This month has been very intensive, with a full schedule of classes 6 days a week, and often studying until midnight. There are also different group projects such as the start-ups, country analysis, sector analysis, accounting analysis etc that help develop our leadership and team work skills.
As well as our crazy study life, we organize other interesting events to explore our potential skills and improve our weaknesses. One of these was our first toastmaster session, which I joined as main speaker – an amazing experience.
The session was organized by three classmates who used to join toastmaster events before.
The event started with an interesting warm-up topic, “Do you make decisions with your mind or your heart?”
After a lively discussion, the three main speakers had their official speech. The topics varied from “standup comedy” to “bitcoin”, and just before, an experienced speaker shared how to evaluate based on content, behavior, grammar, communication with audience etc.
After the main speech, was the most funny part – the talk show. The hostess had prepared 10 topics, and once you pick up one topic, you need to deliver a three-minute talk after 30 seconds preparation. This might not sound difficult but actually is, with topics such as, “If you could go back to when you were 10 years old, what would you say to yourself?” and “If one morning you find that you have changed gender, what you are you going to do?”. The whole class had lots of insightful and interesting discussions.
At the end of the discussion, the elevators gave feedback to all participants and we voted for “best speaker”, “best talk show speaker” and “best evaluation”.
I discovered so many talents and experts among my classmates: public speaking trainer, yoga teacher, sports national level player, pianist, singer, inventor, painter etc. Studying and cooperating with them is such a great learning journey. Someone once told me that “The classmates in the IMD MBA class will be your lifelong treasure”, I am very impressed by their hidden talents so far!
Are you wondering what impacts these young talents will bring to society? Let’s see at the end of 2020!
Jia
Content Photos by: Jingyi Li
