The INSEAD MBA Experience

What would you think if you saw a group of people standing on the roof of a 3-storey building and throwing down eggs? Those might be kids who just invented a funny game, you might think… Well, you’ll be wrong, as those guys are actually grown-ups. Angry French farmers protesting against cutting down of subsidies? Wrong, as they actually have fun and even put the eggs in nice hand-made paper cars. Patients of a local psychiatric clinic on a walk? Not quite true again! This is a group of INSEAD students at one of the Organizational Behaviour classes trying to evaluate their goal-setting skills.

Of course, not every session is like this. But if I were to choose one adjective which characterizes our classes, it would be “interactive”. The level of material taught in class is not too complicated, since it has to account for different backgrounds of students, but what really differentiates our classes is their practical focus. Every formula and every concept you learn is 100% applicable in practice and you know how to do it.

So, to make our learning process more visual, we participate in all sorts of weird in-class experiments. Want to know whether the Central Limit theorem actually works? Let the whole section calculate a number of brown candies in “Smarties” boxes. Curious to check the variability in the production process? Let’s use catapults to imitate the conveyor belt! Wonder how the pricing is made on the oligopolistic markets? Check it out yourself in a simulation online game with other students.

I’m not sure whether all those mind-stretching experiments have an impact on the quality of our learning, but they definitely increase my willingness to wake up and come to class every day

In my country we say that if a person smiles without a reason, he’s a fool. Well, according to my national standards, I must be a complete idiot . The first 3 weeks passed by like 1 minute and all I remember about it is new names and faces (ok, I actually don’t remember names at all, rather my efforts to memorize them). It is true that the most important thing about MBA is getting to know new people and making contacts. Well, the class of 12D has learnt this lesson very quickly. Friend-hunting is going full-speed: people are getting acquainted in the canteen, at the parties, during the classes and at more exotic places.

There are 2 major communicating strategies: 1) get to know as many people as possible; 2) make friends with a limited number of people particularly interesting to you. As you may imagine, extraverts usually choose method #1, while introverts try to stick to option 2. And I still have no idea what’s best for me, as I’m still lost in translation, sensu stricto . Living with Russians, studying in English and trying to negotiate in French at the Sunday food market is not easy. Languages are mixing in my head and I’ve already shocked several of my classmates trying to explain them statistics problems in Dostoyevsky’s language . What to do in such a situation? Well, I’m following the Madagascar’s penguins advice – I keep smiling .