Murphy was an optimist.
Huddled together for warmth under a steel-gray June sky, our heroes anxiously scan the horizon for news of the great beyond. Yes, folks, that’s right, it’s a freezing day in beautiful downtown Fontainebleau, as was to be expected of our final month in ze gulag. No, we weren’t planning any barbecues or outdoor parties or, god forbid, projector movies on the lawn. We came back from Singapore to look for be responsible indoors professionals in anticipation of our next cage-dwelling existence in a soulless cubicle somewhere, not jumping around swaddled in goat furs, trying not to freeze the family jewels off. It would be nice to be able to invite any of the fair number of people over who’ve wanted to come stargazing at our house, but having a star party through the fickle blanket of clouds would be an exercise in futility.
Honestly, it’s not that bad, but the spate of ethanol-fueled social events recently has significantly taken the edge off the job search. Which, natch, has taken on dimensions of a snipe hunt, with a bunch of hapless soon-to-be INSEAD grads crouched haplessly in the bushes, avidly scanning the horizons for something which may or may not show up. As it stands, consider this an invitation, gentle reader, to press your thumbs for me. Press until they bleed (or, failing that, offer me a lucrative job — that will absolve you from any thumb-bleeding-pressing guilt trip. This means YOU, dear alumni. Yeah, especially the ones that hooked up with the company-sponsored Veyron and corner office with the built-in hot tub and Dom Pérignon dispenser and expense-account pet frickin’ sharks with frickin’ laser beams on their heads when there wasn’t a recession on. Give, I say, give until it hurts!)
The batteries are now officially empty, vampirically drained to the last drop of energy. Getting effort or motivation out of the gang of July seems akin to squeezing cask-aged single malt scotch from a stone — notwithstanding the fact that a boatload of us still have some sort of project to do. In my case, a presentation for a major cell phone manufacturer is hanging over my head like a giant hanging thing. I start to believe that I chose very poorly when signing up to deliver a strategy, however high-level, for a market that is young, fluid, and in whose capacity to deliver profits within the next 5 years I don’t necessarily believe. That may be both a benefit and a curse stemming from having worked in high tech the past 10 years; you tend to develop a strong curmudgeonly streak about the kind of heavily hyped new technologies that marketing wonks carry on breathlessly about.
Small extraneous note to the INSEAD faculties people: your Fontainebleau urinals do not have little ledges inside. This would not be significant except that the flush is triggered by some sort of highly randomized pseudo-motion sensor with a pronounced proclivity to spray your trousers with a fine mist of unmentionable. If you are reading this, please take your plumbing supplier outside for a swift beating. OK thanks.
Empty batteries translate into a pronounced tendency to party hard. Drink early, drink often — I suspect that P5 is where INSEAD’s reputation as a party school (notwithstanding the frequently bleak reality of the daily academic and professional MEAT HAMMER the place brings down on the unsuspecting heads of inmates.) The past weeks have seen a plethora of absolutely mental events, including the latin week party at La Plage, the American ghetto party at Villa Foch, the Montmelian ball (at, you guessed it, Montmelian) and the Italian party at Vaux le Penil.
Frat Boy and O.G.
True to form, apparently someone seems to have started a fight at the American party. Way to dispel stereotypes, yo. Although it wasn’t for lack of trying that we failed to find 40oz. bottles of Mickey’s in Paris.
The Montmelian ball exceeded expectations; I wish it had been the last party of the season. This is the way the world ends, with a bang not a whisper, and this was certainly one hell of a bang. Or several of them. Several audible “thumps”, actually, emanating from various corners of the chateau where some of our visitors from Macquarie bank passed out spectacularly. INSEAD students don’t pass out, they just stumble unsteadily into the forest, throwing champagne bottles and bits of dyonisian costume hither and thither, hoping some kind soul will pick them up and offer them a ride home. Or so I’m told. It was a blast, and easily ranked among the best parties I’ve ever attended.
As a small piece of advice for the residents, though — the next time you put on a thinly disguised toga party, consider not prominently featuring the hosts wearing pink trousers and fairy wings and not much else on your advertisements. It’s a vaguely intimidating costume theme for people who cannot make a last-minute Greek tunic out of a hastily ripped down projector screen, and tends to strain the fairy wing logistics of our friends at Big Gay Frat House. Plus, those less scrupulous among us may feel inclined to use the fliers as blackmail material at some point in the future, unless you provide us with copious amounts of champagne. Which, to be honest, you already did, so you’re safe. For now. Kudos to the Monty crew, well done, fun was had. Any social event where the bar staff just collectively throws in the towel and starts passing out bottles gets full ranks from the judges.
Christ, the French are a grumpy people. I’m trying to like the place, I really am, but being scowled at more times than I care to count each day takes a surprising amount of energy. That, and having three bank employees take 15 minutes to figure out an approximate interbank Dollar-to-Euro exchange rate removes any confusion I might have had about how Société Générale lost 4 billion euros. Hint: take the average of the “buy” and “sell” rates. You can do it in Excel. It’s not hard. We learn these things in business school.
<Rant>
Social life, indeed. A fair number of colleagues have commented that some of the institutions here seem to have devolved into borderline popularity contests. I suppose you could see the inevitable politicking that surrounds some of the jockeying for party invites, school events and other bits of tomfoolery in our last period as a valuable preparation for corporate politics, but I’m a bit disappointed by the cheapening of our experience when some of our accomplishments are determined by who has more friends — especially when non-students get into the game. I always figured that remaining socially mobile (a.k.a. “I’m too old for this kindergarten shit”) would insulate me from the inevitable cliquishness that kicks in whenever you get a large enough group of people of any maturity level in an enclosed space, but after a certain point it becomes a bit discouraging.
