Friday, 7 December 2007
If you are going to study at ESSEC, France
There are Mannheimers all over the globe. Even near Paris, at the ESSEC school. Pete is one of them and he sent these tips for those going there in the future. Not my case, but enjoy.
From: Peter Findlay
Date: Dec 7, 2007 6:11 PM
Subject: For ESSEC Students - Winter Term 2008 - Ignore Otherwise
Hello all If you are going to ESSEC for the January semester - here are a few points of advice.
Maina gave us some great advice about Warwick - let us know if anyone else has anything to add to that.
Cell Phones - the other guys were paying for prepaid cards - but they are quite expensive about 0.39 EUR per minute, with not too many deals. If you want to go through the hassle of getting a bank card like I did - (you have to make an appointment, bring a passport, attestation of residence and school enrolment) - then you can sign up for a long contract. The great thing about this is, you can legally break your contract after three months as long as you leave france. Delphine, the academic advisor gives you a attestation of leaving france and you're off the hook. A much cheaper way of doing things - but definitely requires some more hassles.
Residence - the residences are pretty average when compared to the Mannheim and from what I've heard Warwick residences. Nothing is included at the beginning, not even toilet paper. No bedding, no dishes, no light, nothing.
They charge you 90 EUR for a really crappy package - that we suggest you don't take. We all went to Ikea and spent anywhere from 50 -100 EUR and got more and better stuff - most of which we can resell for half price or maybe even give to you if we can figure out where to store it over the holidays. - We should arrange a swap system somehow. If you cant get to ikea - there is also Au Chan, which is about 5 min from ESSEC in the big shopping centre. It is a giant food store and has Wall Mart like items as well - cheap clothes / electronics / dishes, etc. Heating and windows are poor, so good to have an extra blanket. Internet has been a problem - bring your own internet cable.
Also we haven't been able to use torrent or other download tools which is annoying. Skype is sketchy sometimes.
School - not too bad, some of the rooms really need renovating - and often not well heated. Get used to sometimes wearing your jacket in class. The university is well-renowned (MBA just ranked 7th in the world for international business schools in the Wall Street Journal ahead of Harvard and Insead!!), however in reality - the program is not really an MBA. The students, although very smart, are very young and often without any real work experience. They are hired to work at the best banks and consultancy firms in France and throughout Europe, but they don't go in at the MBA level, but at an undergrad position essentially. However, you are going to ESSEC in the best term, as no other of our partner schools offer as many options for courses to take and you can really find courses you like from some generally pretty good professors. You will feel a little old here - the average age is probably around 22 in the MBA classes and many students on campus are like 19 or 20.
Paris - about 40-50 minutes on the RER subway train - a must do almost every weekend,and even during the week. Cergy really does suck and paris is amazing on so many levels. So make use of your time here to enjoy the city.
Food - Food at school consists of French sandwhiches at the cafeteria or the pub for about 2.5 EUR which are essentially a big baguette a few small toppings inside, or there is a student restaurant close which is shared with some local colleges - you have to by a booklet of 10 tickets for 2.8 EUR per ticket - and when you go downstairs - you get a big meal for your 2.8 EUR.
The meal is not always amazing, but lots of choice generally, and good to get veggies, stuff like that. Otherwise - there is a food court in the shopping mall which will be 5-10 EUR (be carefull the asian places are really expensive). To go out to a restaurant - Paris is obviously the best - but if you have to stay in Cergy - there is 4-5 nice little chain restaurants down by the harbour about a 10-15 walk from school - about 12-20 EUR. Residence - Le Haut - not to sure, but seems like there is nothing really around other than a bakery. Linandes - A McDonalds / KFC / Overprice American Steak restaurant and a bakery within 2-3 min walk.
Parties - go to Paris on your own or if you want to do one of the many ESSEC parties - we suggest the "MASTERIZE ME" parties organized by the masters students who are normally > 22 so there a little more your age. Many of the ESSEC parties are like 19 years old. The Foy's pub is pretty cool usually on campus - lots of French people there of course - but beer is only 1 EUR (25cl) or 2 EUR (50cl). Normally in france beer is 4 EUR (25 CL) and 6-7 EUR for (50 cl), so this is the best deal around.
Bakeries - these are everywhere, not as healthy as German bakeries, but more tasy. Almond Croissants are my favourite. Basically its like a croissant getting nuclear bombed by almonds and chocolate such that it doesn’t even look like a croissant anymore.
Hope this helps.
Pete
Thursday, 6 December 2007
New MBA member
I just found out that Diego has a blog, in Spanish. He doesn't post often, but, when he does, he usually has great pictures. And a great sense of humour.
But if you visit his blog (http://eninglaterra.blogspot.com/)today, you will see that he has a great reason to be really, really happy: the arrival of his third kid, Juan Pablo.
Congratulations, diego! Toda sorte do mundo para você e sua família! Or, in Portuñol: Toda la suerte del mundo, par ti y tu familia!
From now on, his blog is linked on the right.
Submitting assignments at WBS
Tip of the week for the Mannheimers coming next term.
Assignments are submitted online through www.my.wbs.com. Usually the intranet is quite stable, although we had a problem during the submission deadline on Monday. But things were sorted out nicely.
Take a look at the e-mail below and do your files in shades of greys.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Miriam Mason
Date: Dec 6, 2007 11:52 AM
Subject: EBE assignment
To: FMBA students 2007 intake
Dear All
I understand there's been some discussion regarding submission of the assignment in colour. This is just a reminder for clarification purposes that you're required to submit online, and according to University policy all work is printed in black & white. It would therefore be more beneficial to produce your graphs/charts accordingly, i.e. using shading etc, rather than in colours which may not be clear when printed.
I hope this helps - and good luck with the assignment!
Kind regards
Miriam Mason
Programme Manager, Full-time MBA
The Warwick MBA
Warwick Business School
Tuesday, 4 December 2007
Two photos to wrap it up today
The picture above shows how focused everyone gets when it is revision week and the subject is accounting. And attendance was also high, as you all can see. This is also a nice shot of the class where we have our lessons, with around 80 people. The number of students increased from around 50 last year. It won't get any bigger, that's for sure. Maximum asset utilization (which is one of the ratios we have to know for the exam next Monday).
And then we have my favorite tree on campus. I guess it's an oak. I don't need to write much about it. It's imponent.
Sunday, 2 December 2007
What awaits me in Kingston, Ontario, Canada
| Monthly Averages | |||
| January | February | March | |
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Saturday, 1 December 2007
An ode to Nicholas Bate
Undoubtedly Nicholas Bate was the teacher who had the most impact on our class this term. Mind you, he is not a WBS teacher. He is a consultant and trainer who has given us about half a dozen sessions on varied subjects, all dealing with personal development. You know that kind of self help and life philosophy Americans seem to like so much? Yeah, exactly that.
I personally don't care for self help books. How could I? They are extremely boring. They do present some neat and interesting ideas, but they rely on repetition and exhausting explanations to present you what is, usually, pretty much obvious stuff, good sense. OK, their merit is to put obvious stuff black on white and present it to you. On hindsight, everything is easy, remember Columbus' egg. But they are boring and patronizing anyway, most of times. So I shouldn't like Nick's sessions, right?
Well, what he does is to get all the clutter out of the way and present what really matters. And he does so in a consistent and excellent way, with all the meaning of the word. But more on that later. So, personally, I found his sessions good, will use some of what he has proposed, but not all of it. But that's the hang of it: you have to endorse what he is doing.
