Day 1:

 We began with orientation, and meeting with our immediate faculty, the Dean Professor Galunic, Joanne and Sven (administrators), Edo(Director of EMBA) 65 GEMBA students, Janine Serieys (Admissions Director for EMBA Program), and a few more, 

It was exciting to meet all of the students in one class, we were all told about the program and the other details.

We were then asked to identify ourselves with one sentence which would last the length of the course, ie get to know your neighbor and introduce your neighbor in a few words with one catch word or sentence,

I was the 'adrenalin junkie', cause i am very interested in adventure sports and the likes of any outdoor activity.

we were additionally broken up in to groups and these are our 'Leadership Development' Groups. These groups we have been told will last till the end of the entire program, though they will continue to put us in different functional groups in class so that we can meet all the students in class and be able to get to know all of them.

I have also heard that the LD Groups last longer than the length of the course since they have been designed with a lot of prior inputs and paperwork which each of us has had to fill out after admission, and these groups have been well thought out and meant to bring all the different parts of my personality in tune with the others in the group, so each one of us can benefit in our maximum from each other.

So thats the groups.

In the first module "2 weeks" -- I call this 'INSEAD Boot Camp', we had the following classes:

Uncertanity Data and Judgement - Professor Enrico, he is from Wharton and teaches there normally, he is an excellent Professor, he is very qualified, and loves to teach the EMBA class here at INSEAD, he is very energetic and passionate about his work and his subject.

The only downside sometimes was that he has a very thick greek accent and initiallly it was difficult to pick up information as he spoke, but he more than made up for this by stopping at many points and asking us questions about our understanding...

His favorite line--- though funny when it is  delivered is "R u weeeeth me Veeevek?" .......... lik I said it sounds much more funny when he says it.

His final exam was quite difficult, and since he was covering so much ground in class and the extent of his coverage was so large, he was unable to do too much of the examples of each topic, and also it was difficult for him to deal with other aspects of the topics, as in exercises,  

OB: This was taken by Professor Galunic, also the Dean of the EMBA Course at INSEAD, he is an excellent professor and spent time with us encouraging and also bringing the groups together to work together, 

his job might have been the toughest as he was dealing with the new groups and the new faces and we had not even gotten to know each other and then we had to work together, each one of us was not in too much of a cooperative mood, more of a competitive mood, and that just defeats the purpose of the entire group exercises,

He managed to get us together quite well and very cohesively, I enjoyed his class very much,

his lectures were filled with case studies and many exercises which we did as groups and this made then entire experience a lot more fun and also we were able to retain all of our learning, I am using this as a process of to be able to build upon my Implementation essay, maybe i will take up OB as one of my Essays for the end of the course.

Price & Markets: Professor Nikkos, he is another star,

i loved his class, particularly because the subject - Microeconomics is very interesting for me, I was we covered a lot of the basic ground, about prices and markets, and demand and supply curves, and then we also covered the curves in a monopoly market, and oligopolies, it was a very interesting class with tangible take home value in terms of actual learning and retention, we dealt with real life situaitons from newspapers and also in class exercises which we had to demonstrate how the pricing and quantities would change when we had monopolies as well as oligopolies, and perfect markets in play, 

this was truly a very interesting class and especially his presentation and his delivery was just clear and his course material was also very clear and also covered in class, so there was no extra material which we needed to know other than what we would like to cover by ourselves outside of class to be able to learn more,  

Strategy: He was a great Professor, he is from the US again and he teaches the EMBA class, 

We have a continuation of his class in the next module which is in January 2009, in the meantime in the time away we have an assignment  which we have to complete to be able to understand and prepare for the next module

Financial Accounting: This was probably the best of all my classes so far, he is THE BEST Professor Ihave had in the longest time,

I MEAN EVER!!

I would be very happy to take up his class again so I can learn the basic concepts of Financial Accounting once again, 

Professor Niall is so funny he will have you in splits in every class,

I LOVED Financial Accounting!!!!

That covers all the classes,

There was one day of an exercise by a professional company called OUtward Bound which we had in the Forest of Fontainebleau, and this was along with our LD Groups, we were combined with another group and we had to spend the day in the forest with a coordinator and a group moderator who would facilitate exercies which would encourage group development and better dynamism, this was another beautiful day and we got closer as a group as well as better performers in group exercises because we got to know each other much better in the day, some very difficult exercises, including some trust exercises, 

So this was another day of revelation for us,

We had a final exam in our UDJ, for our Price & markets, we had a group assignment for our OB, and we have a take home assignment for our Financial accounting, as well as for our OB, and for our Strategy,

There is a lot of work, including the reading for the next session and the assignments for our next session.

I am looking forward t our next session, and also hoping to have a lot more pictures for you all of you.

Will write more as and when I can, until then I am happy to take any questions or other thoughts...

V