Hello there!

For my very first blog post, I’ve outlined for you what a typical Monday or Wednesday is for me. We follow a slightly different schedule on Tuesday and Thursday—days on which we start at 8:00 a.m., take a 4-hour break from 10:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m., and end at the usual 4:00 p.m. I like the 8:00 a.m. starts. I surmise that I’d like them even better if I could remember to sleep earlier the night before.

I live in Richmond, in a not-so-convenient area in terms of public transport. Most of my classmates don’t live as far away as I do, so my before and after-school routine may not be representative of my classmates’ habits. Living so far away means continually refining my time management skills, rearranging activities to be done at certain times instead. On the other hand, the most notable challenges I’ve faced are the following, ranked according to what I perceive to be the most dreadful:

(1) The exhaustion that eventually gets to you and slows your brain down as the period (what you may know as a “school term”) progresses

(2) Time and energy I may not have for peer-socializing (which may be less problematic if I owned a car)

(3) Inconvenient weekend trips to school because there’s no direct bus from Richmond to UBC (then again, it ensures that I try my best to minimize the need for these trips)

 

7:30 a.m. Get up and prep for the busy day ahead

*Ok, I may have snoozed my alarm a few times…

8:15 a.m. Cross a school sports field —> shopping plaza —> road —> BUS STOP!! (~1 block)

*There’s another bus that stops much closer to my house, but it’s a turtle bus!

 8:28 a.m. Bus to Bridgeport Station

*You can get away with a shorter time buffer the earlier you have to leave (less traffic). Occasionally, I miss this bus and take an alternate route.

8:58 a.m. Transfer to the 480 bus —> read the free newspaper / review my notes / nap

*Seat, seat, seat… YES!! The 480 bus originates in Bridgeport Station. Ironically, your probability of grabbing a seat diminishes the closer you live to campus.

9:40 a.m. Arrive at the UBC Bus Loop and begin the long walk to the Sauder School of Business

*Sadly, I haven’t figured out how to get to Sauder from any other direction without getting lost. I found that the only other places you need to know to survive are the Student Union Building (SUB) and the UBC Bookstore.

9:50 a.m. Morning chat with fellow MM-ers

*I’ve never met a more wonderful, supportive bunch of people. It’s great to be part of this cohort!

10:00 a.m. Marketing Research class with Professor Joey Hoegg

*In our recent classes, we evaluated the UBC Course Evaluation Form and also created our own survey in groups. It’s easy to critique a survey, but man, creating one is complicated work!

12:00 p.m. Lunch + go through emails and update my calendar and to-do list —> team meeting / review my notes / work on an assignment

2:00 p.m. Managerial Aspects of Accounting with Professor Bill Dorfmann

*I admit, the first few lectures weren’t the most stimulating (which we were amply warned about… You can consider yourself cautioned when you hear the words “ad nauseam”). But we’ve finally gotten to the more interesting bits, like how to make add/drop (a business segment) and make/buy decisions.

4:00 p.m. 2 possibilities:

(A) GO HOME!! —> prep dinner and tomorrow’s lunch —> do work

(B) Team meeting —> maybe take out dinner from our neighbour, Triple-O’s (White Spot), if I’m still at Sauder at 6:00 p.m.

*The best outcome, of course, is being able to leave as soon as class ends because the commute at this time isn’t as painful. Leaving UBC past 9.30 p.m. may extend my commute to up to 2 hours.

 

Until next time!

Rachel Lim