Classes

We have now started all of our classes for Term 1. This post will be more about the academic experience so far and what I'm actually dealing with and learning.

My Term 1 courses are:

• Quantitative Platform for Business - basically Stats for business
• Management Science - using Excel to model scenarios used for decision making
• Business Society Management - basically sustainable development for business
• Organizational Behaviour - studying the psychology of organizations and their cultures
• Human Resource Management - study how HR relates to the strategy and success in business
• Managerial Accounting & Financial Statement Analysis - as it sounds :)
• Personal Leadership Development - this course runs the entire year
• Career Development - this also runs the whole year and is mostly workshops

I have to say that I am learning new things in all of these courses at an incredible rate. I find the HR, BSM and Org Behaviour courses absolutely fascinating and the professors are extremely good at keeping everyone interested. For these classes, we mostly employ case learning so we have studied everything from SouthWest Airlines to Turbococina (a company that tried to sell highly efficient stoves in Latin America).

The other courses are more dry, but I'm still definitely learning in those too. QPB is actually making Stats somewhat interesting as it's showing the real value of it for business. I've learned most of this in Stats for Life Sciences (yikes, more than 10 years ago!), but it makes much more sense now. Management Science is fascinating as well as it allows one to apply real logic and numbers to decision making and test out a variety of scenarios. It's quite powerful stuff. And Accounting, well, that's Accounting. I haven't taken it before so a lot of it is beyond me, but I'm hoping it all sinks in at some point. What's really interesting to me is that it seems like Accountants are mostly just making up the rules as they go and that everyone does the accounts in different ways. There are rules and guidelines, yes, but it seems much less like strict math and more like the wild west to me (I call it the wild west because I had been taught previously that carbon/GHG accounting is much like the wild west at the moment and it seems like regular accounting is as well!).

Most of these courses also have group assignments to go along with it. We are split into two sections and each section has ~8 teams of ~6 people each. We stick with these sections and teams for all of term 1 and then everything shuffles around. So we are juggling classes, readings, individual work, midterms and group work all at once. It is very much like being in 'exam mode' but for 6-7 weeks straight. I get home from school (by 6pm if I'm lucky, but usually more like 8:30pm) quickly scarf down dinner (that my kind and very supportive husband has usually made) and then sit at the books or computer until 10:30pm. I usually quit then because I don't absorb much after that point. It pretty much goes this way all week until Friday night when we relax. Weekends are usually spent doing work all day, but we also fit in time for shopping, exercise and hanging out with each other. I know I can survive 3 weeks of 'exam mode' as I've done that plenty of times, but we'll see how exhausted I am by the end of 6 weeks.

Here's a preview of what's left to come for me this term:

QPB Team Assignment 1 (25%) - due Feb 14
MS Workshop 2 team assignment (13.3%) - Feb 16
BSM Team Assignment (35%) - TBD (Feb 13-17?)
OB group midterm (40%) - Feb 22
MS Workshop 3 team assignment (13.3%) - Mar 1
QPB Team Assignment 2 (25%) - Mar 7
QPB Exam (35%) - March 12
MA Exam (65%) - March 13
OB Exam (60%) - March 14
MS Exam (50%) - March 15
BSM Exam (50%) - March 16
HRM Individual Assignment (60%) - March 24
HRM Group Assignment (40%) - March 24

And then, we get two weeks off - woohoo! We are planning on going to England to visit family, and then we are looking forward to having my parents and my aunt come visit us in April. I can't wait!

Settling In

I feel a huge relief this week as I finally feel that we can settle in a bit. We got our new apartment keys on Monday evening (despite some set backs with money...described below) and managed to move in on Tuesday evening. I feel so much better, it is unbelievable...but it was a bit of a chore to get to this point.

So on Friday night I attempted to take 2000 euro out of a bank machine as we needed 3600 euro for our first month's rent, deposit, and agency fee. Of course, as I was taking out the money Friday evening, 1600 euro got stuck in the dispensing part of the machine. I could see it there, but it was jammed and would not give me my money. I couldn't believe it and wasn't really sure what I could even do at 6:15 on a Friday evening. I tried calling the number on the machine from my mobile, but of course I hadn't topped up my plan yet so wasn't able to make the call. I returned to school and the receptionist kindly called the Dutch bank for me and got someone who could speak English to me. After 20 minutes on the phone, we determined that he couldn't do anything for me and advised that I go into the bank the next day to make a complaint. So we did and they told us the couldn't do anything either since it wasn't their machine, so I was to return to the branch at my university on Monday. So I did that, and the banker there said that he couldn't do anything as it was from my Canadian account and I had to contact my Canadian bank. Quite the process. Well, the complaint is now underway...I expect I will get my money back, but I'm sure it will take some time. What a pain that I didn't need.

So then of course we didn't have enough money to pay the rental agency on Monday as I had maxed out my limit on my account. But fortunately they gave us the keys anyway and Tyler just had to return the next day with the remainder.

When we arrived here we had so much luggage we barely fit in a cab. Since then we have accumulated bedding, food, Ty's computer, a monitor, an Xbox, etc. etc. So we knew a cab wouldn't work again. Fortunately a classmate from Germany kindly agreed to spend her valuable time Tuesday night shuttling us back and forth a couple times to move our stuff. We owe her big time for the help.

But now we are here and we love it. It is an older apartment, from the 1920s we believe and it has a crazy layout. From the street, you go up one steep flight of stairs to a landing where there are 6 front doors to different apartments. You go in our front door and immediately up another steep flight of stairs to our main floor (what we would call the third floor, but is the second floor here). On the main floor we have a living room, large dining room, balcony, small den/office, toilet, and a nice kitchen. The kitchen is fully renovated with a freezer, fridge, oven, microwave, gas stove, and even a dishwasher!!! So exciting!

Then we go up a flight of stairs to a landing, then up another flight of stairs to the fifth (or fourth) floor to the second level. There we have a toilet (without a sink), a guest room, a laundry room (complete with dryer!), and our master bedroom with ensuite (bath and shower, no toilet). It is all nice wood or laminate floors and great decorations/furnishings that are close to our style. I feel so much more at home here, it makes such a difference.

The only downside is that I'm about 40 minutes away from school by tram so it takes me longer to get to school. However, I plan to get my bike up and running this weekend and will ride to school most days, which should be about 20 minutes. I'm looking forward to the exercise this brings - so combined with the ~10-15 flights of stairs I will climb a day, hopefully I will offset the stroopwaffels :)

So, yes this week was difficult because it involved packing, cleaning, moving and carrying all our stuff up our crazy stairs, but I feel much more at home here. Both of us are happy and there's lots of room for visitors here too - so please come visit!