The Right Decision

On Friday afternoon of the second day of school, for the first time in the last eight months I finally felt that I made the right decision to come to IMD.  As I got to know the other participants during the two days of opening sessions, and sat through the orientation about what will happen this year I finally felt excited and happy and positive, all the feelings I thought I should have felt weeks ago.  It was such a relief that things finally felt real, and that I finally felt ready to start.

On Friday evening the school held a cocktail hour for the MBAs and their partners, which was a nice touch.  A couple of us decided to transition the cocktail hour into another drink at The White Horse (the unofficial IMD pub) and before we knew it we had 20 people there.  The owner of the bar is accustomed to IMD students and surprised us with two free bottles of champagne as his welcome gift.

On Saturday morning we had to be back at school at 9am for "activities", which turned out to be 2 hours of a scavenger hunt through town center Lausanne in groups of 8, and then a cheesy team-building activity where had to build a wooden arch to go in front of a doorway.  They gave us wood, hammers, nails, nail guns, power drills, saws, canvas, paper, markers, glue, paint, paintbrushes, scissors, string, and staplers, and said we had 90 minutes to build it, decorate it, and clean up (90 people, 90 minutes, aha).  We had to organize ourselves into groups of engineers, architects, carpenters, designers, painters, and cleaners to build the 10ft wide by 12 ft high structure.

After the arch building they rewarded us by handing us a group case study that was due at 8am on Monday morning.  They got a real kick out of assigning hours more work each day that we thought we'd have a chance to catch up.  We all ate lunch (provided by IMD thank god) and my group got right to it, spending six hours Saturday afternoon reading, discussing, and creating our powerpoint presentation.  Saturday night eight of us met at the White Horse for drinks and good conversation.

On Sunday I slept in as late as I wanted, then started in on more work.  In the afternoon I hunted down IMD's gym and had a much needed two hour workout that felt fantastic.  I was really happy that the director Martha promoted exercise so much, and I noticed that exercise classes were included on our class schedule in the evenings.

First task was to take a picture with a real Swiss person.

Another task was to take a picture in front of the clock with the moving glockenspiel parts.

Third task was to find at least three dogs of different sizes.

Fourth task was to find the chepeast item possible in the market.  I bought one walnut for 10c.

This is the arch we built.

My job was to paint flags.

We took pictures of all the MBAs with a favorite quote of their choice.

Mine was to live with no regrets.

My study group working on our case for the first real day of class.

This cat lives in a house nearby, I think, because he lets himself into the school and wanders around at will.

Saturday night at The White Horse.

Feeling happy, finally!