Le MBA

In the pursuit of efficiency

2006-07-21T00:30:00.000+02:00

Why did I choose to study and live in Europe? This articlefrom The Observer highlights one of the main reasons (to increase my productivity, bien sur).

I think Mexicans have it worse with only one week vacation a year, and I know Taiwan instituted a few years ago the concept of weekends, that is having at least one day off a week. This makes me wonder: are French expats, with their 8 weeks vacation, resented in those countries?

Released from Jouy-en-Josas

2006-06-26T23:09:00.000+02:00

The ceremony last week was, as expected, a dawdling affair. The school convocated graduates from all programs, all 1,600 of us, in one setting at our Jouy campus. In the business world, this is called economies of scale. But you could also call it being cheap. I don't blame the school though - I'd rather see money allocated to scholarships than on a half-day ceremonial event.

In the end, I waited for about 3 hours to receive my diploma, as the CEO of Veolia, the Dean of HEC, the Dean of the Grande Ecole program, the Dean of the MBA program, the Dean of the Executive MBA program, the President of the Alumni Association... you get the picture... took their turn to address, mostly in French, a passive crowd. I felt bad for the families of MBA students who sat during the entire event not understanding a word that was said.

Our Graduation Gala, on the other hand, was majestic. We celebrated with a copious four-course meal, champagne à volonté (all you can drink), dazzling fireworks, and of course wonderful company.

During the evening, several student awards (more farcical than serious) were handed out, and I shared with a compatriot the dubious distinction of attending the most Grande Ecole parties*. They call it partying, I call it networking.

* Although I went to many during the 6 months I lived on campus, I can think of at least two other classmates who did better (or is it worse in this context) during the course of the 16-month program.

Remise des diplomes

2006-06-16T10:26:00.000+02:00

Today marks the official end of the 16-month HEC MBA. Lots of celebration ahead, but honestly speaking I can do away with the convocation itself.

Last year's was unpleasant for the MBAs. The entire class stayed seated for two hours as graduates from other programs (about 1,000 students I believe) were called first. I'm sure I'll be able to relate to Mark's experience at HBS minus the cold, rainy weather.

After the ceremony, we are celebrating our graduation lavishly at le Chateau de Dampierre, 10km away from the HEC campus. Let's hope the Gala Committee ordered enough cases of champagne.

The heat is on

2006-06-13T23:30:00.000+02:00

Literally. After a drab and rainy May, the sun beamed over London for 7 straight days. The Brits are enjoying their pints outdoors, and the women are clad with skimpy tops revealing their protruding body part (the one you’d rather not see). But of course, as I’m writing this post, the London weather has returned to its dreary self.

And metaphorically. I have until the end of September to find work in Europe before my bank account runs dry. My job search seemed promising last month until the markets tumbled. We’ll see how things unfold in the next little while.

ps: Expect more updates now that I have more time to blog.

Return of le blogger

2006-03-10T19:44:00.000+01:00

I haven't blogged in a long time. I've been very busy studying for the GMAT and finishing my MBA applications. Ok, not really. So what have I been doing during the past three months?

In December, I tried to enjoy Paris as much as I could. Although I had a nice spacious appartment in the 14th near Denfert Rochereau, the hectic workload in the fall term prevented me from fully appreciating the Parisian life. So with the free time, I scoured the city looking for cool shops, bars and restaurants, and threw a couple house parties.

The first one was to celebrate the end of our term. About 50 of our classmates showed up, fortunately coming and leaving at different times. By the end of the night, my roommate and I had so much leftover food that the last twelve people remaining parted with a baguette. I guess I should've paid more attention to my supply chain management class. But in fairness to me, this party was organized in less than 24 hours as the class reps were unable to book a good and affordable restaurant for all of us.

For the second party, my friend Christine and I hosted a Christmas potluck dinner for the 20 people who didn't go home for the holidays. I prepared the roast beef (turkey was too expensive), while Christine handled the rest. In other words, she did practically everything, including baking a delightful pumpkin pie.

