You all know by now
that Ana and Simon have settled in Singapore but maybe, somebody is not really
sure why. Well, the major reason was to get some Asia exposure and while it
worked well that Ana could transfer with Mercer for a year to their Singapore
office (more on that soon), there was the question what Simon needed to do in
order to go to Southeast Asia. It came in handy that he was thinking of doing
an MBA and – now INSEAD plays an integral part – there was just one very good
business school where he could combine the education and the location.
It would take too long
to discuss all the reasons for doing this now but just to explain it as briefly
as possible: an MBA is a postgraduate degree (Master of Business
Administration) that is supposed to prepare people in management to
holistically cope with the challenges of broader organizations. While Simon
studied Business Administration in Germany, the German university education and
an MBA are almost the opposite – at the Tübingen University, he learned all the
theory (that is hardly ever used to this extent in “real life”) whereas an MBA
takes the theory for granted and investigates different management situations
and how they are being affected – the studies are far less theoretical and
largely based on case studies. That being said, there were five major reasons
for Simon in his motivation for pursuing the MBA:
- The school should be one of the top ones, with a very broad and well-established network of alumni
- The student body should be as diverse as possible
- He wanted to really learn something meaningful that will help him in his future career – but only a one year program!
- It should be based in Asia
- He was looking forward for a change of pace after 5 years working in management consulting at Oliver Wyman
These reasons only
left one choice: INSEAD. So he applied, got accepted, Ana worked everything out
with Mercer and now they are here (it was almost that simple).
Anyway, this part is
actually about Simon going back to school. So once Ana and Simon had decided on
the apartment and had done an extensive trip to IKEA (fortunately, open on a
Sunday), January 7th was the first day of orientation week. It takes
Simon about 30 minutes to get to the campus and once he got there, everything
was following a well-organized schedule.
 |
| The main building on INSEAD's Asia campus |
The first few days
were mainly to get to know the classmates. At the two campuses (one is in
Fontainebleau / France, the other one here), there are about 500 students that
will jointly graduate in December 2013. These 500 are from 65 countries! That
is very impressive and exactly one of the reasons why Simon decided to go for
INSEAD. There is a (bit blurry) photo from the first day to get a feeling where
the students are coming from.
The biggest
nationality is Indian, followed by American and French. Surprisingly, the
biggest per-capita nationalities are Lebanon, Singapore and Portugal. It was
quite interesting that there are more Portuguese than Spaniards and more Dutch
than Germans.
There are three
“sections” (read classes) in Singapore,
each around 70 students. Most of the activities are done in classes and every
class is again divided into groups. These groups are working together on a
variety of case studies as well as homework assignments and even exams. Simon
is very happy with his group, it is a pretty awesome compilation of people,
very international yet the cultural differences are not that big… Well, but you
shouldn’t only talk about the nationality – everyone who goes to INSEAD will
have a somewhat international profile. So there is David, a Chinese-American
who has worked for the last 18 months at Mercer (Ana’s company, that is right!)
in Singapore.
Valerie, a French Canadian who had project work in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Neha, from India, living for
more than 5 years in Singapore
and Charles, French, who worked for LVMH (yes, the company that markets these
nice handbags with the LV J) in New
York. Part of the “team building” was an awesome
project where Simon’s group helped a social institution building a playground
for the kids that they took care of. The group did really well, bonded and was
awarded with the universal price for good performance: Alcohol ;-)
The orientation week
cumulated with a super nice beach party on Saturday. It was crazy – just ten
days had passed since Simon and Ana had transferred to Singapore and then, they
found themselves partying at a beach club, barefoot in the sand – on January 12th!
Who wouldn’t want to kill them for that now ;-)
Last week was “Lowland
Week”, one of the so-called National Weeks where students from one country or
region (in that case: Belgium and the Netherlands) were getting together to
organize a number of awareness events that would help their fellow students to
get to know their home region. It was awesome. A lot of things in orange (for the
Dutch), Belgian waffles for breakfast and one night a delicious beer tasting.
The “Heart of Europe” week is coming up in May and the Germans (plus the Swiss
and the Austrians) will make sure that this week will be at least as cool!
However, being back to
school also means that Simon needs to get back into study mood. And actually,
he doesn’t have too much time for that. Only three “full weeks” have passed and
he already had one paper, three group projects and two midterm exams. But no
need to feel sorry for him – that’s what he wanted in the first place. Also, INSEAD requires a third language (besides English and one other language spoken fluently) in order to graduate. Since Simon took nine years of French in school and he was really good at it, he decided to go for Spanish. Wait a minute??? Well, he decided to go for Spanish because his French has deteriorated quite a bit since high school and due to some obvious choices in life, he felt more confident in Spanish now. So he passed that exam - first important exam: CHECK!
So all in all, the
experience is great. Many inspiring people, a lot to learn, both on and off the
class room and all in an awesome location. Simon and Ana will make sure that
you also learn something about Singapore. But more on that later!
Tomorrow is exam day
(Microeconomics midterm quiz) so that should be all for now!
All the best from the
Straits of Malacca!
Ana and Simon
No comments:
Post a Comment