Day 6 - My first day

To whoever ever wondered what it would be the first day at business school, here goes my piece of information. If you have never really wondered, I am not that sure why you would be reading something with such a title, given the obvious relation of what is going through my mind to the laptop right now but I will just assume you are so nice you can not avoid reading these lines.

To those curious of you, I will undo the myth for you. I had a really fun day. I did lego, I had my eyes folded to figure out colours and shapes of the foam weird objects I was given, we built a wood puzzle against the time. What, you actually thought I was actually going to spend my first day on the case method? Well, I might have, but in fact the day was beautiful and hot so we changed the plans last minute and decided to go for outdoor activities instead J Naaaa, I know your thinking that it was just vacation, I still get those jokes every day but that is actually not right. I did get to learn a lot today. A lot about myself (and my inability to memorize the sequence in which I had to place my share of the wood pieces and ability to continuously destroy the timing of the team) and a lot about being in such a diverse group. And now it’s when you think (I will continue my assumptions) that “OMG, her first day and she is already going to this diversity story!”. True, I am.

Today I got assigned my learning team, something that only recently has turned out mandatory but that is now part of the experience here. Every morning, I will meet this 4 people at 7.30 in the morning, to go through the 3 case studies of the day. Now, you know how much someone like me adores getting out of bed before 7am (and as such I live on campus next to the building, I might just make it if I get up sharp at 7!). Well, they definitely had to give us a positive start to try to make you forget from the timing of the future meetings. How can you possibly easily engage with someone that will make you get out of bed and “discuss” for a full hour, just before the classes start and after a night that “for sure” you went to bed sooo early? With a full day, out in the sun, doing legos and team bounding experiences. A lot of moments we thought whether the activities, briefings and de-briefings would ever have an end. And at points we really were not into sharing “what went well and what would you do differently”. But in the end, we all ended up having good laughs, knowing someone completely different and thinking about that person will be able to contribute to your personal experience over the next 12 months. Yes, because that person was thought and assigned to me and my learning team mates specifically because he or she have something unique that will make a difference to me. There was actually a computer program going through mine and 899 other people’s characteristics to determine what would be the best result. So far, I am impressed. They have the skills that I lack; I got the skills that they want to learn. So far so good, we even made it through our first case in twenty minutes.

On the overall experience, the first hour and a half of the day were indeed impressive. We were welcomed by the dean and some faculty members who I ought to remember the name (but we know me…) and I was truly impressed in a way by every different speech. It might have been the 900 people auditorium, the time in the morning, or just the thrill of the first day. The messages did get through to me though, and I learnt a couple of things. Moreover, it is always good to be re-assured you are not in the wrong place at the wrong time. I learnt that even in the days when I will really think my admission must have been a computer mistake, I was rest assured the only department that does not make mistakes is the admissions office, so I will rely on that not to panic.