The first week at INSEAD has been filled with many surprises, great experiences and a disappointment or two. Monday was sign-up day and was quite uneventful. We were offered several speeches including a very inspiring one by an alumnus from the 1992 class. He addressed the topic of failure and used numerous examples from his own life to illustrate the point that you should never be afraid to fail. For some reason, I was extremely inspired by him. We had cocktails on INSEAD’s tab (a big deal in Singapore with the liquor prices here) and I went home to study Spanish.
On Tuesday, we had many different presentations from career services, library, IT etc. Again, I spent most of the evening studying Spanish.
Wednesday was examination day. I wrote Spanish in the morning, and there was a consensus amongst test takers that it was quite difficult. I will get my results next Monday, but I am not confident. If I did pass, I won’t have to worry about language requirements to graduate. (all INSEAD MBAs need to speak three languages at a functional level) If I failed, I will have to self-study more and take classes in January-February and write the exam again. I had also signed up for three core courses exemption exams. I walked out of the economics and finance exams without answering a single question, since I read the exam over and knew right away that I would not get a passing grade. (and I need to learn that stuff…) I also wrote the accounting exam, and against all expectations, not only did I write the exam but I also think I actually passed! I will also receive my result on Monday.
Wednesday was also the club fair.
On Thursday, we went “Outward Bound”. OB is the largest such organisation in the world, with facilities in over 40 countries. It’s like summer camp but at a corporate level to develop teamwork and friendships. We had several interesting activities which underlined my team’s communication problems. (INSEAD administration creates the class floor plans and teams in order to group together people from different background. I’m teamed up with a Frederic from France, Marco from Italy, Evguenia from Russia and Joyce from Taiwan)
Friday was the beginning of the real stuff. We had a very interesting day-long interactive case study about Sabena. Friday night was club dinners… I had class all day on Saturday, followed by a student council lunch and a hard night out at Club Momo with the entire school.
2 comments:
This was an exemption exam. If I pass, I meet the language requirements and I don't have to worry about taking classes etc.
Oliver,
You seem to have the most amazing experience in your one year stint with INSEAD, seems like you are everywhere at the same time! How did you manage that?
On a more serious note, I do have a couple of questions which I wish to your advice on...so hopefully you will reply to me via email. I will be an INSEAD student in a few weeks time, feeling jittery right now as I am trying to prepare for the language exam & hopefully the exemption exam as well. I'd like to find out more information from you, specifically with regards to the difficulty level of the language exam and also on how you prepared for the accounting one. Look forward to hearing from you!
Thanks in advance!
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