Of learning/and my influential blog readers!

before I get to that, I stumbled upon this new INSEAD blog. http://flyingalongonacurrentofhotair.blogspot.com - welcome, flyingalong!

 

So, what is it about learning and keeping an open mind? At INSEAD we meet people with a range of experience and from diverse functional backgrounds. We have engineers, investment bankers, commercial bankers, lawyers, consultants, reporters, sales managers, marketers, vice presidents, founders - name it. And then we have people from "every which" company - whether it is the usual suspects McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Roland Berger and then a multitude of other companies - Deutsche bank, Barclays, UN, Amex, Cisco, Total, Shell, Booz allen, Dell...and so on. The beauty of the mix is regardless of one's own experience, it is useful to hear other points of view. And then we have all these classes - Market pricing strategies, corporate finance, accounting, organizational behavior - subjects many of us are studying for the first time.

 

To me, this is excellent. You could be cynical and be critical of everyone and hate all your subjects or you could absorb the immersion constantly asking yourself "how will this help me next time." I chose to "unlearn" many things I did in my experience and understand how to do things better, how to manage people better, understand several new business concepts. When I look back at my experience, I can already spot areas where I might have done better with the tools I am equipping myself. Ultimately, it is about what we want to take out of a program - a closed mind is not one of them.

 

I am also researching my careers, and noted that there are people from my "target companies" who visit my blog. My dear readers, I may seek you for information and help sometime in getting to know your organizations better :)

 

In other news, I have also discovered, much to my consternation, that several wines and vodkas do nothing to me. I am not even a drinker - in fact, I barely touch alcohol except in some parties, but damn! And singapore is expensive - you don't want to get too happy during 'non-happy' hours or you'll leave with an unhappy wallet. It's so expensive it's almost criminal.

 

We've been having a bunch of activities - to name a few

 

* Australia/Korea/Japan week - loads of fun, BBQ, clubbing

* Deadlines for several banks - made many people run around

* Informal bar hopping/dinner events

* and huge loads to study

 

the coming week is very hectic and we have an interesting online game to be played between Fonty, Singapore and Wharton. Whartonies, here we come! The game lasts a week - and promises to be interesting. Provided we survive through all the activities and slogging as we get closer to the first exams. It's crazy, a month is over and it just whizzed by!