Weclome back to the school year! I’m really excited to be sitting here and typing these words because it was just recently that it suddenly hit me that I’m already in 3rd year. Not long ago, I was in your position trying to decide which schools to apply to. I’m not going to try to convince you that Queen’s is an excellent school because that would be pointless. I’ll let you decide that yourself through giving you glimpses of my life as a student at the Queen’s School of Business.

First of all, happy Thanksgiving weekend! I’m so glad to have this weekend off because that means I get to sleep in! The life of a Commerce student is very busy, often with early morning meetings and lots of early morning classes. Often I don’t get enough sleep. But after spending hours and hours on a case presentation deciding what to recommend to a failing business, you see that the business has decided to implement your ideas, everything becomes completely worth it. Also this weekend, I got to go to a really nice restaurant as a reward for my hard work. Did you know that Kingston has one of the highest numbers of restaurants per capita? You walk down Princess St (the main street here) and basically every other tenant is a restaurant.

Anyways, to give you an idea of what sort of upper year Commerce courses you can take here, this is what I’m taking for the fall semester:

• Operations Management (Mandatory course for all 3rd year Commerce students)
• Doing Business in the Asia-Pacific Rim
• Marketing Ethics
• Business Law I

Many people assume that you go to business school to get a CA (Chartered Accountant) or pursue a career in investment banking, but that is not really true. Many people decide to do general studies and then they can go off having a nice career in consulting, or marketing, or insurance brokerage. There are tons of career choices out there for you. You don’t necessarily have to be a fan of accounting or finance. Of course you have to still take those courses, but those are really basic first and second year courses that everyone has to take. After that, you can choose not to take any specialized accounting or finance courses. Of course they are useful to have and you apply basic accounting/finance knowledge to all of your courses.

Take me for example, I am planning to focus on International Business. Next semester I will be going to the Queen’s Bader International Student Centre and my focus will be on International Business, but more on that next time.

Take care of yourself, and good luck with the rest of high school!

- Sheila