Hi folks !

Do you know what JMSB stands for ? 

Hint : it is NOT "je me sens bien" ! But I do feel good, thank you for asking :)

No, seriously, JMSB stands for John Molson School of Business. JMSB is to Concordia what ESDES is to the Catholic University of Lyon, to give you an idea. 

It was named after a businessman called, oh what a surprise, John Molson ! The school ranks among the top in Canada and just so you know, the dean is Dr. Steve Harvey.

There are two Concordia campuses in Montreal : Loyola Campus, which is situated in the West of Montréal, and Sir George William (SGW for the intimates) Campus, which is situated downtown.

JMSB is located on the Concordia Campus downtown (so SGW for those who follow).  The Molson Building, in which we take all our classes, communicates with all the other Concordia buildings via underground passages.

There are 6 or 7 buildings on the campus, but we just use 3 of them : the Molson Building where all of our classes take place, the Henri Hall building where the international students office is located and the Library Building, where the Library, bookstore and students office (where we do our student ID card) are located. Concordia is such a huge university that it has its own bookstore ! They sell Concordia clothing such as hoodies and joggings, all sorts of accessories (Concordia coffee cups, keyholders...) and class material (calculators, pencils, agendas...)That's where we went to buy the 4 super-expensive books we need for our classes.

Apart from the bookstore, Concordia offers a lot in terms of student services : you can rent laptops and study rooms for free, there's a computer lab where you can print out and/or scan documents, the library is open 24/7 (that means you can study at 3 in the morning on a sunday if you want to, isn't that awesome ?), there's a gym only for Concordia students that offers sport courses 7 days a week at more than affordable prices, and there are Subway's, Starbucks and Tim Horton's (which is a local cheaper Starbucks) inside of every Concordia Building. 

We only have 12 hours of classes here, which is really nothing, but we have a lot of personal work to do, especially read specific chapters of our textbooks to prepare for each class. The way classes take place and the atmosphere in the class are really different from what we are used to. First of all, you're never with the same persons in your courses, because everyone picks different courses, so it's really hard to meet people this way and honestly, classes are not the place where you can make friends here. Moreover, the people are very respectful and quiet during the classes, teachers don't need to tell students to shut their mouths. And there's interaction between the teachers and the students, students are always willing to participate during the classes.

I take 4 classes here :

COMM 212 Business Communication : we learn how to communicate with business partners, which communication channel to use, when and with whom, and we're also going to improve our oral communication skills by doing a solo oral presentation and a group presentation in front of the class.

COMM 223 Marketing Management : it's basically an introduction to marketing. There are notions I have already seen in my first and second year in France, but there are new notions as well. It allows me to learn the vocabulary of notions I already know in french, but the most interesting thing is that we see them from a canadian point of view, which is not quite the same as the french point of view.

COMM 320 Entrepreneurship : we are trying to get to know entrepreneurs (understand who these people are, what they do), and then we will put knowledge into practise by designing a business plan for a company that already exists. I assume this will be very helpful in the future, and a great experience.

MANA 343 Negotiation and conflict resolution : we will try to understand what happens when we negotiate (because we do it all the time), learn tactics and do negotiation simulations. 

Last but not least : integration !

We're lucky to be at JMSB, a school in a school, because it allowed us to be integrated twice !

We took part in an integration day with CISA, the association who takes care of international students for Concordia, to get to know other Concordia international students. We had a tour of the university, did a few games together and then went to a pub crawl which was a looot of fun ! CISA organizes parties and trips during the whole semester, and I'll try to attend most of them, for example we'll go to a trip to Quebec City by the end of the month !

We also took part in an integration night with an association called JIC, which is basically the same as CISA but only for JMSB students. I was assigned two "buddies", JMSB students who are supposed to introduce us to the Montreal life. I only met one of them for now, she's called Alexandra and is really such a nice girl ! I'm looking forward to meeting the other one.

Keep it up :)

Laurie, and Übercool