MA Boot Camp - Week 2

Out of the Woods, Into the Classroom

The first week of real work finally began after an epic weekend partying spree. In retrospect it may have made sense to slow down on Sunday so that I might have caught enough sleep to function effectively through the next week, but what's done was done.

Monday introduced me to my lecturer for the next two weeks, a Singaporean-English former credit specialist with experience in an impressive number of reputable investment banks. I definitely lucked on my instructor - besides being knowledgeable and engaging, Yuen was also very honest about the material in our banking training, especially about which areas which are purely academic and would have no application at all in real life. He related almost every concept back to his personal experience, and regaled the class with anecdotes, interesting what-if scenarios, and constantly challenged us to consider why businesses do certain things (why do Russian companies invest in London, why shouldn't you buy your own company's stock, why do supermarkets like Walmart succeed in some countries but not others)

Despite my fatigue from the weekend, as well as the long lecture hours (8:30am - 7:00pm on average), I found it relatively easy to stay interested and attentive during class. What did annoyed me was HR's attempt at simulating a stressful work environment, by scheduling mandatory guest-lectures after work and implementing a silly policy on homework. HR informed all the instructors to assign us about 2 hours of homework a night, and then also requested they do not provide it to us until the end of the day. This process led to a lot of late nights for many MAs, since our commute home takes over an hour and we still have to manage dinner. I'm certain that none of the 80+ MAs had time to consistently cook throughout the week, and most of us had to settle for takeout or the nearby food court almost every night (which we have for lunch as well).

Perhaps I am being soft but I do not believe that HR has no reason to make class intentionally difficult by withholding information to the people they are trying to train. Why not just assign us more work rather than creating an artificial stressful environment? We would learn more that way and can use time management skills to allocate our efforts to what we feel is important. HR's plan drew a lot of ire during our feedback sessions and resulted in them lifting the big weekend assignment.

Besides this one aspect, I've enjoyed everything else: the case-based subject matter, the mix of interactivity and lectures, my instructor, and the competition for crystals in our classes (it's a lot like Harry Potter and adds some light humour).

MA Boot Camp - Week 1

I'm just nearing the end of my last summer vacation (even though I started work in early August) and I figure it is about time I updated this blog.

I am in the midst of my second week training in Singapore for my Management Associate program and so far it's been a thrill. I will be here for a total of 28 days, a period of time that feels more like an university exchange than a business trip. 

The accommodations are spacious and quite alright - our entire intake of 60+ foreign MAs are staying in a group of fully serviced residential complexes at Tiong Bahru. Despite uniformly terrible reviews of these rooms on Google, I find them acceptably clean and comfortable. I have seen ants in the kitchen area quite often though, and rumours are abound about mice, cockroaches, and lizards getting into certain complexes. On paper these rooms rent for about $4000 - $5000 a month and I would agree for that price living here would be silly. I do appreciate how my flat mates and I can leave the air conditioner on 24/7 - sometimes the heat outside is unbearable.

The first morning of training consisted of hours of Powerpoint briefings and networking games. Little did I know that those two activities are the most popular elements of training, and that morning was just a preview of much, much, more. The afternoon involved a showcase where MAs set up exhibits presenting elements of their own culture to senior management. The CEO came by to meet everyone individually - I found it interesting that unlike the rest of the top management team he didn't pretend to care to be interested in our booths. He came to meet MAs so he would ask whatever questions he wanted, whenever he wanted. 

Tuesday and Wednesday were workshop days to improve everyone's presentation skills. My bank had hired an external professional training firm to take over these workshop sessions, as well as the financial knowledge instruction in the later weeks. It had been over a year since I had last given a business presentation, and I delivered quite a weak one for my first try. It didn't help that I presented a project I did in third year (cap and trade policy vs. carbon tax) and I wasn't entirely familiar with the content. Over the two days I was surprised that I learned quite a bit. There are so many factors to being a natural, complete, speaker that I hadn't considered before, especially regarding speaking pace, pause, body movement, and connecting with certain members of the audience through eye contact. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the workshop and felt major improvements by the end of the second day.

Capping off the end of the week was an overnight team-building trip with Outward Bound Singapore on an island near Malaysia. The most interesting part part involved a rowing excursion to a remote camping spot on another side of the island. After setting up shelters and cooking dinner, we were told that we would try to circle the rest of the island by noon the next day. There were some hints that wasn't going to happen though - for one thing, our shelters could barely cover everyone, there were wild dogs roaming around, and we were never explicitly told in any of the briefings we would be sleeping outside. In the end, the coordinators sent us back on our boats at 11:00pm and we rowed back to our starting location armed only with paddles and glowsticks. The journey back in near-pitch darkness was really the stand-out moment of OBS - it's difficult for me to pinpoint exactly why but the combination of unpredictability, physicality, teamwork, and novelty of rowing in the dark made it such a memorable experience.