Life during the Core – mission is NOT impossible

Well, some of my classmates already shared the opinion that as long as we are able to write anything during the Core, it is probably not THAT bad. I tend to agree. It is definitely intense, with a lot of assignments and readings, but I still manage to do a lot of different activities.
Well, we will see how it will influence my final marks and exam knowledge, but that is still 2 months away!
So, what is the Core? Normally it is 4 days of classes (2 classes a day if we are lucky, and 3 all other days). Almost every class requires preliminary reading, which could be as short as 1 page (rare) or as long as 40 pages (sometimes). Still, we normally get the average=)
Monday is a case day almost every week. This means that we are supposed to write a 1000 word memo based on case information and problems, and during the class we discuss the case and possible solutions. So far we have done a few really interesting cases. My favorite was about Cirque du Soleil. We had a great discussion in class and also a guest speaker from Cirque’s HR. Amazing!
Our weekly routine is often broken by a field trip or guest speaker.
So far we have had two amazing trips. The first one was to see the Grouse Grind Resort. It was truly an amazing experience! The management showed us around the resort, answering all our questions and telling us the details of their operations. Grouse is a privately held company, so there is some restricted information, but other than that they were incredibly welcoming and open. We have seen their recent news – a wind turbine that was just installed a week or so before our trip. They told us their future plans to use it as a viewpoint – another tourist attraction. There are 2 grizzly bears, which have lived at Grouse since 2001, and they are amazingly close! We also learned a lot about their summer and winter operations and the sustainable policies they are maintaining. It is impossible to describe how nice and useful this trip was!
The other field trip was to the clothing retailer Aritzia. The CEO spent an hour with us talking about the company, its strategy and achievements, and kept answering our questions all through the trip. He also showed us around the office and small manufacturing facility. The trip was great!
In my next entry I`ll tell more about the fun part of the Core, but now I have a strategy assignment due…
I promise next post will be more about our life outside the school.