Maple Leaves V1.0

Chetan Shetty
Information Technology Management
GMBA - April 09

My friend Vijay has been asking me to write about my experiences in Toronto. I guess that’s because there is a smile on the face of every “Maple Leaf” (a term coined by Dr. Barnes for everyone going to Toronto) when he/she is asked the question – “How was Toronto?” This article is my answer to that question.

I think I was destined to go to Toronto. I first saw a mail from SPJCM asking if I was interested to be part of a group of students who would go to Toronto and spend a term studying at the Schulich School of Business sometime during November of last year. This was immediately after I had deferred my admission by 6 months to complete my last assignment at MindTree. That was the first time I had heard about the Schulich School of Business.

After doing my research and asking another friend of mine who had been admitted into the Schulich program himself, I decided to go for it. Personally, I thought it would be interesting to be part of the first ever group from S. P. Jain that would go to Canada. I felt like I would be part of a group of trailblazers.

Upon joining S.P. Jain, the first term in Dubai was a blur. The desert sun was pushing the mercury higher in Dubai. I said to myself, “I hope Toronto is different.” I was looking forward to experiencing summer in North America. The fact that we would be one of the first people to fly on an A-380 to Toronto was also part of the thrill. It only reinforced the trailblazer feeling.

Upon arrival, we found the campus of York University to be a haven compared to the desert in Dubai. It was fun to meet the 15 cohorts from Singapore who had literally flown halfway around the world to Toronto. We are now really good friends.

I still remember Prof. Wade’s first class as if it had happened yesterday. It was interactive, forced me to think and also had a discussion on a news item of that day! As the program went on, he had told one of my friends that the news items he picks for discussions were as current as 6:30a.m on that day. He personally spends half an hour to make it a part of his class presentation. That level of dedication can only inspire students. The fact that all the other members of the faculty at Schulich had the same drive and dedication meant that we were all inspired to give our very best!

I would be lying if I said Toronto was special only because of the learnings in the classroom. Our time in Toronto included visits to the CN Tower, Canada’s Wonderland and the Niagara Falls. We had tea session at one in the morning, spend nights at the disco where we would dance till four in the morning and played cricket with the team from the Schulich School. In short, it felt like we belonged at Toronto. It is not a coincidence that we have a lot of photographs capturing all those memories of being a Maple leaf. I owe a great deal to Mohit, Saurav and Ananta for their splendid photographs.

The extent to which we liked the Toronto experience can be gauged by the fact that there was an absolute majority when Mr. Nitish Jain asked us if we liked the Toronto experience.

I could keep filling the pages about my time at Schulich. There are so many memories – watching the NBA finals with Tikku, Darshan, Shruti and Gagan at Hoops, celebrating Gary’s birthday (trust me – he won’t forget!!), Anna and Eshita on a Harley showroom at Niagara Falls , Macro assignments with Mahak, the whisky with Sagar, Sushant and company, the late night pizzas with Vyas and Sahil while writing ARP reports, Ashutosh’s “Amanda” presentation, Utsav’s expert handling of “Kantaben food”, Priyani & the girls going red seeing “the biker”, group work with Jaz, Somani, Ashwin and Shalini, coffee @ Timothy’s, squash at YORK …….

In short, Toronto is an experience that I will cherish all my life. I would like to thank everyone at S.P. Jain & Schulich who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to make it happen. I’d like to thank Martine, our GMBA coordinator from Schulich for her splendid work. You are an awesome person Martine!!

I’d like to thank our faculty – Prof. Wade, Prof. Konson, Dr. Barrows, Prof. Supapol, Prof. Bradshaw and Dr. Zandi for teaching us during the summer and all my fellow Maple leaves without whom Toronto wouldn’t have been so much fun.

To summarize, for everyone reading this post, I truly miss Toronto and wish that the clock could be turned back to July 2009 so that I could do the Toronto leg of the GMBA program again! They say hindsight is 20-20. In the case of Toronto, it was 20-20 when I was there as part of the “Maple leaves of April ‘09”!!!