After celebrating a rather uneventful New Year's in Paris, I spent the first week of January moving for the fifth time in two years. It was such a long and an unpleasant experience. I made at least 6 trips on the subway lugging my stuff all over Paris.

Once that was done, I managed to squeeze in a trip to London to see my newborn niece, Sara, before my flight to Japan. She's gonna be a cutie - half Taiwanese, half Mexican. Too bad my brother is moving to Abu Dhabi. I would've loved bringing Sara around London. At least I'll be spared the hassle of responding to all the flattering remarks from British women. Can you imagine the number of times I would have to point out, for factual purposes, that I'm her single uncle?

As I mentioned a few months ago, I'm now in Japan as an exchange student at Keio Business School. Life in Japan has been phenomenal. More on that later. In the meantime, I'll have to decide in the next few hours whether I go all out with the boys again taking the first subway train back the next morning, or join them for a few drinks and hop on the last train. Yet another stressful and difficult situation. Fortunately my MBA education has trained me very well.

Christmas season already

2005-11-19T13:24:00.000+01:00

Gift-giving came early this year. For business schools that is. My alma mater, McGill, announced a couple days ago that it received a C$22 million donation for its business school. Not to be outdone, my beloved HEC will be receiving... drum rolls please... 120 million euros from the CCIP (Chamber of Commerce of Paris).

The Chamber of Commerce essentially represents businesses in the Greater Parisian Region. Its main activity is to promote economic growth, but it also also has an educational division that regroups several schools, of which HEC.

Concerning the 120-million-euro investment in HEC, most of it will be used to enhance the facilities, including a new building planned for the MBA program. In addition, the administration intends to increase the class size from 200 to 250.

Things are definitely looking good for HEC.

Robot mode

2005-11-17T03:30:00.000+01:00

Net Impact Conference: cool. Workload: not so cool. Last three days very rough.

Spent all Sunday in San Mateo working on Business Plan project. Submitted financial projections in Word but forgot to attach Excel file. Result? Group members couldn't use figures in review with BP advisor because different assumptions used.

Woke up at 4:45am on Monday to catch morning flight to Paris. Arrived Paris at 8am on Tuesday. Attended three-hour class starting at 2:30pm. Struggled to stay awake in first half. Chewed gum in second half to fight off sleep and noticed that notes in first half were illegible. Had dinner on campus at 7pm. Returned to MBA building to work on an assigment at 8pm. Returned to Paris at 9:30pm. Completed and sent assignment #2 at 2:30am.

Woke up at 10:30am on Wednesday. Probably fifth time since September that I got more than 7 hours of sleep. No class today, but had to work on assignment #3 due yesterday (or two days ago now). Still not finished. Blogging right now because can't write my assignment in robot mode. Will go to sleep at 4:00am if not progressing.

Turning brain back on.

Dry humor

2005-11-09T02:20:00.000+01:00

It's days like today that I miss North America. Since most French homes are not equipped with dryers, I just spent over two hours ironing my clothes. That should serve as a lesson for doing laundry at the last minute. But I'm sure if I had Mark's new power toy it wouldn't have been as bad.

Just a few hours remaining before I leave for San Francisco. I'm really looking forward to the Net Impact Conference. I have to thank the HEC MBA administration for sending all five of the board members to Stanford. How to spot us? Simply look for the Dutch, Canadian, Australian, Lebanese and Indian setting cars on fire. Ok, that was a tasteless joke. I'm not a riot after all.

ps: if you want to get a cynical (but true?) perspective on the social situation in France, I suggest to read yesterday's editorial on the Wall Street Journal.

What riot?

2005-11-07T21:04:00.000+01:00

As pathetic as this might sound, I only found out that riots were erupting in France on the sixth day of unrest. With the workload and visits from family and friends, I have been completely disconnected from recent events. I guess I should stop limiting myself from reading only the business section of the Financial Times.

