Archives: Commerce

Cream of the Crop as Shown by Google

I have faith that the readers of UBC blogs like mine are the cream of the crop of the student population here at this lovely university (slight sarcasm intended). As to how you guys got here, some were via Twitter, Facebook, my email signature, and a plethora of places filled shameless self-promotion; while others found it through search engines like Google. I’m quite happy that I come up first when I search “Phoebe Yu”, but what keywords did other people search to get to this blog? Some had mindnumbing questions, others were just curious. I will try my best to appease such curiosities. Much thanks to Google Analytics for stat tracking.

Bring on the keywords!

480 ubc runs on weekends
No, it doesn’t. You’ll have to take the 98 B-Line and then the 25/41/49/99 bus.

phoebe yu birthday
I’m flattered you’re trying to find someone’s birthday on Google, wait, on Google, seriously?!

chinese girls ubc commerce
Umm… *gulp*. There are a lot of us here… but we’re not sure if we want YOU here…

at ubc we like them yong [sic]
-Disturbed- (this is actually a line from a Sauder Frosh cheer, haha you’ll see)

mean things to do to someone to get them back

  1. Tell them to Google stupid things
  2. Get that featured on a blog

Oh wait, you just did that. Cream of the crop indeed.

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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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The Pitiful Evolution of the Email Signatures

When I was in sixth grade, an eager classmate introduced me to the joy and excitement that was email and MSN. Oh yes, we had a blast giggling in the computer lab messaging each other online while sitting side by side. Back then, kids were creative. So when someone came up with the idea of email signatures, we all flocked to add sigs in a dizzying display of emoticons, pink comic sans fonts, and blinking unicorns.

Circa 2002 – The :] Age of Comic Sans. Emoticons in the prehistoric email world is like fire in prehistoric times – it looks good and expresses fluttering emotion, but can burn you if you use too much. To compound the damage, I also went through a phase where I wanted to appear wise above my years, hence the corny cliche.
Email Signature

Circa 2003 – The Age of Disco Flashback. Some genius then introduced graphics attachments. I erred on the side of conservatism and refrained from overdecorating my signatures in a nauseating shade of magenta. But I do believe some of my friends’ emails ended with the following.
Email Signature

Circa 2004 – The Age of cHtSpk 2lzy2TyPe. Soon, the excitement worn off and emails got tied to school work. The messages stopped having greetings and signatures. What previously said

“Dear Amy, Hope you are well. Sincerely, Phoebe.”

Now read

Amz, wassup?? u okz? ttyl brb!!

Oh how low we sunk.

Circa 2006 – The Age of Formality. As high school drew to a close, I felt the need to be more mature and professional, and thus ended my email with something simple and polite. Yawn.

Regards,
Phoebe Yu
(604) 555 – 5555

Circa 2008 – The Age of “Hey look, mine’s longer! Har Har”. This is the main point of this entry, I promise. After I entered the sacred pearly gates of UBC Sauder and started receiving emails from upperclassmen, I was COMPLETELY blown away by the level of involvement and sophistication each signature seemed to display. Sauderites also have a distinct style where people put dots instead of dashes in phone numbers. It’s all very amusing. Observe one such gem (fictious, of course).

—
Sau Derkeener
VP Logistical Administration | UBC Logistics Club
Executive Manager | Management Conference, UBC
Marketing Coordinator | Association of Marketers Vancouver Branch
Acronym Director | AFPWRAAACRAA
Bachelor of Commerce 2012 in Marketing
Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia
Email: sau.derkeener@gmail.com | Website: www.sau12.com
Linkedin: SauDerkeener | Skype: Sau12
Mobile: 604.555.555 | Fax: 604.555.3456

Behold the greatness that is business school signature (though only midly exaggerated). It’s twice as long as the body of the email and three times as long as most professors’ (although the disclaimer “The content of this email is confidential and meant only for its recipient. If received in error please destroy immediately” has yet to catch on. Oh I dread the day someone popularizes that!) . I have to confess that my own email signature currently looks like an abridged version of above. From experience, I have compiled a very handy dandy guide for you called “How to Create Your Email Signature to Ensure SUCCE$$”.

Step one. Open the Word Document that contains your most recent two-page resume.

Step two. Select All and Copy.

Step three. Paste into signature of email.

Step four. Send emails and earn the lusting admiration of your peers, TA’s, professors who bother checking their emails, random-dude-who-never-responds-to-your-group-meeting-requests, and love interest you tend to flirt with by email.

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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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KPMG Crack the Case Competition

One of my goals this year was to step out of my comfort zone and participate in things people wait a few years in university before doing. Last weekend, KPMG and the Case Competition Club hosted a competition for first year’s and second year’s. My team (three first-year’s) got to KPMG’s downtown office tower bright and early on Saturday morning. We had some breakfast and got a tour of their humongous multi-floored office.  After we were given a conference room with an awesomely huge whiteboard that covered an entire wall, we started on the “cracking” the case.

Basically we had three hours to plow through, in this case, a 15-page long case on a company, identify the major problems it faces (such as corporate culture, organizational structure, global expansion, demographic shifts etc. etc.), come up with solutions/implementations/risks, and create a powerpoint presentation. Then we had to do a 15 minute presentation to KPMG judges as well as endure an intense Q&A period.

You’re probably thinking at this point, what the heck, people do this for FUN?! Shush, we’re commerce-majors, we powerpoint and party like there’s no tomorrow.

Before I even get to the presentation, I have to say that the prep part was absolutely NERVESWRECKING. Three hours may seem like a lot of time, but 1/3 of that was just reading the case. It didn’t help that the case was about an international wine distributor, which was a completely foreign topic to us underage kids XD. Don’t get me started on oddity that is wine names (Banrock Station and Kelly’s Revenge anyone? Yep they’re wine brands)! However, it is rather amazing how efficient we were working under stress. We soon had filled up the entire 2m x 4m white board with diagrams, flowcharts, maps, and mock ppt slides. It then occured to us in our self-congratulatory euphoria that we had about 30 minutes to synthesize everything that was on the board into a professional-looking presentation and come up with intelligent-sounding things to say. Somewhere along the way we lost track of time and was reminded that there was OMG 5 MINUTES LEFT when we thought we had at least fifteen.

I was responsible for the powerpoint. Wow, I have never finished one so fast in our life.

The presentation room is set up like a classroom – a projector screen at the front with a table, some walking room, and a few rows of tables facing forward. We walked in in our business suits, shook hands with the four judges, and cued up the powerpoint.

The good

  • The group member in charge of the introduction wrote it out and memorized it, making us seem very relaxed and confident at the beginning =D
  • No PPT crashes, font was legible, template was a nice blue
  • Everyone generally knew what they were talking about
  • Perfect for the time limit

The bad

  • I said a lot of “um….”s which I wasn’t even aware of; now I am haha
  • The PPT seemed really bare
  • Our solutions may have been too drastic for the company’s liking
  • Didn’t have a chance to answer one of the judge’s questions – time was up, maybe this should go under Good?

The ugly (hey Im honest!)

  • Total dead air at one point because of the extensive amount of abbreviations/short hands on the PPT resulted in lack of comprehensibility

Congratulations to Uvini and al. who won, and two year 1s who got honourable mention! We had lunch after the presentation (gotta love competition food!) and mingled a little with the judges. Was the almost-reaching-stress-breaking-point worth it? Only time will tell =D In the mean time, Crack the Case was just a little taste of the business world to come.

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