Between classes: Bill Ashbee
Financial Services Management
Bill Ashbee
is banking on some family time.
Education:
- Financial Services Management Diploma, 2010
Kudos:
member of winning team in Business Strategy Invitational, December 2009
Hometown:
Thunder Bay, Ontario
Career goals:
After the Olympics, I plan to work at one of the big five Canadian banks and become a branch manager.
Personal goals:
To pay off my student debt and to finally have weekends off to spend with my baby daughter who was born mid-semester on October 16 (right in the middle of mid-terms).
My role model is:
Richard Phair, who was the operations manager at my first job and who is, to this day, the best manager I have ever worked for.
In five years I will be:
Hopefully a branch manager at a Lower Mainland bank and proud father of a second child (but not for a couple of years yet - one is enough for right now).
If I could turn back time
I would you tell my 17-year-old self to take a year off of school and try to find out what you really want to do. I didn’t and it took several majors before I found the one that was right for me. Also, buy Apple stock and retire at 30.
Finding the right fit
I was in the Accounting program and not really loving it, when George Stroppa talked to me about the Financial Services Management program. It was a program leading to a career doing everything I loved; working with numbers, dealing with people and problem solving.
The Douglas advantage
Honestly, I intended to transfer to SFU or UBC after a year. But the fact that Douglas offered up to and including a degree in the program at a significantly lower cost than the universities and that the classes were not lecture theaters of 300+ students, but the more intimate 20-30-student class sizes gave me more reasons to stay here.
The best of times
Learning - that sudden instant when you finally understand that confusing formula or that abstract law or that the coffee is way better at Tim’s than at the cafeteria but the line up is way shorter at the cafeteria.
The tough times
The temptation was so great at so many intervals to just give up and let all the stress go. Those weekends when you have to work two double shifts and three of your assignments are due on Monday by noon and your group needs your part by Saturday morning and they want to meet between your two jobs in Coquitlam and you work downtown and…you get the point.
Lasting lesson
How to work in groups or teams with people you don’t necessarily agree with and you may argue with. It sometimes becomes a process of negotiation and balancing different views and I think that will be incredibly useful to me in my career.
Links:
Information Sessions
Financial Services Management Program
More feature stories
Published February 11, 2010