It hit home in Singapore how many people felt alienated by the various social circles that many gravitated towards; since returning, I’ve had several conversations with friends who felt left out. It’s stunning how I completely fail to recognize these sorts of social undercurrents at times. Encouragingly, a few of us at lunch today discussed how people who come across as aloof and exclusionary are themselves left out of a lot of things; it’s difficult to behave elitist when others (a) don’t care and (b) have better things to do than bother with your attitude.
Minor point: gossip sucks. People do stupid things, it’s a fact of life. Talking about it, especially judgmentally, behind their backs, is undignified and insulting. Leave it be.
Welcome to the real world, kid.
</Rant>
I’m in the middle of salary negotiations with a potential employer — without knowing whether “before we continue, we’d like to figure out where we stand in terms of compensation” constitutes an offer. Cross your fingers. The package they propose for a challenging management-level position didn’t floor me, but at this point I’m not terribly concerned about base salary (especially considering that, working in France, I’ll lose half of it to pay for some fonctionnaire’s wine cellar.) My main issue is finding a way to pay for my accursed loans — first the bank, then the family. I mentioned that during my second salary-related chat, and they didn’t object right away. Good sign. It’s a humbling realization that, having done fairly informal consulting work for the past 7 years, I haven’t the slightest, foggiest clue about how the “real world” functions salary- and contract-wise. I have gained a grudging admiration for people who are able to plug away at a career for years at a time. The next 24 months will tell whether I have the same sort of endurance.
Depressing news: we had 2 baby ducks at Le Vivier. “Had”, as in, the moment I turned my back after taking a photo, a crow grabbed one. And after we locked the remaining one up for the night (with a vocally protesting mother), a fox broke in and killed the other. Our landlord is furious and has his shotgun ready, so if you’re reading this, you murdering bastard…probably not, I suppose.
Lately we’ve been combining copious amounts of beer with Andy’s Wii until the Wii hours of the morning (sorry, couldn’t resist.) There isn’t much that’s as pointedly hilarious as a bunch of intoxicated adults screaming abuse at Mario Kart on the projector at 2 a.m. On the other hand, it’s a great way to pull you out of the crappy day you’ve just had. Advice to prospective business school attendees: bring a gaming console and a projector. You won’t waste time with it (as you won’t have much time to waste) but it’s a wonderful therapeutic equalizer for the rest of your life.
Small piece of advice for anyone in follow-up classes: scan your crap as you receive or write it. Scan your reading packets at the beginning of each period, scan your class handouts (the ones that aren’t online) when you receive them, scan your notes as you write them. Many of my colleagues (myself included) are engaged in a frantic last-minute scan-a-thon with the bulk machines. The logic of the knuckle-dragging cretins who write copyright law escapes me; we waste reams upon reams of paper with course readings and handouts, when it would be infinitely more convenient to hand the damn things out in PDF format. They eventually end up in electronic format anyway, but the sheer waste in man-hours to scan and sort everything just defies reason.
It seems somehow unreal that this whole thing will be over shortly. Much of it already seems like a distant, foggy memory, like a intense dream rapidly fading into the shadows after leaving you punch-drunk and wondering what the hell just hit you. Much more than the inevitable change of scenery and of my daily working paradigm (I’ve been through enough of those in the past few years to not be particularly bothered), I’m wondering how to deal with no longer being regularly surrounded by large numbers of people.
Spending time in Paris with Karin was always a healthy change from being run over daily by the INSEAD freight train, but I suspect I’ll still need a fair amount of time to adapt.
What I find particularly troubling is the wealth of information that seems to have seeped away already; during my near-daily scanning sessions, I am constantly amazed at the breadth and depth of material that I’ve learned and already forgotten. Maybe it’s a good thing that I’m scanning it all, then. I wish all of our profs could be as forthcoming as Markus Christen (bless him, if only for helping me with the market strategy presentation I volunteered to do — in French — for a potential employer. Markus, you’re a saint) and provide all their lecture notes, presentations and supporting material on a CD at the end of their session.
I’m busy lining up the skype coordinates of those I plan on staying in touch with; I nurture the hope that the lasting friendships I take away from INSEAD will not be transitory like holiday acquaintances. My encouragement comes from the fact that I still communicate, if infrequently, with good friends from high school and university, with whom I enjoy an instant rapport even after years of news blackout. Primarily, I’m attempting to put together a list of colleagues who’ll be in Paris (and Western Europe in general) for occasional weekend trips.
I should mention, at this point, one of the most extraordinary lectures I’ve ever been privileged to attend — Prof. Subramanian Rangan’s final session of Global Strategy and Management, a half-credit course I took in the first part of P5. A quiet, thoughtful man, Prof. Rangan went over several models of international corporate strategy, with an emphasis on analysis of fundamental economic and organizational factors that drive companies to do what they do. After a brief review of core concepts during his late Friday afternoon wrap-up class, he excused those who wanted to run off to enjoy the weekend.
Their mistake. We were subjected to a seemingly random, sweeping reach across the vastness of human cultural, political, economic and even biological history — the motivations underlying human behavior in an economic environment. Only near the end of the section did I realize the complex elegance of the lecture’s structure. One by one, the elements of Rangan’s talk began to fall into place, into a beautifully clear construct explaining the driving forces behind, and opposing, globalization and economic internationalization. Describing the lecturer’s final exhortation to not just create wealth, but to work to better humanity will likely come across as contrived to anyone who didn’t have the fortune to be present, but I was in awe of the lucidity and insight of it all. This should be the lecture that the rest of INSEAD builds up to.