Good things

1030 was the time that we ended our learning team meeting last night. Slowly but surely, we are getting into that pace wherein we now spend less time working with our assignments as a group. I'm not really sure if it is an improvement in time-efficiency, or some other productivity thing, but from what I can initially observe is that people are working faster when they know that they have a lot of work left to do for the following day of which the odds of successfully finishing them all are low. In short, once people know that it is almost an impossibility to finish everything in one night, people start going against those odds.

Which comes to this entry I'm writing here. It's about good things. About how some people and organizations, despite the odds, still strive to go about creating and contributing positive changes to our societies. Among these things that we can probably brag about as authentic human beings is the recognition of one of the Philippine's own, EFREN PEÑAFLORIDA as CNN's Hero of the Year 2009. You can search around in the net, what his great achievement is but to really sum it up, he was a man, who decided to create and spread education to the marginalized sectors of our country. He might be described as a small man, one among many millions, and yet who knew that there were some things that needed to be done to help improve the society.

Truth is, the world has no shortage of heroes in society. What we lack, is support and people who are willing to dare to make an impact and a difference that changes the lives of others and themselves for the better. We need more of this. Personally, I also think that the way for people really to get out of poverty is through education. MBA students should also remember that despite getting higher income as one of the main reasons for taking up the program, we should also keep in mind how to transform the lives of not just ourselves but also of others. After all, we are going to end up in places where we can actually make a very big impact on the lives of many more people in our future organizations and business environment. The world needs not just any MBA, the world will need more responsible MBAs.

Congratulations Efren! Mabuhay ka!



Chino

The AIM Blogger Chosen as One of 100 Best Blogs for International Business Students

Great news!

The AIM Blogger is chosen one of the 100 Best Blogs for International Business Students by Online Colleges.net. The list is a selection of blogs that  provide an excellent opportunity for students to find out first-hand about doing business in countries around the world, hear from other b-school students living and studying abroad, find out what professors have to say, and even explore the developing field of micro-financing.

I'm sure recognitions like these will motivate us, The AIM Blogger team, to write better stuff for the global business school/MBA community. (BTW, Chino has been coming up with mighty great contributions. Check them out!)

BTW, this is the second recognition the blog has received-- the blog was selected as one of the 100 Best Blogs for MBA Students early this year.

Macroeco Exam Over

Finished taking the Macroeconomics Midterms a few hours ago. After taking the test, I found a new found respect for economists and the training that they go through. While I'm quite sure none of us will be expecting a perfect score, I am sure that at least I got maybe 4 points right. It is true I guess, what the upperclassmen said about how hard it was. But it turned out to be more difficult than I expected. Whatever score we get, I know how much effort the professor put into that exam, and how much important it really was for us to have as complete an understanding as possible of economic theories and principles. It really helps if we know more about how economics work.

Anyway I still hope I get a good mark. They gave us a time extension earlier, but I don't think it helped out that much, hahaha. One midterm done, more to go! =)

On a side note, today is the start of this year's World Pyrolympics event. Check out Anton Diaz' blog here.



Chino

The Macroeconomic Dilemma

DO I SLEEP OR DO I NOT SLEEP? Just got home after meeting up with friends. After the hopefully going-to-be regular habit of jogging with some of my classmates (no group name yet), I proceeded to Glorietta on foot to meet up with them. We had dinner at HG Rockstar, the former Heaven and Eggs "breakfast restaurant".


Strange to eat breakfast food of toast, sausage and egg during dinner. But it wouldn't seem that odd if I considered the fact that we were going to have our Macroeconomics Midterms tomorrow at the 9 in the morning. Something, which some of the upperclassmen even advised us, to just relax and go watch a movie instead of spending the whole night and morning reviewing. It seems that our professor, had very high expectation which no one actually had a chance to even reach a break-even point. Anyhow, I'm sure everyone is spending the night reviewing alone, or in a group and I hope we all get good grades.

As for me, I did some reviewing last night thanks to the help of some friends in school. Right now though, I'm thinking of whether I should read some more or just go and rest my brain and sleep.

Cohort 3 (the graduating batch) is having their party tonight somewhere. Apparently a good number from their batch had received offers from Cognizant and they'll be treating the rest of their batch to drinks and stuff. Congratulations to them! We'll get there soon enough =)

But for now, I hope Cohort 5 makes best use of the remaining hours before the big midterm exam. Good luck everyone! Whether we study our butts off tonight or not, let's not forget to also have some time left for rest. As one classmate once said, "Let go."

May we all do our best in tomorrow's exam! Good luck everyone!

Chino

The picture was taken from this site right here.

Nightmares

There are many things to be afraid of,and for an MBA student, one of these fears is to be the lowest of the low in the batch, to be the outlier among outliers, to be the cream of the crap, and to fail when others have high probabilities to succeed.

We all probably have this fear. Despite our best efforts, we might not be getting the ideal results that we wanted to. Despite the best learning team composition, the smartest geniuses, the best team effort, the best school, the best mentors, sometimes some people just have greater propensities for failure.