It seems that his way of teaching is, at least, very striking: many of my colleagues have written about him in their blogs, and his phrases or citations are common vocabulary in the cohort: "Love the dip, love the plateau.", "No failure, only feedback.", "Be here now.", "Be your own hero.", "MEDS", "Be distinct or extinct." and so on. One of Deepak's first blog articles was about Nick. Praveen has written about him. Chris also. And Marwa is a big fan. No other teacher we had made people think as much about themselves.
We did have great teachers. And Ben Knight is, from WBS, surely the one I liked best. He has an extreme enthusiasm for his subject, economics (the mother discipline) and he obviously has fun making everybody participate in his class. And he knows the students in the group. By name, nationality, experience. He put effort into getting our particular experiences out to illustrate his points to the class. Five stars for him.
Then we had the energetic Stuart Chambers, Operations Management. For me, one of the most entertaining classes. As his colleague Nigel Slack, which we had for only one session, also created an impression with his knowledge and humor.
Nigel Piercy, Market Analysis, was, IMHO, a very good teacher. But one with a mixed feedback. I liked his classes a lot, many people could not deal with his cynic and sarcastic style. Sometimes you were not sure if what he meant was what he wrote or the exact opposite. But that was fine for me. Our marketing course was very much a first grade strategy course and it treated marketing from an updated point of view. No 4Ps or established (and usually still valid) theories, but more about customer value, customer relationship, strategic advantage, effective communication. I believe we could not have had a better marketing course. And, for me, his slides and his presentation style, though monologic and maybe boring at times, worked well.
In organizational behavior we had so many teachers, that only the first and main one remains in my memory. Nick was a very pleasant guy and his classes are interesting. But sorry, didn't work for me. I couldn't find a structure in his exposition and this made it very confusing for me. I am not expecting to get a good mark in OB.
Accounting was well taught. But it was a technical subject, nothing special to report.
And we had other speakers and teachers coming in and out during the term for one day sessions. Graham from Sykes Fairbairn stood out and his colleagues were pretty cool. Not to mention Mark and Dana from Penhela, who fortunately I will be meeting again and listening to their extremely fast paced speech in Mannheim in April. These are some really expert recruiting consultants!
But Nicholas Bate was surely the most impacting character during these 3 months. And, for me, it has more to do with the way he presents things, than with what he actually presents. He clearly has control of the crows all the time. When he is in class, he means business, and you know it. He does joke from time to time, but he is dead serious. He is extremely well prepared. He know his handouts by heart. He doesn't use powerpoint slides. He speaks clearly and loudly. He repeats and emphasizes. The course of his lectures is dynamic and diverse. He has catchy phrases. No bullshit keywords. And, obviously, he likes what he is doing.
So, that's it for today. I gave you all an overview of the types of teachers we had and singled Nicholas Bate out. I hope this gives you a good idea of who we faced during the term and I'll end up with the weblink to Nichola's blog. Its feed is on my reading list.
http://nicholasbate.typepad.com/
Cheers,
Fernando, heading to the Practice of Management report which should have been done long ago.
P.S.: The geese are back. They disappeared for a week, when it was really cold, but it is warmer now and they are there again, although not as loudly as usual. But this is an old pic.
And Google Maps Mobiles gets even better!
I really miss my Hagenuk S200 Palm OS Smartphone. It died on me, or, more probable, the battery did. But it could run Java applications, the best being Google Maps for mobile phones.
The only thing missing was a feature telling you where you are. My phone didn't have a GPS module, but Google Maps helped me a lot in several occasions in Germany, where I had GPRS internet access very cheaply (www.symio.de, I can recommend this pay as you go SIM cards).
Well, now I won't need a GPS module anymore, it seems. Google is using the cell tower location to approximately tell you where you are. It is by far not as precise as GPS, but I imagine that it is a really big improvement over the older version of Maps.
But it is revision week, an assignment is to be delivered on Monday and others have already written about this. So check the fun genial video below and the following article.
http://lifehacker.com/
Just one more quick note: it seems that the best precision of Google Maps Mobile My Location feature is about 600 m or half a block.
