Six Weeks Until Relaxation Therapy

I finally finished up my preparations for my two cases for tomorrow, so I thought I’d write a quickie before bed. I’m wired anyhow so there’s no point trying fall asleep when I know it won’t happen.

I’m down to the last six weeks of school before grad, and I’m now taking electives. Over the next six weeks I’ll be taking Corporate Financial Reporting, Portfolio Management, Value Investing, and High Impact Presenting. Up until two weeks ago I had decided that I would not take any finance courses for the rest of the MBA program – I can’t say that finance and accounting are my favourite subjects and having taken two core courses earlier in the year I felt that I didn’t need any more knowledge in these areas. But then it dawned on me – finance/accounting are my weakest subject areas. When I asked myself the following questions ~ What is an MBA graduate without a strong financial background, and do I feel like I am confident to talk finance-speak? – ...I realized that I needed more finance/investing ammunition…. So I decided to make three of my four electives investing/finance/accounting-related.

Last week was March break. Geeta and I spent half our time in London and the other half in Toronto. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law came up to London, and we later met my brother and his family in Toronto. It was a productive break; I got a lot of personal tasks out of the way and it was really nice seeing family. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the ‘break’ I was looking for. While other classmates came back re-charged from their vacations, I came back drained. I think I needed a quiet week away from everyone, and it turned out to be quite the opposite. Not that I don’t love spending time with family….but I think that after two draining months of school I needed a bit of solitude. I was so burnt out by mid-week that I decided to delay studying/writing my P.Eng exam in April. I just can’t heck it right now.

Recognizing how drained I feel, I decided to push back my start date with my new employer to late August. I’m hoping that a few months off will give me ample amounts of time to recharge, and re-learn how to relax and enjoy life again ~ relaxation therapy. I sometimes feel these days that I’ve forgotten how to relax – I’m restless 24/7 and don’t know how to sit still. There is always a million things to do (school-wise and personally). My Outlook to-do list is almost 60 items long and I just feel overwhelmed all the time. When school calms down, I catch up on my personal to-do list ….which these days often involves banking, taxes, dealing with my rental property, finding a place to live in Toronto, employment stuff, and a few other family/personal things etc etc. The only thing that gets me through is being organized, managing my time, and grabbing a workout when possible. Yes – a one year program will make you a fantastic time manager.

So, with six weeks to go and 3.5 months off before I start my new job I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do this summer. Here’s my list: travel, spend time with friends and family, drive across Canada, get back into sports, discover my new hometown/Toronto, read, use my newly acquired investing skill sets to fix my investment portfolios so I have a chance of recovering from this brutal year, get into shape again, volunteer maybe, do something I’ve never done before, gift myself with a new car maybe….find a place to live.

On a final note, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what makes a good leader. I’m not thinking of the traditional attributes (i.e. strong communication, decision making, organizational skills etc), but rather about the little things, the so-called secrets of leadership success. I think I’ve gathered a pretty good list from my work experience and from my tendencies to observe others. I hope to blog about it soon for my next article for the Financial Post.

Lastly, to my surprise I actually did pretty well last term in terms of marks. I’m happy that the hard work paid off, especially considering that I made it a priority not to focus on marks and rather focus on learning….Luck always has something to do with getting good marks in a case-based school and it wouldn’t have surprised me if things didn’t go as well as they did last term.

Until next time…

Sach