I need to apologize for my long silence in the blog. I must acknowledge, that my IMD experience goes far beyond schooling, projects or class experience. When I packed my suitcases to come here six months ago, I thought I knew everything I put there. However, just like in books of Milorad Pavic, all of a sudden I found the whole bunch of stuff. In my childhood, clumpy sea shells with loud wave illusions were popular to keep at home, and to surprise visitors from time to time. And here, in my virtual sea shell collection, of which I personally had no idea up to date, the first specimens were rather small and negligible, while the last one almost deafened me. Hopefully, that was the biggest one… I want to say “Thank you” to my classmates and all the people at the IMD, and to my friends, who helped me regulate the volume of noise and hear other beautiful sounds of the world around. We all are here, at the IMD MBA, the best place to learn and explore ourselves in leadership from the business context. Those looking to come, just be prepared for the internal journey, too. Putting your house in order might help find the better version of yourself in many areas of your existenceJ
This week at school was unbelievably full of learning discoveries, accomplishments and light sadness, as we completed finance and strategy courses, and a class on sustainability. I didn’t notice, when exactly the financial terms and concepts became a regular part of my thinking and communication, but yesterday, when I listened to my classmates making presentations on various financially-related topics of versatile businesses from all over the globe, I was amazed to admit, that we were a completely different group of business people, juggling with sophisticated topics, asking each other tricky questions and going back and forth from finance to economics, from marketing to leadership, from communication to negotiations etc. (not to mention quality of slides and speakers!). My heart was almost bursting, when we were applauding to our finance professor Nuno Fernandes. I also want to thank our strategy professor Mikolaj Piskorski, who taught us cybernetics of strategic thinking and made us dig very deep beyond trivial in searching for real answers. Debates in the class were very hot, while the level of respect to individual opinions together with unexpectedly brilliant navigation of the class discussion by Misiek sometimes brought us from decision-making to realistic futurism.
Well, despite bitterness of farewell, the thought, that we belong to the IMD community, and that the door for us will be open, keeps me looking forward to the new paragraphs with IMD and beyond. So, no time for sentiments, exams are just around the corner!
Till soon,
Aysylu
