classes until the winter midterms. That was rather quick…

With 267 students who applied for exchange in the Commerce program this year, Dunning Hall Auditorium was packed.  The presentation started with statistics from this year’s exchange applicant pool and a last-ditch plea to try and convince more students to consider fall exchange (winter exchanges are traditionally more popular with QC students).  Next, it was an agonizingly slow outline of the next steps to take once we received our offer package.  Finally, sorted by alpha-order (by a section of the alphabet), an announcement was made and there was a minor stampede to get to the front of the lines.

After all of that, my first round offer has been to BI Norwegian School of Management in Oslo, Norway!  I celebrated at QP (a campus pub located in the middle of campus) and now I’m settling in to a long night at Stauffer Library to finish off an essay…

Until next time!

Kat

After last Thursday’s exchange offer meeting was postponed, today is the day that all Commerce exchange applicants get their first round offers!  I’ve been watching my Facebook news feed over the past few hours and there has been hourly countdown status updates from a lot of my friends.  Only a few more hours to go before I find out what country I’ll be studying in next year.  SO EXCITED!!!

Stay tuned for another post in a few hours!

Kat

Wedding Info Session Crashers

One of my highlights during first semester was attending Cara’s info session during fall recruiting season. Obviously, I had no chance of getting hired, but I heard that these events catered some exquisite food, as well as complementary beverages. And so they did.

Tonight, I wrapped up “my winter recruiting season” (unless I become too enticed and register for another one), having talked to recruiters from the likes of Goldman Sachs and RIM. This is just another one of the wealth of resources Queen’s Commerce makes available to all its students, even first years. With the click of a button on MyCareer, you’ve set yourself up to meet the VP of a bulge bracket investment bank.

The way I see it, the informational aspect of these info sessions are kind of useless to those actually pursuing the internships. The upper years have already researched the job/industry/company extensively. In that respect, I believe that my fellow 1^st years and I – who learned a lot from these info sessions – while in the wrong place, were there for the right reasons, the entire time.

Class Participation

In an eloquent transition, we move to class participation. Unlike group work, this isn’t a grading component in all courses, but it’s still quite significant in many. Last semester, class participation counted for 12.5% in one course, and this semester, is worth 10% in another. These marks are awarded on the basis of our quality contributions to class discussion.

Now, there are several ways to claim as high an allocation of these marks as possible, but all hinge on a very important prerequisite: the professor has to know your name, which leads to: the professor has to be able to put a face to your name. To accomplish this, there are two general ways to go about it:
-say something completely ridiculous/stupid/inappropriate/obscure/etc (once is enough)
-provide a lot of consecutive right answers/insightful responses (this might take a while)

There is another way I’ve noticed, and I would really love to see if someone has previously done a study on this matter. There are some important facts first:
-commerce classes cap off at a size of 75 (technically 80)
-rooms are semi-circles, with multiple stages, such that the professor can see the face of every student in the room
-we are given name tags to place in front of us

So what I’ve figured out is that, if you pick a seat where your face is at the prof’s eye level, sit in that same seat every single class, smile a lot, occasionally raise your hand, and don’t screw up when you get picked, the professor just naturally learns your name. Once the professor knows your name, I think any contribution that doesn’t embarrass yourself is looked upon in good light, even if you just happen to regurgitate something in the reading.

But wait. What if you provided a lot of consecutive right answers/insightful responses, from the same seat that was at eye level, class after class? Profit =). So it’s kind of about being in that place, for all the right reasons, the entire time.

Rock Band

I believe my profile states that I quite enjoy Guitar Hero/Rock Band/SingStar. Well…my common room just got Rock Band =D. And some sketchy game called “Band Hero,” but it’s all good because it has some Taylor Swift songs. So uhm, goodbye average! The game is in the wrong place, but for all the right reasons, the entire time.