Round 1a of 5 done

It's been a while since I've posted and it was all due to our Pre-Term exams. Just a little background information on the ESADE course structure. The 18 month full time course is divided into 5 terms of roughly 3.5 months. We also have a Pre-Term which is considered the catch-up month to provide everyone Intro to Accounting, Project Management, Econ 1 and Business Law. To everyone's detriment they've crammed about a semester's worth of material into 48 hours of lecture. Obviously a lot of the material was kept summary level to avoid peoples' heads from exploding but I'm sure for a lot of people it felt like there was a lot of info.

Anyways, as I have yet to receive the results from those exams I will call it the successful completion of Pre-Term. I honestly like the ESADE MBA culture because it is very collaborative in terms of learning and studying. Countless times we've been told that there is no bell curve and the intent of the program was not to weed out the bottom 10% but to provide an environment for learning and teamwork. In essence this fosters an environment where people want to help each other out with the goal being that everyone does well and not that you beat out the rest of your classmates. There's already enough competition amongst classmates for post MBA jobs why create a continual sentiment that you need to be better than anyone else. Maybe I don't have the killer attitude that enables me to crush my competition, but most people I know who've maintained that type of mentality are usually dicks.

Not all of the past week was spent poring over books. I actually got a chance to go to the Green Day concert at Palau Sant Jordi. Hats off to my classmate who got us down to the floor when we actually had reserved seats.

It's funny because Green Day has been around for so long that they've created two separate demographics amongst their fans. Those who first heard about them in the mid 90's when they were rocking out at Woodstock and every pop/alternative station was playing songs from Dookie (me and others in their mid-late20s)  and those who caught them in their later days (Warning/American Idiot) era (teens/early 20s). The concert was awesome but it was very interesting to see the waves of excitement and recognition as Green Day alternated between their older songs and newer songs. The oldies like me get excited when they play Welcome to Paradise and the teens would get excited when they played 21 guns.

The "God I am old" feeling was a double punch this time around as A) I saw a huge queue of parents in their cars waiting to pick up their kids after the concert and B) my body ached from 2 hours of being on the floor and the next day I was actually sore from standing. WTF.

It was well worth it though because I got to hear one of my favorite songs live. At times as I talk to people from back home and get updated on the ongoings of life and events I missed, I pause to wonder if getting an MBA in Spain was worth it. When you top that off with the anxiety of post MBA employment, stress and worry associated with classes, exams and time management it's hard not to doubt your decision. But then you look back at all the fun you've had with your classmates, what you've learned from everyone's experiences and what you've learned about yourself in such a short period of time that it's easy to realize that this was absolutely the best decision you've made. I keep waiting for the hammer of reality to knock me back into negative land but it hasn't happened yet. Until then in the immortal words of Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day....

Another turning point;
a fork stuck in the road.

Time grabs you by the wrist;
directs you where to go.

So make the best of this test
and don't ask why.

It's not a question
but a lesson learned in time.

It's something unpredictable
but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.
ESADE MBA365.com