My first 90 days at the Ivey School of Business have been unconventional, yet, very rewarding. The current pandemic has had myself and my fellow classmates working from home with all classes being online this semester. My immediate reaction was how would this impact my education, and would I succeed in this new environment? I can safely say that I have learned as much if not more from being online. Professors have repeatedly stated how well our work has been coming along and that results are the same if not better than previous years results. I will take some credit for being able to transition to online learning but most of the credit goes to the professors and administrative staff at Ivey. The professors have all been accommodating and have done their best to answer my questions promptly and to the best of their abilities. Holding extra office hours, help sessions, and staying late after the Zoom classes have ended are just some of the things that the professors have done to go above and beyond to ensure every student succeeds. The administrative staff have also transitioned all teaching material to online resources which is not a small task. Without their help, the semester would not have been able to run as well as it did.
Coming from an undergraduate degree in Medical Science, I was not that familiar with the business field and I was essentially learning from scratch. However, after completing my first semester, I now have a lot of tools that other business students would have learned and more. I believe that this is because of the case method used to teach students at Ivey. It highlights how each principal can be applied back to real world situations and enables students to hold conversations with business professionals. In both my Art of Modeling and Business Statistics classes, we made our very own cases and teaching notes using principles we learned throughout the semester. I would have never pictured that a short three months ago that I would be able to write my very own case, let alone a teaching note that would enable other students to learn from our work. With that being said, these first 90 days have given me the confidence to make a successful transition into a management career in business.
Networking has also not stopped with the transition to online learning. The Career Management and Ivey Analytics Lab (for business analytics students) teams have done a great job to enable us to meet with potential employers and allow us to ask our questions to those panelists. Having these group sessions has also allowed us to connect with the panelists over LinkedIn to further build our network and connections. In addition, the sense of community is still there between us students. Online help sessions and fun activities have helped make new connections amongst my peers. Everyone is extremely helpful when others are stuck and it then reenforces what we have learned in class when you are able to teach another student what you have learned. Studying at Ivey has been a great educational experience so far, I would recommend the Business Analytics program to anyone that wants to get the best business education possible!
Heading of the case write up we did as a group for our Art of Modeling class:
Wearing Ivey swag off campus during a Zoom class:
