What a week...

I’ve barely held it together this week. School, work and life-in-general all seemed to collide, and it was hard to stay focussed on any one thing. Had the stats exam this week. I couldn’t even take a day off as it was year-end reporting. Well, the exam is over. That’s all I can say about it. Success or Failure is out of my hands at this point...

We’ve now moved onto Macro Economics, and the prof is really good. He’s funny and makes the class interesting. He is definitely the best professor thus far. I have observed that he has a penchant for the word ‘okay’, which he says every 2 seconds in a very funny intonation! However, for all the entertainment that he brings to class, I was starting to get bored in the second class. I really like macro economics, and when he talks about current economic news or anecdotes, I find myself engrossed; however when he starts telling me what the difference between GDP and GNP and how you calculate balance of payments, my eyes start to glaze over...

The Investment Challenge is A LOT of work!! One of our group members quit, but since he wasn’t really contributing I wasn’t too surprised. The only problem is that he was supposed to be the presenter on challenge day, and now I am not sure which one of us will have to do it. We might have to draw straws. We have to finish our investment policy by Monday, and there are still so many things to set up before we start trading. Apparently most of the other groups have started trading, so this week we have to start trading! One of the things that I really like about this challenge is that they set each group up with a mentor. We sent our mentor an email asking him to see if our stocks were aligned to our investment policy, and he replied in an hour. I was impressed! I like the fact that there are so many workshops and seminars and people to ask for help if you need it.

On another note, I was sitting with my investment challenge group when one of the Rotman Asset Mgmt reps came by, and he was rambling for a bit and at first I thought he wanted me to get him to go to some women in capital markets event, where you usually accompany a woman as a guest (there are events like that) and in between his spiel, I was losing patience (I’ve been in a very ‘chop-chop’ mood this week). It turns out he was asking me if I would be interested in attending a women in capital markets seminar. I felt a bit guilty after, especially as I was very interested. This event is geared towards women and only women. And apparently they were finding it hard to get women to go.. Bonus! Now, I know why I am doing the MBA. It’s always been quite the struggle for me to break into the investment side, and I have always felt being a woman has never helped. That and the fact that I am soft spoken and reserved. I am looking forward to it!