The INSEAD MBA Experience

In many ways, going to INSEAD is similar to joining a “Big Brother” season. You spend nearly 24 hours with people who just like you decided to come to the same place – but other than that may be (and probably are) totally different than you. You don’t know exactly what is about to happen, but you know it is going to take a lot of time and effort.

P1 is over. We have only one long weekend to think about everything we have been through since we came here before we start the next intensive 7 weeks, a.k.a P2. During P1 I studied more than I have ever known about numbers (MR=MC, WACC, and the almighty regression), but the course that had the strongest impact in my opinion was OB – Organizational Behaviour. It is difficult to point out one skill we acquired in this course. Instead, we studied a comprehensive approach that is not always easy to implement, but I think that it can serve us better in our career more than any specific mathematical formula.

Most MBA students are used to mathematics and look for rules and research that will clarify life. How do you just let go, accept instability and deal with people who are much less predictable than numbers? There is no one formula or one right answer, and even sitting in a classroom for dozens of hours may not prepare you for the first obstacle.
Therefore, it is better to learn about ways to analyze such obstacles. We did it with role plays, feedback sessions, trying to think together of ways to drop an egg from the top of the roof and land it safely on the ground, and especially by learning how to listen to each other. It was a course that people could not stay indifferent to – because it dealt directly with our lives.

Two weeks have passed since our last OB session. We soon start the next “Fontainebleau Big Brother” season. I am not sure how many of us will know how to use regression after we graduate, but I am sure that we will not forget what we studied in OB. The question is whether we will know how to OBhave.

You can pretty easily guess how hundreds of conversations began in the last two weeks: “Hi, I’m _____. Nice to meet you. Where are you from? What did you do before coming to INSEAD?” but after these 15 seconds you can never know where it might lead.

It has been three overwhelming weeks since we came to France. Our first challenge was to put 5 suitcases in one Renault (Lesson #1: When your partner agrees to join you for the whole year, her Kitchen-Aid will probably join you too). Once we managed to do that, walking blindfolded in Fontainebleau forest, as part of the outward bound, seemed like a nice and easy morning walk.

Getting used to living in a new place is not easy. My French may have satisfied the exit language requirements, but it did not seem to satisfy Orange, and that probably explains why I had to wait two weeks to get an internet connection. In addition, you can never tell when stores are open, and when you interfere with lunch break\ holiday\ the baker’s daughter’s wedding or whatever. On the bright – or dark – side, the forest here is beautiful and driving at night seems more like a Radiohead Video clip than the way back home.

After the necessary 36 hours at Ikea and Carrefour, we were ready to meet other students: Patrick from Singapore at the bank, Helen from Scotland at Telecom 1, and a couple of days later – 300 new names, new faces, at school. Everyone has a story you want to hear, there are so many questions to ask, but it will definitely take more than three weeks. The whole year probably won`t be enough. So the right way to do it is step by step: The Israeli friends I met back at home, my group mates, section and then – who knows. I might even show up for my first INSEAD party tonight.

During the first week of P1, I think I read more than I did in my 3.5 undergrad years. For those of you (of us) without financial background, I am not sure that the Business Foundations week is a must – I did not enroll – but this knowledge can surely help you start this year more relaxed – and as far as I can see, we will need that serenity.

This is how my first weeks at INSEAD looked like. In my next posts I will try to share some of the funny moments, experiences with new people, and obstacles which I am sure everyone of us will encounter.