Rude Awakenings

It’s Tuesday night, and I’m feeling sick to my stomach. Coming back to school after the holidays has been a rude awakening. I’m not used to working this hard again, and I’m craving a day off and a morning to sleep in. I’ve been extra quiet since school started up in the new year. I’ve been in more of a thinking mood lately, and haven’t felt like socializing much. I think I’m anxious to move on with the next phase of my life, which will be a move to Toronto and a new job.

My perspectives on what I want out of the last four months of this program have dramatically changed in the last few weeks. There’s no doubt that having some free time in China gave me an opportunity to think about my goals for 2009, and how I want to go about spending my time at school and with my colleagues, my friends, and of course my best friend; my wife. After a couple of very excellent conversations with some good friends and Geeta, I think I have a much more clearer picture of some of the changes I want to make in the last four months of school.

So what do I want for the last four months?

Out of School…I want to:

-Take the time to really learn and absorb from the classes and not to trade a deeper learning and understanding of the material for higher marks. I like to excel and therefore I like to aim for high marks, but I also know that I’ve sacrificed a bit of learning all year round in order to focus on getting higher marks. I need to get more comfortable with making this trade-off and I know that it will mean that I may not be able to do all the cases and class preparation everyday.
-To make a meaningful impact for the school.

Out of my social life….I want to:

-Spend less time socializing at the bars, and spend more quality time with friends and colleagues from Ivey
-Spend more time getting to know my colleagues that I don’t know as well or haven’t had a chance to connect with during the year

Out of my home life…I want to:

-Spend more quality time with Geeta
-Make more of an effort to connect with family more often

Other than the fact that school is whipping me back into shape, things are progressing: I haven’t been keeping up with my workouts as I would like, I’ve got a new learning team, and I’m working with another team on an exciting new consulting school project for a very interesting client.

Until next time…

Sacha