Yet another example of long class hours, a bunch of my friends are in a marketing course that's running from 8pm to 11pm. I know at least one person who also has a class tomorrow at 8am. I wouldn't be surprised if he'll be grumpy all day.

Anyway I'm on campus now waiting for my buddy Andrea to drive me home to Paris. I actually didn't have class today - in fact I only have class one day a week this month - but had to spend my entire day at HEC finishing a paper, doing group work, attending a meeting for Net Impact HEC and finalizing some documentation for the Finance Club. The good news in all of this is that I was able to cross out many things on my to-do list.

Staying alive

2005-11-06T23:36:00.000+01:00

The pace is still unrelenting. After attending the school's inaugural conference on Sustainable Development, I started the first week of the Personalized Phase (PP) with 35 hours of classes, excluding lunch breaks. I am not exaggerating. Fortunately, we have much fewer assignments and presentations than in the core phase but it's still quite a lot of work.

In the PP, students can specialize in four subjects (called tracks) - Entrepreneurship, Finance, Marketing or Strategy. Although I'm pursuing a career in finance after the MBA, I chose the Entrepreneurship track. I simply figured I'd learn more if I specialized outside of my professional experience. Besides the curriculum is flexible enough that I can also pick classes in finance and in other areas.

To meet the credit requirements for this term, we are expected to earn 24 credits for a total of 210 class hours. These figures exclude the French classes (six hours a week) that non-fluent speakers must take. From speaking to exchange students at HEC, it seems that we're saddled with more class hours even though our program is shorter.

Here are the numbers:
325 hours of core classes
399 hours of track and elective courses
80 hours of compulsory personal development courses (leadership, communication, conferences, business simulations, etc).

So after 16 months in the HEC program, each participant will have endured 804 hours in the classroom, plus an extra 132 hours for those who weren't exempted from French and an additional 132 hours for the brave ones who want to learn a third language. I wonder how these figures compare with those of other schools.

I'm very impressed with the quality of teaching this term, as many classes are taught by professionals. They include the ex-CEO of Louis Vuitton Malletier and Yves Sain-Laurent, the CEO and owner of an investment fund, and an investment banker from Rothschild who worked in London, Paris and New York. The drawback with this setup is that many of these 18-hour classes are squeezed into a few days to accomodate their schedule.

My classes this term are:
Core/Required Classes
Corporate Valuation.. DONE
Management Control.. DONE
Entrepreneurship Track.. ONGOING

Electives
Business Plan Workshop (write an actual BP for a startup).. ONGOING
Private Equity.. DECEMBER
Mergers and Acquisitions.. DONE
Marketing of Luxury Products.. DONE
Takeover of a Company in Bankruptcy (in French).. DONE
Negotiation and Created Agreement.. DONE
Corporate Marketing.. STARTING

Anyway, I have a busy week ahead as I'm going with four other classmates to the Net Impact Conference at Stanford (17-hour plan ride) and have three big projects due the week after. I hope my hotel will have Internet access.

Where next?

2005-08-30T22:50:00.000+02:00

I can't say enough great things about BCN. It's young, hip, fun, modern, stylish, sexy and clean. I'm so glad that I didn't visit earlier. I would've been easily seduced and tempted to do an exchange program at IESE or ESADE. Instead I opted to attend a school outside of Europe.

I must confess that, at first, I was vying for a spot at a top U.S. school to get a taste of the American experience - great people, amazing campus life, top notch facilities and strong ties with the corporate world. But after considerable thought, I decided to apply to a school in a non-English speaking country. The exchange program is after all an opportunity to live in and adapt to a different environment.

I had to withdraw my first pick, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, due to the timing. Classes start in January with a summer break in February and then resume from March to June. My main concern was coming back to Europe in the summer looking for work (in case I don't find a job before I leave on exchange) as July and August are not ideal months for job hunting in Europe. In fact some companies in France shut down in August.

