The bursting radius of a hand grenade is always one foot greater than your jumping range.
Exams are done, hoorah. Long done, and it’s taken me this much time to get back to a reasonable mental state. What a fucking nightmare; at least two of them (finance, statistics) saw me completely and utterly dumbfounded by every single question, and I am convinced of having failed them. “Failed” as in beyond the usual, expected INSEAD “I bet I failed that exam.” Let’s see what Dean Fatas has to say. In any case, I must have been a right zombie after the damn things; two double scotches at the bar had a good go at putting that in order.
Mom visited last week, but I couldn’t spend a lot of time with her, due to a combination of classes and a horribly planned overall schedule. It makes me sick how much of my life I’m sacrificing, even given that I knew I’d have to prioritize. I could have saved myself the time and cost of the Montmellian ball; in addition to being a tired wreck, the combination of having to stay sober (driving to Switzerland at 5 that morning) and a bunch of random people acting strange contributed to a generally not-so-awesome vibe. At least the Pink Martini concert in Paris on Friday night was brilliant.
We’re saddled with 6 classes this period, compared to the 5 we had to deal with before. They’re fascinating, even though I’m a bit concerned about impending doom in my advanced corporate finance class. A bit ironic, learning about options pricing when career services sends out an email saying “Given the current situation in the financial markets, we would like evaluate how many of you have already received an offer from a bank (including offers coming out of summer internships) in order to take appropriate measures with the banks. “ Oops. I had the crackpot idea of looking into luxury goods as a career options, even though Karin has stated clearly that she doesn’t think I’d have a clue about it. Hey, I like nice things.
This period it’s finance, managerial accounting (with the most arrogant-yet-competent professor I’ve seen so far), operations management, leading organizations, marketing and strategy. All good, all intense, and all to be brought under our belts in 6 weeks before Christmas break. After that, I anticipate all hell breaking loose as I move on to Singapore. The apartment hunt-at-a-distance is a bit disconcerting, as I’ve lost two places in the much-vaunted Dover & Heritage complexes already (bunch of miserable usurers, screw them) but I’m sure something will turn up.
It’s grown freezing, my kind of weather, and it’s somehow viciously fun to watch the poor Australians and South Asians shivering over cigarettes. For some reason (maybe finally having gotten some sleep has something to do with it) I have energy again and have decided to live vicariously, to not take classes _that_ seriously beyond doing what’s possible (the impossible takes a bit longer) and to engage in some more career/fun-type activities. Let’s see…