Dec-28th 2009: So I am sitting here in the boarding area of Munich Airport, ready for a 15 hour trip to Singapore with a stop over Paris. All that goodbye-saying of the past weeks is accomplished, most of mom’s wonderful Christmas cookies are eaten, all the best wishes and some clearly jealous remarks were happily accepted with a wide grin in my face and now I am ready to go. The 20 kilo weight limit was challenging indeed, because the next months will be as diverse as my apparel: Business attire for formal receptions, dinners and meetings with external speakers. “Smart casual” outfits for average school days and of course casual/outdoors/trekking outfit for exciting weekend getaways some where in South-East Asia. Everyone so far warned me about Air France, but this check-in lady was nice and ignored my 3 kilos overweight with a smile – maybe she saw the sparks of excitement in my eyes. Well, it might also be the fact that I looked quite exhausted after my 2 hours run this afternoon. I have made it a good habit to run a longer distance before long-haul flights because it helps me sleep and my legs can rather accomodate to sit for many hours.
Without ever having visited the school or met most of my future peers, vivid online conversations (internal bulletin boards, facebook groups) have already created some first-hand impressions. First, INSEAD seems to me like a well-lubricated and good-working big machine, processing those 500 students in my intake without any major flaws. One of my previous concerns was that a mass-institution will be of disadvantage, but so far I am positively impressed. Well-designed online resources and responsive & smart staff were a very pleasant surprise. In that matter, INSEAD is clearly the most professional school that I have dealt with. My crowd is also very active, looking at those hundreds of emails & discussion threads. Some people are doing a great job in researching the next year and helping others. I contributed some Google Spreadsheets for contacts and apartment sharing and people accepted it right away and adapted it to their specific needs – web 2.0, here we go. Even before we wear the official INSEAD name tag, people are clearly self-organizing, take initiative and team up for such tasks as visa applications, apartment hunt, building study-groups for the language requirements and of course organizing first get-togethers and trips. Maybe I am over-enthusiastic or just slept over , but it’s a good way to set a benchmark for everything that’s coming over the next months.
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