The AIM Blogger

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

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 thank...

Haven't really been updating the website lately partly due to the lack of wifi services in my place, partly because of the heavy load of readings, cases and quizzes, but mostly due to lack of drive to write something. Some call it the writer's block(?) I think. Anyway, I've been thinking of getting wifi soon because of the obvious necessity to stay up-to-date and connected with the rest of the campus community(it also makes setting up meetings and CAN sessions easier). Tomorrow I'm going to sign up for a cheap one that will be enough for my stay in Makati. A number of important things have happened last week. While I cannot recall all of them, some things are just worth taking note of: 1. We had an impromptu public speaking session during MC class(MGT COMMUNICATION), out of a random pick of speakers I got to be the one to speak first. I was supposed to be a famous martial arts movie star, who gets invited to an elementary school to persuade kids to eat vegetables. ...

Our Financial Management 2 (FM2) professors ( Prof. Maya Herrera , Prof. Gary Olivar, and Prof. Grace Ugut) were kind enough to give us MBA folks a chance to improve our FM2 grades from our core subjects term. Only a "select" few were invited to take the exam (obviously, I got an invite) and I guess the exam was motivated to make our Asian Institute of Management transcripts look spiffier. :) The exam was three and a half hours long and it covered the three major areas of the subject-- Fixed Income Derivatives, Project Finance and Risk Management. We were advised to bring only a four function calculator. You read that correct: four function calculator . Imagine a high level finance exam where we're using only the four main arithmetic functions. It's analogous to going to war against the United States with just slingshots and water guns. Here are some choice quotes from the people on their thoughts on the exam: "Bullsh*t"- Anonymous" "Terrib...

Officially, the first eight months of the MBA program is tomorrow April 18. But by virtue of my exemption (Thanks to my CAN group!) in the Management Control Systems (MCS) finals tomorrow, today is my last day of classes. Our classes for today were the last session for General Management & Ethics (GME) under Prof. Jess Gallegos and the Operations Management (OM) final exam. Since it was the last class session for GME, Prof. Gallegos shared his "Tips To Go," life lessons on making a difference, leadership and your definition of success. It was really a feel-good topic since he was sharing more on his experiences, anecdotes about how some events in his life altered his career and his family life. Speaking of family life, I find that a touchy topic. When Prof. Gallegos said that at some point in our careers we will have to make tough choices when it comes to family and career (I'm not married by the way), I reflected on it. It's probably because I think I have the...

(This post could also be called "Eight Hours of Financial Management.") We had our Financial Management 1 (FM 1) final exam yesterday and boy was it a monster exam. The exam was originally from 9 am to 2 pm, and I thought it was more than enough, but, boy, am I glad they changed the schedule to 8:30 am to 5 pm. I'm glad our Asian Business Systems (ABS) professor, Brahm Prakash, was willing to reschedule our classes to next year to give us more time to do our finals. The exam had two parts: Part 1 was a 40-point multiple choice section that focused on capital budgeting, weighted cost of capital (WACC), earnings per share (EPS) and stock prices, and capital structure. Everybody in class thought that part was very challenging. After taking that part of the finals, I felt there was an anvil that fell down from the heavens and dashed my MBA hopes. Part 2 was a case analysis and I think it was harder than any of our Written Analysis of Cases (WAC) where we're given 13 hou...

Darkness: I have plenty of reasons to be gloomy and glum these past few days. First off, the academics part. It seems I have found my new nemesis for this batch of subjects: Management of Cost and Profit (MCP) under Prof. Mau Bolante. The subject is not hard in itself, but the exams are a bit tedious and you have to take note of the details. My oversight in the last MCP quiz got me a score of 2/12! I really find it hard to believe that a couple of months ago, I was lamenting my low quiz scores in Language of Business (LOB) under Prof. Larry Tan. Give me a time machine and bring me back to the Pre-MBA days , and I'm sure I'll really kick butt in Financial Accounting. This past week has been exam-heavy. Two Financial Management (FM) exams and an Economics exam were reasons of our sleepless nights this week. I already got my score for the first of two FM quizzes for the week and I got a not-so-sterling 10/20. I've also been preoccupied by non-school matters-- I moved out of t...

It's Friday and I'm thankful for two things: We do not have a Written Analysis of Cases (WAC) today and the schedule for next week is very light. But between last Monday and today, our class had three exams: two for Financial Management (FM) and one for Quantitative Analysis (QA). We had the FM pair last Tuesday and thanks to Prof. Larry Tan , as I write this post, I already know my exam scores. The exams had 20 points each and the passing grade was 12 for each exam. I got 13 and 10 on the first and second exams respectively so I'm still in the red, so to speak. What did I learn from the FM quizzes? I'm able to appreciate the financial ratios more and evaluating the financial position of companies/organizations in a systematic way. However, for the following topic, financial forecasting, I'm still a bit iffy (thus the exam scores). For the QA quiz, I found it disappointing because you spent a great deal of your time creating charts, rather than doing the analysis a...

