Bragging About Education Is Totally Acceptable

“Winning is not everything, but wanting to win is.” Vince Lombardi

I’ve been transcribing last term’s successes as well as its struggles on Twitter for the past four months now, but I’m done now, and would like to dedicate this post to my Bachelor of Commerce degree. I graduate with a 3.62 GPA, which likely puts me in a good position to apply to grad schools. I have not picked any specific programs yet, but they’ll most likely revolve around an MFA or a mix of MFA + MBA. Something new, something useful in tackling the future where I’ll be spending a lot of time.

It’s been a crazy ride, featuring Sauder School of Business (at UBC) and the Ted Rogers School of Management (Ryerson). Transferring credits set my graduation back one year, but no matter. Below I list some of the most valuable courses of my undergrad years for the skills they taught me and for personal and professional roads they opened:

1. Strategic Management – an amazing course taught by Steve Gedeon at Ryerson. The professor drilled into our heads the real value behind essentialization, or selecting and communicating most valuable information for decision-making purposes.  Answering the “So what” question is the second element that helped me to write stellar business plans and get my point across.
2. Modern and Postmodern Art - this course dipped me into the pool of beautiful as deeply as possible. I love them because not only did I learn about the key players of last century’s art scene, but I also discovered an infinite web of connections between pop culture, film, business and politics. And I try to keep tabs on my knowledge of art history.
3. Marketing Communications – mostly due to our dynamic professor Marla Spergel, I really enjoyed this course and got a taste of the advertising world. And also made a final and total decision to become part of it (the new advertising, v. 2.0 if you will).
4. Philosophy of Love and Sex – thank gods we got to pick electives; this course made me feel like I went through really amazing therapy sessions. Learned about multi-dimensional relationship dynamics, digged into the depths of “what is love and to love” questions and had the pleasure of working with one of the best and most entertaining professors I ever encountered – James Cunningham.
5. Industry Analysis – a.k.a. the economics of strategy. One of the hardest courses I’ve taken, full of readings and theory, it helped me grasp a better sense of strategy and market dynamics, made me want to read books on war, find joy in writing industry reports and standing my ground. The final A+ industry report I wrote is going into my portfolio of accomplishments.
6. Introduction to Quantitative Decision Making and Application of Statistics in Business – I combine these two classes into one, because they go back to back and are heavily related. Although I struggled through its first part, I cannot ignore its value because almost every finance-laden project and marketing plan needs it. I can also optimize with this baby and fight uncertainty. What a warrior. Stats will haunt us all forever.
7. Ethics in Finance – it sparked my interest in the markets that spreads beyond course content. It also set my ethical beliefs in a more responsible direction. Learned the root of the recent economic crisis and sincerely began to care for sustainable business practices, all thanks to the awesome Dr. Allen Goss.
8. Academic Writing - goes in hand with #1 because you need to be damn able to write coherently if you tamper with complex topics. Especially when your page limit is 10 and you have to communicate the essence of at least 40.

PS. 100th blog post

Filed under: memories, moving up , development, education, ideas, memories, ryerson, self