I could not believe that doing an MBA was so time-consuming! The workload is really big and the pace quite intense.
Anyway, I'll take some time to share with you my first month @ HEC and try to give you update on a more regular basis.
First week: Orientation week
A lot of introduction speeches during this week about the cursus, business concepts, Communication in Action, Stereotypes @ work, Personal effectiveness by Mark Fritz (inspiring!) and parties!!Anyway, I'll take some time to share with you my first month @ HEC and try to give you update on a more regular basis.
First week: Orientation week
My room on the Campus is great, have installed a wifi router, bought a microwave,... ready to rock!
Second week: NEGOSIM
NEGOSIM is a business simulation tool where you manage a company in group of 5. You are competing with other companies from different countries. Different countries have different labor costs and quality of work. The interesting part is that to play you really have to negotiate with other companies to set up a joint venture in a low cost country or buy raw material at a discount.
As I have no accounting background beforehand, I was struggling a bit at first with the different financial statements. But it got better and everyone got very excited to get the best "market to book" value!
We have been playing this game the whole week and it has been really interesting for me as a newbie to identify what is important in the financial statements, how to implement different strategies and how to negotiate with others and a good dose of leadership training to channel the team work.
Third week:
Now the show begins with real classes. Marketing, Financial Accounting, Financial Markets, Supply Chain Management, Human Resources Management, Statistics.
A lot to read and many cases to deal with.
My study group is great and after a slow start, we are now quite well organized but one question remains: are we all supposed to work on cases or can we just dispatch the workload within the study group?
Fourth week:
Getting up to speed with cases and different classes.(and parties!)
+ different conferences with Yann Arthus Bertrand (remember HOME?) and Alain Juppé (former France Prime Minister, currently mayor of Bordeaux)
Fifth week:
Now are the exciting things coming up! Every year, HEC organizes the MBAT (MBA Tournament), which is a sport tournament between the best european business schools. This year is the 20th anniversary and there's a lot of pressure to make this one unforgettable.
This year, 2 teams have competed to organize the event: "GAME ON" and "DREAM TEAM". This week has been so exhausting by preparing videos, newsletters and advertisings combined with the usual workload.
At the end, "GAME ON" won by 1 vote difference! Crazy!
Here are the promotional videos of both teams:
Enjoy!
I'll keep you posted!
