Summer of Sun, Fun, with Work to be done!

Summer Internship is a phrase that's mentioned a little during the Pre-Program & Orientation phase, a little bit during Q1, a lot during Career Discovery Week, a lot more during Q2, intensively (or not at all) during the Winter Break, non-stop during Summer Internship Recruitment Week, intensely (possibly with interviews) during Q3, with mild panic during Q4, and fearful panic after Q4.  If you haven't landed a summer internship by the end of your first year, the above roller-coaster might be the trajectory of your panicky emotions.  If you're one of the lucky ones that landed an internship early in the year, good on ya!  But not everybody has that feeling of comfort; some have to wait a little longer than others, some have to wait a lot longer than others, but the result is definitely worth the wait! I believe good things take time, and my summer internship certainly took its time in becoming clear & concrete, but it was so worth the wait!  My summer assignment took me to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, where I was very fortunate to be working on research on the Global Competitiveness of the GCC Region.  I was quite excited to be going back home, and although it got a teeny bit hot at times, the heat didn't really bother me... I suppose when you're happy doing what you're doing, all the minor inconveniences like a little heat & humidity fade into the background :)  It was certainly a challenging research project (prior to the start of the project, Foreign Direct Investment was an area that I wasn't completely familiar with), but one that I thoroughly enjoyed, as it allowed me to work with a firm that I was in incredible awe of, work in a country I hold very dear to my heart, and to learn about & work on an issue which is of significant concern to the region's future as a whole.

In this part of the world, we have real sun with real summers (30C is kinda warm, not hot!), but after having a long cold winter with sub-zero temperatures, it was nice to see my old friend (the Sun) again :)  Another wonderful result of my summer stint was that it took me back home to the United Arab Emirates, and it gave me the opportunity to spend some wonderful time with my family & friends (after the day's work was done, of course!).  I am very fortunate to have a wonderful group of family & friends in both, my hometown & gradtown, and it was fantastic to see all the amazing people who encouraged me early on & are cheering me on during this adventure.  To all of them, I owe a debt of thanks & limitless bear hugs! :)

My summer experience has been so incredibly amazing, that the thought of going back was a little bit not fun, but once you've started riding this intense roller-coaster, you've got to see it through to its (graduating) conclusion, and I am so excited for this final year and all the awesomeness it holds for us! :D

Summer Intensive 360

After a year spent what can only be described as riding a roller coaster at warp speed, the last thing you might want to do is ride it again for another two weeks.  You'd have to be a bit odd & quirky, and have an insatiable thirst for adrenaline and adventure, or in my case, have an insatiable thirst for knowledge and adventure. After about twenty-one intense courses in the core areas of business (okay, so maybe some of those courses were two-part courses, but they still felt like twenty-one trials!), with some mind-numbing concepts, plenty of all-nighters, and very little sleep, the last thing I thought about was diving straight into another course for two weeks, and that too just three days after the last exam of my first year.  However, during a Rotman MBA Electives Fair at the end of March, we had the opportunity to learn about the different Electives available for our Second Year, not only from the Professors who would be teaching them, but also from the Upper Years who took those courses.  From the mind-numbing Electives selection exercise (there are so many great choices, and it's so hard to limit yourself to ten!), came one course that I was extremely curious about (it came highly recommended by the Upper Years), and when I learnt that it would be offered during the Summer Intensive term, I just had to do it, even if it was right after the Q4 Exams.

Professor Sarah Kaplan picks one organization for each edition of "Corporation 360" and we stick with that corporation (in our case, Nike) for the entire duration of the course, through Observation, Reflection and Conversation, analyzing it inside out and all around, in short, we do a 360 degrees analysis of an organization, an exercise many of us may be called upon to do after our MBA.  We looked at the different functions of Nike - strategy, human resources, supply chain management, marketing, finance and accounting - across the course of its corporate history and business trajectory.  Not being a particularly sporty person, I was concerned about my ability to immerse myself in a sports corporation, but the extent and variety of readings certainly helped me understand Nike better.  Be warned, you will have an immense amount of reading to do, but it's all essential, and not doing the readings will have you looking like a deer in headlights during the class discussions!  While unusual, considering our previous courses, it was refreshing to use a case study of one company, and look at all the stakeholders to see the company, in very many different ways, all interlinked with each other, and using them to take different lenses & understand trade-offs better.  It cut across a lot of what we learned in our core courses, with integrative questions to develop a holistic view of the corporation, and also highlighted the necessity of cross-functional teams, instead of being siloed in.  As in life, so it is in the corporate world - not everything is black & white, but somewhere in between - the grey area - and this course allowed us to start embracing it.