A few weeks ago, I was worrying about my Language of Business (Accounting) and my Quantitative Analysis classes. Nowadays, LOB has been reduced to a sunk cost in some ways, and QA, while hope is still there, is seen as something salvageable. From these two subjects, new anxieties arise in the form of FM1 (Financial management 1) and in some ways MCP or our Management of Costs and Profits Class. Sounds similar to accounting? In some ways they are.

Comparing my performance to my batchmates is like comparing bananas to banana splits. Similar, but distant in some ways. Still, like anything, the most important point is, to not give up. I was always thinking about this idea in school that if not academically, we are all sort of in the bottom point and are failing by default. The only way left then for us is up. Like real managers, we exist to manage problems besides making many successes.

I was telling a friend to not worry about having nightmares and I end up dreaming of zombies overunning the place where I lived. (I lived in a building, with emergency stairs containing nothing but the garbage chute) At the Asian Institute of Management, we are all like zombies sometimes, trudging along, lacking sleep, looking scary whenever we do, and moving as a throng, when we crowd, it gets scary. Imagine if we eventually figured out to run and chase after our goals!

picture taken from the new Zombieland movie here.


Chino

Five Years of Firefox in Manila

The Mozilla Philippines Community, Globe Telecom, and the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) will be hosting the Five Years of Firefox in Manila! event this coming November 21, 2009 (3pm-5pm) at the Fuller Hall of AIM in Makati City.

This event is a get-together of Mozilla Firefox and web enthusiasts in the Philippines.

This is the third web-related event held at AIM this year. First was the Form Function & Class Web Design Conference, next was the WordCamp Philippines event, and now it's the Mozilla Firefox event. AIM is making an effort to diversify its presence into the web-savvy crowd by supporting community events like these. By reaching out to web professionals, bloggers, and netizens, these events are really a part of a "Geek Series" the institute is trying to string together.

With the support of W. SyCip GSB Associate Dean Prof. Ricky Lim and the institute's marketing team, people should expect more events like these in the future.

AIM Launches New Website

The Asian Institute of Management recently launched a new look for its website!

The design is quite special to me because I was  responsible for creating the design where the final template design was based. I was inspired by the "maximal" photos incorporated in nice sites today, like the website of MIT. The good thing about this design is that the photo can be changed easily to suit the season. So we may see a new photo at the site's home page by the end of the year.

What do you think of the website? Feel free to give feedback without fear. :P

--

Trivia: The new design features a photo of students from the outgoing cohort of the MBA program. :)

Did You Read The Case?

If you've noticed that I haven't been blogging here as much I used to, you're spot on. But there's a pretty good reason for that.

I'm working on a free book project about my experiences in studying and teaching at the Asian Institute of Management's MBA program. The free book is called "Did You Read The Case? - 25 Tips on How to Survive the Case Method MBA and the Asian Institute of Management" The book is meant to be a pocket guide to folks who are interested in taking the MBA at AIM and a source of inspiration to MBA students who are cursing the high heavens during their Financial Management exams.

Here's a draft of the cover:

The book is still in its early stages and I've gotten Prof. Ricky Lim to write the foreword. Included in the book are tips on how to get admitted into the MBA program, how to make the perfect class participation (CP), and how to work with Filipinos and Indians without going crazy. But I promise it will be a light read that will evoke sheepish grins.

As for the release, the target date is second quarter of 2010 (or even sooner!). :)

The Allen Iverson Syndrome

I was reading news about the NBA when I read about an issue about Allen Iverson of the Memphis Grizzlies.

For a good portion of the decade, Iverson was the leading scorer the team he played in. He was a gutsy player who played with much heart and even won the league's Most Valuable Player award once. He was admired of his style of play that defined the play of his team.

However, when age started to rob Iverson of his athleticism, he was expected to take on a reserve role and play less time to give his body more rest. At the same time, the less playing time meant that his younger teammates would get more exposure and experience playing at a high level.

Iverson resented his new role to the team. When he was not leading the team's efforts, he was a distraction to the team and disrupted the flow of the game. But when he was given the chance to start when another player was injured, he excelled and led the team like he used to. This behavior from Iverson led him to be traded twice and made it difficult for him to find a new team early this year.

Now, Allen Iverson just took a leave of absence from his current team, the Memphis Grizzlies, because he was designated as a reserve player.

This is story of Allen Iverson reminds me of something that happens to us more often than we would admit it.

When we are the leader of a group, we bring our "A" game and put in the effort to do our best and try to inspire everyone to perform at a high level. But when we're not the leader, our effort and commitment dips (but probably not to the level that it becomes a distraction.) This is something I'd call the "Allen Iverson Syndrome"-- when we're the star, we shine bright, but when we're put to the background, we tone down significantly (and even resent it).

I feel this is a challenge to folks who are used to being leaders and/or having their way. (I think the MBA program has lots of these :P) I think we can reduce our Allen Iverson-like tendencies of we believe that we can still contribute and get recognized without being in the forefront. This also means that the team must have a culture of giving props to everyone, not just the leader.

Blood For Thought: Give blood and Help Save Lives! On Friday 6th November 2009!!