4 week summary, Consulting here I come

Its clear from the BCG presentations and general consulting overload since beginning INSEAD (we've had, at last count, "personal" letters, cds, sponsored parties (kudos to Bain), corkscrew (wine bottle) openers of the expensive kind and books....) that the "famous" consultancy firms value brevity.

So on that basis (and with one-off overdose of bullet points) here is a KPI of P1 (not fully in context, but hey it’s my blog).

Courses:

• FMV (aka finance): Our professor is the former dean of INSEAD (he has the garden on the campus roof named after him), who is very knowledgeable and pretty funny. He likes shouting, boy does he like shouting, but he makes the subject more interesting and watching him move across the amphi waving his arms is not unlike watching John Travolta showing his moves in Saturday Night Fever.

• P&M (aka Microeconomics): We have a surfer dude professor from Hawaii. He has a penchant for Hawaiian shirts, shorts, flip flops, the words "Awesome and Aloominum" and Tiger beer. But he knows his stuff and whilst I am not sure I totally get it, the real life element is refreshing. Just in case you are wondering, he is clearly incredibly clever and was smart enough to leave HBS, Stanford, Kellogg et al and head off for a quality of life in Hawaii most of us can only dream of.......I hate him.

• UDJ (aka Statistics) : Imagine the stereotypical smooth Russian from a cold war movie or the sports stars of the USSR and you have our stats professor, including a brilliant accent. However, this man is a bona fide genius because he makes a 1.5 hour lecture fly by and actually makes statistics fun (yes I do hold my head in shame at that confession). The use of articles, M&Ms and cold calling has been inspired.

• Financial Accounting : To be fair, this is less about the mechanics of accounting (although we have covered this) but more about understanding the accounts enough to decipher what the hell a company's management team are up to and how well the company is doing. I'm not the biggest fan of this professor - but he knows his stuff, can be amusing and cold calls mercilessly.

• LPG (aka knowing me, knowing you as ABBA would say). This is mix of trying to understand yourself, while trying to understand your impact on others and trying to understand them. The professor varies from boring to insightful and the whole range in between.
  

Week 2 and 3

• Lots of career counselling, finance presentation, getting to know each other (i.e. parties and barbecues) and our professors. Oh and we are travelling like mad each weekend - Malaysia and Thailand with the P1/P2 break looking like a choice of Cambodia or Vietnam. Oh and the potential IBers are working around the clock on their CVs and covering letters as European IB internships deadlines are now.
  

Week 3

• This was Iberia week and it was good. The amphi storming was funny with the bull fighter scoring extra points for smoothness and clever use of socks. The party was excellent, t-shirts were cool and the drinks flowing - these national weeks are going to be a lot of fun.
  

Week 4

• Mid-term tests - now my view on these is that you do a bit of work and then walk in and do the test. However, it seems that the professors do not see it that way - oh dear.......

• Interviews for the IBers are coming in - mostly video conference call interviews with London staff -oh the joys of the 21st Century. To be fair the poor buggers and bugerrettes are being really stretched and to some extent the famous "INSEAD community spirit" has kicked in with non IBers stepping in to help out. As one man, who could be described as a larger than life human happiness machine says "two teams, one dream." (copyright NH-L)

Week 5

• 3 day week due to Chinese New Year. Most people just used the break as an opportunity to travel or just relax in Singapore. (I refer you to my fellow bloggers Phathu and Wordly for more details).
  

Week 6

• Workload is reaching insane levels with pre reading being an interesting concept that is ignored. Assignments are coming from all directions and then there is the P&M game. I will not tell you more but it’s interesting to bring the theory to life, as well as prove some of my classmates really need the P2 class in strategy.

• But still time to arrange valentine’s night poker and invite our P&M prof. A lesson to be learnt is that if your prof attends poker, then make sure you have done the pre reading for the next morning in case he cold calls anyone (perhaps anyone who he played poker with?)
  

I am back in the saddle, but let's see how long this lasts....