Category: School Life

22 February 2024

Upon discussion of plans and outlook for the later half of this calendar year, it prompted me to consider the options. Up until this point, I had thought I would return to Canada immediately after the course completes. I’m trying to allow myself to consider the opportunities for spending more time in London, which perhaps would involve some sort of work, collaboration, or funding opportunity.

• The Graduate visa seems to be an amazing opportunity but I’m not sure how I would take advantage of it if I do.
• In terms of my business plans, perhaps it could be better to obtain funding in the UK? If I go forth with my new idea, I may benefit from working collaboratively with people or securing investors from the London fashion industry, as there are way more chances for that to happen as compared to the fashion lacking Toronto where I would return to.

12 February 2024

I have always questioned my learning in this program, sometimes I even felt that I wasn’t getting the learning I expected to get here, but I suddenly realized that I’ve gained an understanding into the industry. Although I may not be able to solve any problems still, but I have accumulated acumen. I have also learned to read to inform, as previously I was not reading. I used to find reading boring, but now I often consider reading up on subject matters that peculiar my interest, and want to develop my knowledge further.

12 February 2024

Upon being briefed on the Future Retail Challenge competition in Paris, I heavily debated on my participation. On one end, during my undergraduate days, I have always signed up for case competitions as I hoped to leverage those experiences to build on my resume. On the other hand, the conflict of schedules and overlapping work loads do cause a degree of concern over viability. An additional question I have is the success rate of participating; do I have what it takes to make it to Paris? Will I be in a strong enough team that will get us there? There is already no prizes to be won, so it’s been difficult to justify putting in free work, especially if even going to Paris wasn’t guaranteed.

In the end, I signed up anyway, after hearing that I could possibly join students from another program, since I was unable to gather momentum from our MBA classmates to form a team in house. I figured, since I’ve always done it in university, I could do it again. I don’t mind the potentially wasted efforts, even if I wasn’t looking for job opportunities to arise from this conference, simply trying for a chance to go witness this conference would be worth the while.

We had a guest lecturer on 28th November who reminded me of what I expected from MBA learning; lectures packed with information, including frameworks, while focusing on real life situations and real challenges businesses face, along with suggested possible solutions. I must say that up until this point, this is the first time in the school year when I felt “ah, yes, this is MBA learning”. Seldom, there were moments where I felt that what I was learning was based on industry knowledge, mostly during the OPS1 sessions. But often, I felt that the learning I received was too academic, or provided no new solutions. I was hoping to learn new things; ways to solve problems in the industry. Majority of the learning we’ve been doing so far has just been learning frameworks and trying to apply those frameworks in business cases. I wish to receive learning on new ideas, be presented with possible solutions, and be challenged to create new solutions; do things that really make a difference in a business setting. In the working world, nobody will ask us what frameworks we used. They will ask: “how can we improve the present, what solutions do you propose, and how should we achieve it?”

And I must say, class discussions haven’t been helpful for my learning. I have not seen them as a good use of time. Nothing new is being generated in these discussions. I rather go read another article.

For our OPS 1 Summative assessment, group members are to be divided into roles, each taking on individual and group responsibilities. I have considered the Commercial Director and Supply Chain Manager roles. Reasoning for this choice was due to what I already know or capable of doing, as well as what I see would be beneficial for my learning for the future. I decided to try something new.

The group submitted their individual choice rankings, each member had a unique top choice and the one remaining was the Commercial Director role. I decided to go with that role to not complicate things or having to compete with another group member for our choices.

This is the first time in academic life or extra curricular activities where I have taken on a leadership position. In the past, such position would be taken up by the more outspoken and confident individuals in my class. I am surprised that I have landed in this position. As an afterthought of envisioning my group member personalities, I could see how this came to be and how it would work.

Besides the strategic challenges to be considered on Love Designs as the Director, I didn’t realize I would also be responsible for group member synergies. There has been concerns over group members’ fulfillment of their responsibilities and completing work on time. A group member raised their concerns to me, in hopes that I would discuss within the group or present the issue to our course lead professor. The approach I’ve taken was to assure the group member that work will be done on time and with quality. If needed, I would step in to help speed up the process, as I am also interested in the other aspects of work. I continue to ponder whether this was an appropriate approach, or whether I should have presented these concerns to the professor instead. For now, I will see how the concerns play out, whether it actually becomes a problem down the line, and will do my best to mitigate issues and manage the group dynamics internally. If the problem develops beyond my ability to control, I will present the issues to the professor.

Tutorial Date: 26 October 2023

Some of the key takeaways from the tutorial session were to:

• set up a reward system
• block off time for self care
• direct learning focus

These goals and directions are meant to develop a school life balance and build sustainable study habits.

• Setting up a reward system is often a challenge for me, as most of the times, the rewards I enjoy are not exactly helpful in achieving my goals. Such activities include indulging in food and spending time away from my work/study. I often wonder how productive or counter productive it would be for me to have a reward system. However, as an attempt, I’m going to set one as follows: for each week that I complete my to do list, I may go out and dine at a restaurant. Hopefully this will motivate me to study more efficiently.
• I plan on signing up for gym classes, as it will obligate me to commit the time to it, rather than my existing habits of staying home all the time and studying. Exercising is great for the health as well, it should help me maintain a good body to keep going.
• So far, I’ve been completing class/seminar preparations by doing all the research and finding most of the reasonable responses. Perhaps I should try simply having a couple of answers for each question, so that I’m not spending hours on the questions. Hopefully, this method of approach still enables me to feel that I’ve touched upon all subject areas, while reducing the time I’m spending.

First week!

I couldn’t get the balloons to stay

– Welcome to LCF

Ah, corner lot

– Executive Education Studio