In the end, I will be wrapping my MBA in the winter term in Tokyo at Keio University. I now have four months to learn some Japanese and appreciate raw fish.

Summer vacation

2005-08-03T13:27:00.000+02:00

Like many of my classmates of the January intake (those who started in January), I am not doing a summer internship. Since the first half of the program ended in mid-July, working for two months in Europe with many people on vacation is not an interesting experience. Instead, I'm in Barcelona for two weeks and am staying at an amazing place near Sagrada Famila.

Since the place is new, I wasn't able to find any reviews on it. The lower price (63 euros per night) and the pictures were enticing enough to try it out for 3 nights. After walking into the apartment, I realized that it was a steal. The apt is 70 square meters with two bedrooms, two balconies, a spacious living room, a kitchen, and air conditioning (woohoo!). Right away, I went back to the guy at the reception and managed, with my little knowledge of Catalan, to extend my stay until the 16th. (I actually understood everything he said until he mentioned m'entens.. which as I found later meant do you understand)

Since I put all my money in accomodation, I'm debating whether I should take Spanish classes and hang out with foreigners all the time. For now, I've joined Dir, a cool gym near Plaça de Catalunya, with the hope of meeting locals.

Almost done!

2005-07-11T16:45:00.000+02:00

Done with the last exam! I ended up not studying for the Corporate Finance final but was still prepared for it as we had a "mid-term" only three weeks ago (3/4 into the course) and I did quite a lot of work on the group projects.

With only the Marketing Project presentation left, I'll be done with the first half of the program in less than 20 hours. I can't wait to sleep in and spend money that I don't have!

My summer plan, so far, is to spend at least two weeks in Barcelona to learn Spanish at ESADE. While I'm there, I'll probably visit my friend Carla, a former HEC exchange student, at Majorca and spend a couple of crazy nights at Ibiza. After that I have to head back to Paris to look for an apartment and then return home to Montreal to see friends, restock on T-shirts, renew my passport... and beg my bank for more money.

Cramming again

2005-07-11T04:24:00.000+02:00

The ride back to Paris was brutal. I left London at 2pm Paris time and arrived on campus at 8pm due to delays from the Eurostar and the SNCF, France's train network.

I'm cramming yet again for my projects and exams. I just spent the whole evening working on my part for my Marketing project meeting in a few hours. Although our presentation isn't until Tuesday, we have to submit the PPT file to our prof by the end of today. Otherwise I would have used the time to start studying for my Corporate Finance exam in the afternoon. I guess I'll have the lunch break for that or maybe I should take a nap...

Whatever. Two more days to go and the core phase will be over!

Bad timing

2005-07-08T11:17:00.000+02:00

I sure picked the wrong time to visit London. When I took yesterday's Eurostar train at 1pm, I noticed an unusual number of policemen at Gare du Nord. My brother had told me earlier that the tube wasn't running, but I had no idea until I stepped onto the train that London was attacked by terrorists.

The train was delayed for only 30 minutes. It was business as usual and I didn't notice any additional security measures on the train. I did see a couple of Eurostar staff walk along the wagons but they didn't ask for my ID or anything else.

Since public transportation was paralyzed, many people were waiting for cabs. Fortunately for me, my brother lives near St. Paul's, only a 30-minute walk from Waterloo station.

The streets were pretty much deserted last night. I'll see today if London is back to normal.

Too hot to handle

2005-07-04T23:55:00.000+02:00

These past couple weeks were the toughest and it had nothing to do with the workload. It was a challenge I was unprepared for - coping with the heat in France.

I've gone through heatwaves before but always had air-conditioning or some other form of ventilation (paper fans don't count!). This wasn't the case on campus. We were over 50 students trapped in the sizzling classroom of Bat'Zet (short for Bâtiment des études, the Grande Ecole building). Since I didn't have a fan to bring to class, I had to be a bit creative.

