Hadi's Blog

The start of 2010 has been an incredible experience so far! In fact the whole year leading up to the first two weeks of 2010 has been a long, exciting, and defiantly an exhilarating experience.
This post is at least a week over due, this post is dedicated to my family and loved ones who have been waiting impatiently. So here goes nothing… I hope my few readers enjoy it.

Before you read on, keep in mind that this post is broken into three main paragraphs; Academics, Social, and finally “What comes next?”.

Academics:
For those who know me well, you know for fact that school was never my favorite place to be and studying could easily be classified as the worst past time I have! 2009 however was a bit different! I was introduced to a new world of academics, the case competitions. I have to thank my girlfriend for it… She was after all the one who pushed me to try-out!
This new world of Case Competitions has been the highlight of my university life! (at least until now!)
Throughout most of 2009, I have been busy with writing case reports, analyzing business problems, and preparing presentations; partially for an elective class but mostly to be part of the ICBC competition that took place last weekend at Queens University. ICBC or the Inter-Collegiate-Business-Competition is a well known and extremely prestigious competition that brings together the best students of North America and gets them to compete for the trophy. In fact only 6 out of 45 teams get chosen for the final round of each event. My teammate and I were either lucky or smart enough to get in! But either way, we made it there and we did well! I won’t go into the details of ICBC, but you can read about it all in my next post. (pictures, details, and all!)

Other than the case competitions my academic life has been quite ordinary except for one specific class that I will never forget. Systems Analysis with prof. Büyükkurt was probably the most useful and interesting class I have taken so far. Not only for the contents of the course which is outstanding, but for the teaching methods and valude added Dr. Büyükkurt has to offer. Most MIS graduates of Concordia know what I am writing about and should agree with me that this class teaches us much more than what the books do.
That is pretty much it for Academics in 2009, but I have to say that all the academic events coming up in 2010 look promising! Specially with a few more case comps coming up!
I’ll cut it short on the academics… after all, how much fun can one have reading about school for too long?!

Social:

My Social life in 2009 has been quite amazing actually! I met my girlfriend early in 2009 which pretty much opened up a whole new world!

2009 was also full of beautiful trips. Lebanon, Miami, New York, Boston, Kingston, and Toronto…

This past year was full of meeting new people. Whether it was at school, during my trips, or during other social events; I have met extremely interesting and influential people. I feel fortunate that I can easily talk to and meet new people so easily. I’m not quite sure if its a personality trait or just good circumstances, it might be a combination of both for all I know. I do however know that 2009 turned out to be a great year with regards to expanding my network with many intellectual and culturally rich people.

My social life during 2009 was not only about meeting new people. It was a lot about who I was last year and who I have become today in 2010. I am still the same person… but I do think that my experiences this year have taught me to see a different perspective of many circumstance. Some may call it “becoming more optimistic” others call it maturing. Who knows what the right answer is. Either way, I have grown and learned a lot this past year. Being so busy and forcing myself to organize and use an agenda is a big change and I now understand why my sister always has her little notepad on her. I have my phone and my note pad; and I use them both! Believe it or not, doing so allows me to keep up with all the little projects and events that I need to attend. All these little changes in my life that occured in 2009 have paved the way for a hopefully successful and fun 2010 the only wish I have is to spend more time in this new year with my family who I have been away from for a few years now. New years resolution #1: spend more quality time with the family in 2010 than in 2009.

What comes next?
This section of my post is, for practical purposes, the only documentation I have on what my new years resolutions are… Not the entire section, but quite a few ideas here are in fact resolutions I intend on fulfilling.

For 2010, the first goal I have is to continue on building a solid path for my professional career. I intend on doing so by continuing on competing in the case competitions, getting to know the participants and the judges and listening to what they have to say about the industry they are in. So far I have already narrowed down my hopes for the future to a more specific career. In addition to that, I am looking forward to applying for a position as an executive for one of the associations at JMSB. Either the case competitions committee or the decision sciences associations; both of these associations need all the help they can get and any of the two will open up numerous doors for the future!

Second on the list of What Comes Next; Finding a job or even possibly creating one!

So I have this urge to find a Job! I am looking for a job that will challenge me, something that keeps me thinking, a job that requires research and hands on work. In short, NOT a desk job that required me to crunch information in all day. Their are potential jobs that I am looking at right now, some that I might be hired for by the time you read this post, but all are entry level positions. The next step is finding the right job for me and going at it full force. Wish me luck readers. Oh, and concerning creating a job… That is going to require some more research and the idea of a lifetime, but hopefully a dream come true in the near future.

Finally the most important resolution, although already mentioned earlier in the post, spending more quality time with the family is a priority in 2010. Its hard when we are all on different continents and so far away from one another. But family sticks together one way or another, and its my primary goal for 2010 to do that. I’ll have to start re-exploiting Skype to get in touch with them for now… Getting on a plane and flying there a few times a month is not within my budget just yet.

That is all I have for this post. Do however read the next post for all the details on ICBC weekend. (First Competition weekend)