With the beginning of the New Year, and of my third session at Insead, it seems an appropriate time to reflect on where I have been and where I am going.
It’s disconcerting to watch the new students of the December 2008 promotion arriving on campus and rushing around during the introductory classes of “welcome week”. I remember, with a Proustian flash of recalled anxiety, the feelings that I grappled with when I came to this prestigious – and at first intimidating – school, full of hope, apprehension, and excitement. Like many of the new students now, I was taking a first step on a journey, knowing only that I was looking for learning, a major change in my life, a chance to meet new people and to connect to new networks, and a way eventually to pay off an $80,0000 loan at the end of it all.
My first two sessions at Insead have been so much more than I expected from an academic perspective. I clearly have a long way to go before the knowledge I have gained becomes well integrated and applicable in a practical way, but I still find myself surprised at the content that has been crammed into my aching brain – with pretty good recall, considering the fast pace of the programme.
I would never have guessed last August that I would be able to have (somewhat) intelligent conversations about a range of subjects and topics I had previously only touched upon at my former job at Canada’s foreign ministry. Among them are how diversification of a shareholder base affects a company’s cost capital; how cultural versus political issues in an organisation may prompt different solutions to a rethink of its corporate structure, human resource management and incentives; how, under certain circumstances, it may be better to estimate the value of a project using options pricing rather than discounted cash flows; how to think about extending an existing brand or creating a new one from scratch; how to evaluate how quickly a new product can diffuse in the market; how to estimate how long a customer will wait in line at a cash register; how to work towards leaner production and lower levels of working capital; and how emotional issues can impact the capacity of manager to engender a happy and productive team.
Of course, it wasn’t all interesting study and engaging conversation with Insead students and first-class academics. The gruelling workload, particularly during the second session in November and December, was overwhelming. For a student who generally keeps up with most of the homework and reading, sleeping four to six hours a night is the norm, with a further reduction towards the end of the term. Then an increased number of projects, papers, and it culminates in six examinations in quick succession.
Frankly, at times it was pretty awful, and without the strong camaraderie with my class and occasional opportunities for stress release that Insead’s “work hard, play hard” culture affords, I am not sure I would have been able to keep it up. Never have I been so glad to go on Christmas vacation, which, after being in Japan for the past four years, was spent at home in Montreal. It was a relief to spend time with my parents and family, to enjoy the company of old friends, take a few days on the ski slopes, and mostly, catch up on my sleep.
The term I have just begun, I hope, will be a little less hectic than the last. While I may have almost as much group casework, the fact that I have only two required core courses this term means that I will be able to avoid having to sit more than two finals, as electives rarely feature exam-based evaluation. I hope this means a less crazed ending to the term.
Other than the core economics and politics courses, I have decided to focus on finance, with a course in applied corporate finance (based almost entirely on case work) and international financial management. I like to call these my “broccoli” courses: like broccoli, corporate finance may not be everyone’s favourite, but if you are an MBA student, it’s really good for you and helps make you stronger. And I didn’t come to Insead just to eat cheese and pastry.
As well, I have begun a two-term field project in the context of Insead’s entrepreneurship programme. As part of a team of four Insead participants, I will be advising a German investment bank that serves small- and medium-sized clients, as it seeks to grow globally quickly and cement relations with partners around the world. I am particularly looking forward to working on this project because it will allow me to move away from classroom cases to working on real business issues with a dynamic client.
For the next two periods until graduation, I will probably continue to work on finance courses but I will also concentrate on strategy and entrepreneurship, organisational behaviour and psychology. I may also take courses that build on my undergraduate work in economics, such as economics in developing countries, advanced game theory, and dynamic pricing. I might also take an operations elective as I enjoyed the core course in the second term and found the intellectual frameworks useful in terms of designing efficient organisations to deliver products, services or other “outputs”, such as humanitarian aid.
With the beginning of the new term, therefore, I will be moving away from the core and to the part of the programme that is more customised. I will miss the remarkable esprit de corps of my section, the 75 or so students with whom I attended every course during the first two terms. Some have gone to the Singapore campus, some are now in different sections, and for electives, I have joined new study groups. But a whole new promotion has arrived on campus, meaning a new group of people to get to know. This is the last term where I can focus on school work and on campus life, as a job search will begin in earnest in March. I intend to enjoy every last minute of it.