The ‘school’ part of IMD Business School is becoming more intense than we ever could have imagined. As we step out of the first leadership experiential week, we continue with classes in accounting, economics, entrepreneurship, and finance, and look forward to starting operations. IMD believes in the philosophy of ‘learning by doing’. As a result, these classes generate a lot of assignments.
Economics class with Professor Ralf Boscheck and Finance class with Professor Arturo Bris:
Most of the work that we do is in teams of five or six. While this presents challenges like reaching agreements within a diverse group of strong and talented individuals, the cohort deals with the workload by cooperating, coordinating, and leveraging each other’s strengths. However, there’s something more to it that is holding us together: the bonds that we have formed since day one. This is what maintains the camaraderie and the gaiety of the learning environment at IMD.
While people have busy schedules due to their academic workloads, deliverables, and family commitments, we still manage to find time for each other. This is evident in the light moments in-between and after classes, lunch, study sessions, and weekends. After all, socializing and bonding with peers is an important aspect of this experience.
So whether that’s playing ping pong in the locker room (of course there’s no competition), playing FIFA in the nap room (we now have a PlayStation), organizing ski lessons for the uninitiated (thanks Stephanie), inviting friends to your favorite restaurants (take a bow Bingjie and Yiran), hosting jamming sessions (courtesy Harsh), dropping a message that you’ll be in Lacustre the coming evening to blow off some steam, or simply hanging out in the cafeteria after lunch, we all still manage to spend some quality time with each other.
Spending quality time with classmates allows us to build relationships and develop a sense of community, which makes the MBA experience more enjoyable and rewarding. They come from different backgrounds, cultures, and experiences, and by spending time with them, we learn from their unique perspectives and insights. And this translates when we collaborate and work in teams.
Our current to-do list looks like this:
- Conduct research for our start-up projects
- Coordinate with multiple teams to conduct an industry analysis for our economics class
- Shoot a three-minute video explaining financial results and strategy in an accounting game
- Go through pre-class readings for operations
- Study for finance
- Meet Personal Development Elective (PDE) analysts
- Develop a negotiation strategy for a virtual exercise involving MBA students from multiple business schools from around the world
But when our friend Guilherme messages saying that it’s his birthday, we say “Prrffff” and go to celebrate with him!
