Archives: Economics

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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Election Drama Ain’t Over

The UBC AMS election has come and gone and it’s a big congratulations to Johannes Rebane (Yay), Tim Chu, Crystal Hon, Tom Dvorak, Bijan Ahmadian, Michael Duncan and the Student Legal Fund Society and Voter-funded Media winners.

Now you may be wondering why Blake Frederick, the new President-elect who won by 43 votes, is not included in my congrats list. Turns out, HE HAS BEEN DISQUALIFIED (sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) by the Elections Committee for “slating”.

So what happens now UBC? Are we left without a president? Well Blake has a 48 hours or so to appeal the decision and take the case to the Student Court where an appointed Justice will hear from both parties’ and their representatives. To quote RadicalBeer, “The burden of proof is now on Blake to demonstrate that there were errors in the judgment. This is notable as the candidate must do more than create a reasonable doubt, but explain why the actions of the [Elections Committee] were in error.” Oh hearings and pseudo legal systems, how I love thee.

On a side note, my election predictions on the VP/President positions were 80% correct, yay. Crystal Hon surprised everyone with an awesome campaign and beat the get-Tristan-Markle-reelected groupies.

It’s currently 4 in the morning (don’t ask why I’m up heh…) so I can’t be bothered to absorb the election code… but if Blake gets thrown out is there a chance that runner-up Alex Monegro would become president? If so, then EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. of International Business Club’s endorsees would have been voted into office. Either someone is good at calling the shots or we’ve got one hell of a new source of political influence on campus (the answer, fyi, is both). Next year’s candidates take note. No wonder the non-endorsees were complaining.

P.S. – Gateman’s “date night” (translation: econ midterm) was a massacre. I don’t think this relationship is working out…

P.P.S. – I was registering for an orientation interview today and the lady who checked my name paused and said, “Phoebe Yu… of UBC blog fame?” Thank you for making my day.

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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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