First hour of International Finance

Cool to see more friends from abroad here: Omo, Jake, Valmiki and Andson from Warwick are here.
Then we have some new people I still have to get to know better: Laure, Tom, Hiba.
And we have some old friends showing up again: NPV, WACC, IRR...
Let's see how it goes.

Phase 2, block 1

The first block of the term is practically over. The "Financing New Ventures" course was a great eye opener and I enjoyed every class of it. Great structure, great guestspeakers and a really good teacher, asking the right questions at the right time and making everything exciting. Even the assignment, which took a huge effort to get done (it was the first time I saw term sheets and I had to get myself familiar with many different legal and financial terms and practices), I enjoyed doing. There is still a group assignment to be done, but this will be dealt with on Tuesday.
So it was a good break to have an easy weekend after a busy week, and I am glad it is not over yet. Some of my colleagues are doing a heavier course and had to work the whole day yesterday, so we went to the Queen's Pub in the students' union's (or government, as they call it here) building to cool off.

And, if you have 20 minutes, take a look at this:
http://storyofstuff .com/

0.4 club

So another couple of days has passed and it's time for some more impressions of Kingston and Queen's. So far, so good. I am really happy with my choice. The courses have been great so far. Demanding and interesting, relevant. There is still a bit of schedule conflict for me to solve, but I am enjoying it.
The class is very close knit. Of course, they have been together for 8 months now and know each other very well. But that doesn't make them less welcoming, and it has been very easy to get to know lots of people. I won't probably get to know everyone, as the class is really big, almost as big as in Warwick, and everyone is taking different courses.
For this first block of 3 weeks the options are:

• Financing new ventures
• Problem solving and consulting
• Marketing strategy
  
• Corporate valuation & mergers and acquisitions

So far I have been to all classes, but am actually enrolled in the first two. Tomorrow I will audit marketing again and it might be possible to take it as a third course, but I will have to see if I manage the work load.
Because of the schedule conflict I mentioned, I was not able to take the second session of PSC (or PBL, as you wish) and the first one was not enough to evaluate the course well.
Mergers and acquisitions seems to be the most demanding course. The teacher impressed me, but, since it really isn't what I want to work with, I will forego this one.
I guess I already wrote a bit about marketing, either here or on twitter, but the class I attended was really good. It was looooong, 6 hours with breaks, but it was very interesting. I will audit as many as possible or even take it as real course.
FNV is extremely interesting. Mainly because it is all new and very valuable information taught by people who really know what they are talking about and have real and hard market experience. So, as you can see, I can't complain.

Today the class went out for the first time. It seems that there is the Thursday out tradition around here. They call it the point four club. It seems that there has been a study somewhere stating that, if you go out once a week, the negative effect on your GPA is only o.4%. I'm not sure of the origin, so maybe one of my new colleagues will correct me.

And today we went to a new sports bar near my house and it was fun. Having, for the first time, really time to talk to some of the new people and playing, for the first time, the Wii I know so well from the marketing assignment from last term. I'll definetely taking part on the future instances of this even, so don't bother trying to chat with me on Thursdays evenening.
And I am ripe for bed. I want to post one more thing, then I'm gone.