I am very happy to be one of the four official IMD bloggers for year 2017.
Little bit about myself – Name is Sathappan Sathappan (unfortunately, that is not a typo). I graduated from NUS, Singapore with an Electrical Engineering degree. Since then, I have been working in Financial services space for over 7.5 years.
It has been roughly 10 days since I reached Lausanne. We had our opening/orientation day for the MBA program last Thursday (12th Jan). It has been an interesting journey so far to say the least.
As far as prep work to get here, IMD was very helpful. Lausanne as a city is notorious for its vacancy rate for apartment rentals – 0.24%. IMD have an exclusive agreement with a relocation consultant who made our life so much easier with respect to apartment rentals.
I must admit, there has been few signs for what is to come this year – both in good and bad ways. I have already seen great collaboration among fellow students. Residents of Switzerland helped foreigners like me settle in quickly by sharing ample information on the whatsapp group chat. Students who reached Lausanne first volunteered to greet other students in the train station and helped the new comers move suitcases, boxes etc. There has been so many shared Ikea trips that I even lost count.
The following story is epic – when a fellow student got stuck with a stick-shift car that she couldn’t drive in a bizarre turn of events, two other IMD students volunteered to go fetch her and the car – picture below. (on a side note – the backdrop of Lausanne and the lake in this picture is beautiful isnt it?)
On the down side, we have already been warned many times that the first few months will be a “pressure cooker”. The pre-program assignments were a good warning shot I think. All of us together are still grappling with the quants, leadership assignments, accounting quizzes, finance quizzes, financial modeling exercises, elevator pitch video assignment, etc and the classes havent even officially begun!
During my application phase and interview phase, this blog was extremely useful. Bloggers from previous years had done a great job providing a candid, honest feedback of their life here at IMD. I hope to continue that legacy and share our exciting journey ahead.
Sath
