February goes by very fast. It is the first month back from the industry projects and we are hitting the ground running once again. The first week of February which is the second week of the winter term, is jam packed with presentations. At first, the week seems so daunting, having to sit through everyone’s presentations about their industry projects. However, the week turned out to be super enjoyable – it was awesome hearing about what our classmates spent their 9 weeks working on, not to mention we had refreshments during the breaks between each presentation.
After the week of presentations, the program offered lots of workshops to help us strengthen our hard and soft skills. These workshops included introductions to technical interviews, case interviews, programming in R and the Self-Development Lab helped us hone our presentation skills. We were also given the opportunity to speak with previous MFRM alumni about their career path, where they are at now and if they have any advice for us new MFRMs looking for jobs.
Speaking of jobs, February is an interesting time for that. Some of our classmates have jobs or at least interviews lined up thanks to their industry placements. Others are actively seeking out coffee chats and networking to get jobs, some are just applying via LinkedIn or company websites. People are getting interviews and offers and accepting those offers. There is also the other half of the class who realize they want to take a small break after the program just to re-group and re-energize before launching into their careers. At the end of the day though, everyone is doing what they feel is right for them and there is no need to panic.
There are fewer assignments in comparison to the fall term which I believe is because the program knows we are looking for jobs and want to give us more time away from academic related tasks to focus on the job hunt which is very appreciated. The pace of the courses and assignments and the group work all feel very familiar now having gone through the fall term. It no longer feels very frantic and scary.
Onto more fun aspects of February, a highlight for me personally was the MFin/MFRM/ MMA Casino Night. This was a night of fun, food, prizes and networking with alumni, both fun and productive. It was great to take a break from school and de-stress, and it was even better seeing our professors being our poker and blackjack dealers. This is definitely an event I would attend in the future as an alumnus.
To wrap up February we had the MFRM Industry Reception Poster night which was also a wrap on our industry placements. This night was great as we got to showcase what we did at our placements in the form of a poster night with everyone’s posters displayed at the same time in Fleck Atrium. This allowed students and sponsors to interact with other students and sponsors who were not at the same industry project. This event wrapped up our industry projects which is a huge draw of the MFRM program very nicely.
The Master of Financial Risk Management is a full time program designed to prepare ambitious young professionals for careers in risk management and finance.