During my three-hour Business Economics class, I kept myself somewhat cool clutching a cold, unopened can of Coke. When it became warm after forty minutes I tossed it out, stormed out of the classroom, and got another drink off the vending machine. In the end I went through four cans and must have looked ridiculous during my group presentation, as I talked about World Trade issues while holding a soft drink against my neck.

The situation at Expansiel, the MBA residence, wasn't much better. Although I lied on my bed for seven to eight hours each night, I don't think I got more than three hours of continuous sleep. I was sweating so much that even my sweat was sweating. But that was partly my fault as my windows shut were kept shut. It was between sleeping in a muggy room or fighting off flies all night.

Since I couldn't continue sleeping in these conditions, one of my classmates drove me to Velizy 2, a suburban mall near HEC, and I bought one of the few remaining fans at Darty. With my luck that same evening the weather went back to normal.

Sausage fest

2005-06-18T23:49:00.000+02:00

It's official - the HEC campus is now 80% male. The MBA exchange students (50% female) left a couple of months ago, the Grande Ecole exchange students (50% female) last week and now the Grande Ecole students (35% female) are gone. I suppose my grades will improve this term.

MBAT: the good, the bad and the ugly

2005-06-06T09:21:00.000+02:00

I've partly recovered from the MBAT. I'm not sure how we managed to organize the event, compete in sports and host 1,800 students but we pulled it off. I can't get into too much details as schoolwork is piling up rather quickly but here is how I would summarize the experience:

The good: Wonderful turnout... NYU first American school to participate... Amazing school spirit most notably from LBS, IESE and Bocconi... The LBS mascot... IESE cheering for HEC teams as we were all busy working... My compatriot Christina organizing track and field, playing soccer and rugby, running the cross country, the 100m and the 1,500 m and still offered to help out with my Ultimate Frisbee team... The organizing team sleeping an average of... actually I'm not sure if they even slept at all.

The bad: Scorching weather. I'm so tanned that my buddy Russell calls me Aboriginal Charles... My compatriot Peter getting a bloody nose and his tooth knocked out from Ultimate Frisbee... Playing Ultimate Frisbee with 1 sub... Running the 400m with 5-min notice (I finished 4th - in other words last)... Mixing drinks while sweating like a pig.

The ugly: Cleaning the Hall d'Honneur and the outdoor tent after my bartending shift. We were ten clearing the mess left by 1,000 people. I started at 1:00am and didn't get back to my room until 4:45am.

A lazy update

2005-05-26T19:20:00.000+02:00

Been very busy... my friends Amy and Ryan visited me last week... I went on a tour of the Vuitton factory in northern Paris last Friday... held a practice on Sunday for Ultimate Frisbee and joined the rugby team afterwards for drills... former CEO of Schneider Electric and Tuck MBA grad gave a speech on Tuesday... and I'm now gearing up for the MBAT.

My duties: host for the wonderful people at Bocconi, captain of the Ultimate frisbee team, mover, laborer, bartender, check-in person and cameraman. This is going to be an amazing weekend... now back to work!

Le first post

2005-05-10T08:10:00.000+02:00

Although Core 2 is in full swing, I might as well start blogging now about my experience at HEC. We have three huge events lined up in May.

On Thursday Valéry Giscard D'Estaing, the former French President, will address the HEC community on the upcoming EU Constitution referendum. Later in the evening David Guetta, the biggest DJ in France, will perform on campus. And at the end of the month, we are hosting the MBAT, a three-day sports tournament involving 14 business schools and 2,000 MBA students.

It's too bad I wasn't able to blog since day 1 at HEC back in January. I could give the usual excuse - I couldn't find the time to blog regularly - but that wouldn't be entirely true. No, the real reason was because I wanted to find a catchy name for my blog. After four months of intense brainstorming I came up with... an article plus the word "MBA". Can you tell that I won't be in the marketing track?