Man, Mondays like these make me want to wish it was Friday already. The culprits: the result of my Management of Cost and Profit (MCP) quiz and the class we had today in MCP. (Hmmm... is MCP a new nemesis for me in my quest for MBA glory?) First, the exam. I had probably the lowest exam in my stay here in AIM to the tune of 2.5/25 or a meager 10%! I saw this coming as soon as I finished the exam last week. I really felt I wanted to request for a do-over of the exam since it wasn't that hard (at least mathematically) but I wasn't able to study. (OK fine, I admit it.) The last week was such a doozy that all aspects of my life (personal, blogging, etc.) took a hit from my school-related activities. The MCP quiz was really a casualty of my inability to manage my time better and desire to maintain a life. (Yes, I do desire that.) The more frustrating of the duo was the class we had earlier. I got a cold call form the indefatigable Prof. Mau Bolante and I practically clammed up. Well...

After the loaded day last Wednesday, we had a loaded weekend with the Economics Midterms Exams. It was an exam of two parts: a 2-hour "open books" exam and a 5-hour sit-down exam. The latter was also doubled as a Written Analysis of Cases (WAC) paper, which is a first for our batch. The first part of the midterms was very, very, and I mean, very difficult. The exam had everything on it-- multiple choice (there was a question with 16 choices), reading comprehension, essay and fill in the blanks/multiple choice hybrid. Any exam where I answer "financial chaos" on a monetary policy question is bad news and it didn't help me that some questions had vague instructions. As far as topics covered are concerned, it was everything we tackled plus more. The class was practically stupefied as the exam ended. Looks of discombobulation and "What was THAT?!?" expressions littered everyone's faces. A lot of people felt their study was rendered useless by that ex...

We had probably one of the most intensive class days yesterday when we had three straight classes then followed by the Language of Business (LOB) Final Exam for the coup de grace. This loaded day was heavy with quant subjects: Quantitative Analysis (QA), Financial Management 1 (FM1) and the Operations Management (OM). Incidentally, this was our first session for OM. We met our teacher for this class, Prof. Fernando Roxas , for the first time. The OM session was an introduction and we didn't discuss a case (thank goodness). The LOB final exam was a difficult case and we were given four hours to analyze and answer the questions relating to it. After the exam, I overhead the finance folks in the class discussing the answers and realizing that I totally missed some of the items in the exam. Don't you just hate it when that happens? You pour your heart and soul in an exam and you feel a sense of achievement as you pass you paper only have your hopes crumpled in an instant? Yesterday...

Glory is fleeting indeed. I went to Ateneo to pick up my graduation kit. It consists of the regalia (graduation dress), the graduation cap, program, tickets and my full set of graduation pictures (I'll upload them soon.). I really felt proud that I'm done with my MS in Information Management and there's really nothing like walking around the campus as a graduation candidate. You feel that sense of entitlement. But like waking from a nice dream, I went to AIM and boom-- the second brain-busting Financial Accounting exam was in front of me. The exam really shows that finance is one of the Asian Institute of Management 's strong points (and one of my improvement areas). AIM MBA students are expected to have the knowledge of a CFA ( Chartered Financial Analyst ) by the the time the financial courses are done. I'm sure that possible, but it's like expecting a newbie programmer to be a SCJP ( Sun Certified Java Programmer ) in two months-- It's possible, but it...

The results of our first quiz in Financial Accounting for the Pre-MBA course are out. Here's my not so sensational score: If you ask me, my 42 out of 85 (49.4%) score is reflective of what I currently know about Financial Accounting. This assessment means I really need work on knowing the terminologies of accounting and know the effects of tweaks such understatements and overstatements on the accounting equation. I think I was able to narrow most of the 4-choice questions down to a 50-50 decision, but it seems I'm really not there yet. I'm trying to be positive about things but I can't say I'm totally happy. Who likes a low test score anyway? This test score somehow casted some doubt on my ability to handle the MBA for a few seconds. I then looked at the big picture-- two weeks ago, I didn't really know that revenue is different from income, that debit and credit just means the opposite sides of a balance sheet and what accruals and deferrals mean. I probably sc...

We had our Financial Accounting long quiz for the Pre-MBA program and being our very first quiz (although technically this quiz is not graded), I had no expectations but I felt the pressure. It's more like a first date, actually. (uh oh, bad analogy). What I can say about the exam is I to see who will do good and those who won't. The 85-question multiple choice test gives little room for error as erasures are not allowed and all computations must be shown. I'm thinking the nature of the exam is either you get it or you don't-- If you're done early, you are either studied your ass off or you spent the weekend watching Ratatouille . Personally, I found the quiz not too hard, but not a cakewalk either. I'd rate it a 6.5 out of 10 in terms of difficulty. The Indian folks in our class didn't seem to have difficulty with the test and I'm not surprised. What I'm surprised about is how they seem to take the exam seriously and really took their time finishing...