Sunday, April 27, 2008

Dennis & friends

Last Friday a new subject called Leadership in Action started. It is part of the core courses of the Easter term. When you see something like that on your time table you wonder what is going to happen there. Interestingly enough, after attending one session the name of the course actually starts to make sense.

My first impression was that I was watching one of those concerts like Pavarotti & Friends, where a big start calls his friends to do some singing together. The principle of this course is the same. Lord Dennis Stevenson brings some of his friends to talk for 20 minutes each. In that time, they are supposed to summarise their entire careers into some hints and tips for us.

The concept looks very interesting and I must say it is interesting. 20 minutes is the perfect length. Whenever we start getting bored of the speaker, it is over. And the speakers are very diverse and interesting people with some good insights. Even listening to the obvious tips is interesting as it reinforces their importance. In a way, it reminds me of the Enterprise Tuesday (already mentioned in a previous post) but more diverse and shorter.

After the session, there is a get together at the restaurant next door with nice food and drinks, giving us the chance to speak with these people. Because it is in a restaurant it also means we finally get good food (yup...the food served after recruitment sessions at JBS is horrible!)

Believe me, if I’m praising a course that is taught at a Friday night, the thing must be pretty interesting!

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Easter term

I’m back. And I mean, back to the blog, back to the UK and back to classes.
Almost two months have gone by since I last wrote on this blog, but I’ll try to make an update in the next weeks.

But let me start with the end. Yesterday, the Easter term has started. The Easter term goes until the 13th of June and it is the last term of the MBA. It is amasing how time flies here. Not long ago I was just starting and now the end of it seems so close. Yesterday many prospective students where here for their interviews and it is very funny to think that roughly one year ago I was in the same situation, and now I’m almost done.

Anyway, the Easter term has started and despite the unattractiveness of the idea of having classes again, it is nice to be back and seeing everyone again after one month of GCP. Because the GCP involves companies all over the world, the last month was spent with my GCP team and part of it was spent outside the UK. So being back is nice.

The Easter term seems to have a different structure from the previous ones. For starters, there are no exams, which is quite nice. Secondly, the course courses last roughly for a week. After these core courses, we have some electives but in general they last for 6 hours only. So it seems like I have some very light days form the second week of May onwards. That looks nice, but I guess things are designed like this so we can have more time for job search. This is also the term we’re supposed to look for jobs in the open market, which takes a lot of time.
I’m looking forward to this term, but most importantly, as most people in the MBA, I’m looking forward to finding a job soon. So let’s see what happens. In the meanwhile, I’ll try to update the blog some of the events that happened during these last two months, namely during GCP.

Just as a side note, I’ve been receiving many emails from prospective students. I’m not always very fast to answer but I try answering to all your queries. Also, I’ve been asked to post more often, so I’ll try to do so...if time allows me!