A Day In The Life

McKinsey Case Competition & Wine Club Event

It's 4:30pm and I'm surrounded by my sleeping classmates. I finally have a minute to myself. What a rush the last 24-hours have been.

Friday was the culmination of a three-day case competition, sponsored and judged by McKinsey & Company. Each day six-person teams were given one case and five hours to create an integrated solution, PowerPoint slide deck and a 20-minute presentation. As with everything in your MBA, you're under significant time constraints. Our performance over the three days was consistent and strong, enough to qualify for the finals. We had done it. Nervous energy filled our group, followed soon after by enthusiasm and excitement after presenting our most polished delivery to date. Twenty minutes later we heard the unbelievable results: "Congratulations to Team 6!" After the photos, it was off to a patio to celebrate our victory.

Saturday morning was early and cruel.  Drinks flowed long into the night, but no rest for an Ivey MBA, even on weekends. Today was the first event organized by the Ivey Wine & Spirit Club, a day-trip to Niagara beginning at 8:30am aboard a chartered bus. Southwest Ontario had been in the grips of a prolonged heat wave with daily temperatures above 38C (100F) including humidity. In short, it was a perfect day for wine touring on an air conditioned bus. Each of the four wineries had something different to offer, all rewarding in their own right, but over and over again we were impressed by the Niagara Rieslings. Half exhausted and half exhilarated, we board the bus back to London. Finally, some much needed and well deserved downtime.

Looking around at my classmates, this is common place. Both your days and nights are so busy, you sleep when you can and most of them are doing exactly that. Few, like me, are taking these fleeting moments to pause and reflect on how amazing and thoroughly engaging the MBA process has been thus far. Two hours from now I'll be dressed in full cowboy gear, heading out to a country and western bar to celebrate the start of the Calgary Stampede. There truly is never a dull moment at Ivey and I'm loving every minute of it.

Ivey MBA Association (MBAA) President

At 10:30am, our learning team wrapped up preparation for the finance case that we are presenting in a couple of days. It's a challenging case, but hopefully the class will buy into our idea for an IPO.

I had meeting at 11am with Ivey Media Relations. Our VP External, and I met with him to talk about what help they need from the students for any articles and questions that have come their way. We also will work with him to promote events at Ivey, like the Canadian MBA Leadership Conference.

Then I quickly head back to Spencer for the MBA Association Town Hall at 12:30. It's during this forum that the Executive team updates the class on what we have been doing, and how we plan to enhance the class experience.  Our team worked hard to develop plans and timelines for deliverables, which were then used to describe how we would deliver our plans throughout the year.

Next up, I interviewed a couple of classmates who are interested in International and Social Senator positions. We have to choose all the senators by the end of the month, so our team will have a full roster and ready to make it a great year.

Then it was time for the daily dose of class for four hours. We had Finance, Accounting, and Marketing today. Dante Pirouz, our Marketing Professor, came in during our Accounting class with Vaughan Radcliffe, to help provide additional perspective on the case he was teaching about cost behaviour.

Last for the day at 6:30, I had a meeting with my New Venture Project group. We've been kicking around a few ideas of what we should do for our final project. So we spent a few hours diving deeper into opportunity and risk areas for each. We have too many great ideas and not enough time.

Then it was time to head back to my apartment. I grabbed a quick bite, answered a few MBAA email questions, and then of course, prepped two more business cases for the next day…when it starts all over again!

Get Connected

Today was the first day of Get Connected, a three day event organized by the Career Management team at Ivey. Get Connected offers students an opportunity to learn about the various career opportunities available by participating in panel discussions with alums and industry experts within a specific industry. The event was attended by over 200 alums from 111 firms.

We arrived in Toronto from London at 9 AM and a delicious breakfast was ready for us at the Toronto Board of Trade.

Post breakfast we had two back-to-back sessions on the importance of networking in the job market and how the Ivey brand and alum network can be leveraged to achieve your dream job.

Post Lunch at 1:00 PM all of the aspiring consultants in my group rushed to the BCG office on Bay street. The information session was extremely useful. While it affirmed my goal to be a consultant post MBA, it provided others with a view of the 'consulting life' which they had never seen, leading some to realize that consulting was not for them. After the session we were able to interact more informally with the alums at BCG and the partners at the Toronto Office.

After rushing backing to the Toronto Board of trade for the next information session with AT Kearney, I then had a 30 min break after which I had to rush to another networking session with alums on "Career Success Stories for International Students". For an International Student like myself, this session was particularly useful and apart from making some good contacts, it also served as a confidence booster. It was really reassuring to meet other international students who had managed to find excellent jobs and who were in extremely enviable positions in life.

At 6:00 we hurried back to the hotel and had 15 minutes to freshen up and leave for the "Young Alumni Networking Night" at SteamWhistle Brewery, where we met alumni in a more informal setting over food and drinks. This event was scheduled to start at 7 PM and end at 9PM but we stayed well beyond the scheduled time.

I returned to the hotel at 11PM that night and immediately had to send thank you mails to all the contacts I had made during the day, hoping that they would be able to recollect my name and face from all the other amazing people that they would have met from my class.

Although our class was "competing" to make the best impression possible with the alums, we all went out of our way to help each other out.  I had at least two of my classmates tell me about a contact they had met in the industry which I was interested in, and I made it a point to do the same.

The entire Get Connected event has been an amazing experience, extremely enjoyable, and a little scary. But at the end of the day I am all set and raring to go for Day 2!

24-Hour Report

It's 6:30pm and the envelopes with the assignment are in: 24 hours of good work ahead of us summarized in one report that accurately represents the view of 5 or 6 unique students on a subject matter. This is it: the countdown starts. It is true that the report is done during 24 hours, but the expectations begin building up during the day as the start time approaches. Some teams are already talking about the appropriate strategy to approach the assignment, while others choose to be prepared by stocking themselves with "provisions" of snacks and coffee.

The envelopes contain valuable information that would account, not only for an important portion of our grades, but also for our learning experience so far at Ivey. Every team allocates itself to its own randomly assigned room, which becomes pretty much a fort. Once everyone has the assignment/case, silence surrounds Spencer campus, as students read and try to analyze the relevant pieces of information.

Once each team reunites, there are several strategies that you could try to work through the report but ultimately, the entire team has to agree on one. If you've agreed on a strategy, you dive into work. Of course the stress levels and workload would depend on the subject. But, even if you think a course is "easy", writing a good report that is concise, comprehensive and reflects the entire team's view is pretty difficult, especially if you add the time constraint. The outcome would be more successful if everyone was on the same page, but getting there may not be as simple as you expect. Additionally, it's really impressive how strong ideas and different perspectives can enrich the discussion and the content of the report. That's the reason we're doing this: to learn from each other. If you speak your mind and are open to listen, you can certainly achieve that.

As hours go by, students may be found wondering around Spencer, doing research, going through the notes taken during class or running models. Sometimes faculty might show up to clarify case facts or even taste the snacks. Way after midnight, the effect of stress and tiredness is kicking in and most students call it a day, although there are a few teams who choose to spend the night at Spencer.

The next morning, the dynamic of the team is changed. Hopefully the teams have finished answering the core of the questions and reached several agreements. Believe me, the work is not done. This is when you have to consolidate the whole report into a consistent, concise and well communicated effort. Considering the different writing styles within the group, the process of editing begins. Some people really enjoy doing this work or even have experience, whether others may be less concerned about the process. Some stressful situations can arise when agreeing on that balance, but either way, the final goal is to deliver a report that the entire team is happy with. If that doesn't happen, then you're just thankful that you survived the process and managed to drop that assignment into the box by hour 24. Time for a nap!