Archives: Academic

Term 2 Class Summary

This blog started 35 entries ago, wow.

See End of Term Wrap Up for my first semester courses.

Commerce 293 (Financial Accounting)
Rob Jackes
Monday/Wednesday/Friday
10:00am – 11:00am

I had never seen anyone more excited about accounting than Rob Jackes. He has a booming voice and could sometimes be seen jumping up and down to emphasize a point. He’s a firm prof, but quite fair and nice during office hour chats. As for the subject itself, duh, it’s accounting ,you either hated it or could tolerate it (kidding!). My two years of high school accounting and career prep work experience really paid off because the first month or so turned out to be a breeze. Instruction components: the textbook was not overly useful but good for previews and additional practice, the online Lyryx labs were kind of … frustrating and fun(?!), and the note pkg you had to buy were life-saving. One midterm and one non-cumulative final. Grade: I’m happy (I’ll let you work out the code haha).

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Pop Culture, it’s What We Live For

You know you’ve been studying too much computer science when you hear the lyrics “there are only 2 kinds of people in the world” in Britney Spears’ Circus, and immediately correct it in your head to, “No, there are 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don’t. Take that Britney.”

Midterm today.

And now, to borrow a concept from the website Overheard in New York: SPOTTED IN UBC.

SPOTTED IN THE SUB. Last Friday evening – five middle-aged men intensively playing a game of Yu-Gi-Oh cards next to the food court. I was tempted to stay and watch.

SPOTTED IN THE COMPSCI BUILDING. The day before Valentine’s Day – a couple who looks like they’re about to consummate their relationship on the sofa in the atrium in open view. OH MY EYES! MY EYES!

Did you spot something outrageous, delicious, hilarious, or gorgeous (like Jennifer Aniston’s dress at the Oscar’s)? Feel free to email them to me and share the *cough* learning experience.

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End of Term Wrap Up

I’m going to follow Sam’s template here and do a review of the classes I took this year. Thanks for the idea and title Sam!

Commerce 292 (Organizational Behaviour and Management)
Deborah Rupp
Tuesday/Thursday
11:00am – 12:30pm

OB in a nutshell is basically employee-manger relationships in the modern workplace. Maybe it’s because I have two office-type jobs or maybe it’s fate telling me to pick the Human Resources stream in third year, but this class turned out to be one of my favourite of the term. Yes, the textbook is common sense to a certain extent, but one has to approach OB with the intent to apply it to the real world. The class was largely discussion/activity based with lecture off the powerpoint usually taking no more than 40% of the class time (I think we spent half an hour having a paper tower building contest *ahem*teamwork in one of our classes). We watched hilarious clips from The Office and movies on Kennedy and decision making. Both the midterm and the final were multiple choice; a one page “cheatsheet” was allowed for the final exam (I managed to cram 6000 words into mine, don’t ask lol). The class was very much team-oriented. A group case study project was worth 25% of the mark, and the rest came from participation. Dr. Rupp was a very nice and enthusiastic prof who gave us the choice of what to do each class, whether it was a discussion on past material, lectures, or a jeopardy review game (did anyone else notice that OB profs seem to be the HAPPIEST ones around? Makes the students more cheerful too!). She definitely knew her materials and was extremely well-prepared for each class with activities and such. Our section had the highest class average – a whole 5% above the grade average – so that says something about the prof (or us haha)! For those of you who want to get her as a professor, unfortunately she was only at UBC for a one-term Sabbatical. Grade: A+.

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We Interrupt Our Regular Programming

… to bring you this special message.

I just got the funniest email from the Sauder School of Business, parts of it are reproduced below. It’s titled COMM 299 Winter Term 2 – Assignment #1‏. Homework in university over the winter break?! Hmm… it’s an online assignment/survey type that takes 40 minutes, so I didn’t mind too much. Then I read the rest of the email.

For the second term of your Comm 299 class you will be learning all about how to figure out what you want in a career and how to land your dream job. It is a very rewarding and powerful part of the course. […] Developed at the Harvard School of Business, you will receive much personal value from this assignment. See below for details.

Assignment #1: CareerLeader online assessment (5%)

STEPS:

1. Pay the MANDATORY $17.50 (taxes included) fee online at [URL]
2. Take the online assessment using the following details at [URL]
3. Print out the “Narrative Report” and bring it to class during week of Jan. 12-16 […]

* The system is setup to ensure that you can take the assessment immediately even if you do not pay before taking the assessment. We recommend you pay before beginning the assessment to avoid forgetting. But you must pay nevertheless no later than March 31 at noon. Failure to do so will result in your grades being withheld resulting in a “0” grade for the course. [emphasis added]

Wait what?! It’s a 5% assignment, that requires payment, and if we don’t pay we fail the course?! Such a bright outlook for the future of business schools. So apparently the cost is there because the class taking the assignment is very large. This is ALMOST as a good as paying $45 for a piece of paper with a password on it so I can do my econ labs online.

P.S. – Lack of updates due to exam season. I’ll be done on Tuesday and will be back with a TON of uber awesome posts =D

UPDATE: You know what? I did get some great insight from this CareerLeader survey. My professor is a huge fan of this assessment so I thought, hey, there must be some merit to it eh? Although the results weren’t what I expected, it did open my worldview to other possible career options to complement my law school journey after undergraduate years. COMM 299 is slowly becoming one of my most enjoyable classes this term. But come on Sauder, couldn’t you subsidize this?!

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Last Day of Classes?!

Wow, where has the time gone?! It seems only yesterday when we eager first years embarked on Frosh and started our university experience. Alas alas, time was inversely proportional to the amount of fun we had so now here we are, at the end of the term.

I had an unusually giddy day today. Despite all the workload (compsci assignment that required 30h+ of work anyone?) that sort of built up near the end, I had a huge grin plastered on my face throughout much of the day… probably because of the “insignificant” moments which made me cheerful.

Moment one. At the end of the Compsci 111 lecture this morning, everyone stood up and applauded while the professor tried to make his humble exit. Compsci was my favourite class this term (OB falls a close second) because the prof made it fun and inspirational, yes, inspirational. I didn’t know it was a tradition in university to clap at the end, nevertheless it was still more special than the other classes.

Moment two. Looking out the rain-splattered bus window and seeing fog descending upon Pacific Spirit Park… then later seeing distorted colours of pink and yellow – lights from the neon signs along Granville Street.

Moment three. I didn’t have to wait for more than two minutes for any of the SEVEN buses I took today. I also didn’t get splashed by any passing vehicles, which is a first. Hallelujah.

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