First Diary Entry

As mentioned in the blog on 18 December I will be having the honor of writing the IMD MBA Diary this year together with my new American colleague Kristin Sherwood. What this basically mean is that I will be writing an entry every tuesday and every other sunday. Kristin and a number of other guest writers will write the other days. I will be posting my entries on this blog, but if you want to get the full (daily) story then I recommend that you follow the Diary on the schools website or sign-up for the daily mail. 

In the coming months time will be the most scarce resource I have ever had and almost everything I will be doing will be related to the school. You should therefore expect that most of the entries on this blog will be identical with those of the Diary. 

Here is my first entry:

Dear Diary Reader,

Welcome to this very first entry on the 2009 MBA diary. Today, 7 January 2009, is the official first day for the class.

I have together with Kristin Sherwood [American] been given the honour of telling the story of this year's MBA class. I read the 2007 diary with Roland and Kudzi and the 2008 diary with Cat and Mathieu, so I know how high the bar has been set.

I am Danish, 32 years of age and have since 2000 been working with international container shipping. My thoughts of doing an MBA goes more than 5 years back, but it was only about a year ago that the time became ripe to do something about it. It was particularly the focus on personal development and entrepreneurship that brought me to IMD as I see that as the general direction of my future.

For most of us in the class this past December will be remembered as the month where we all were working frantically to pull our roots out of the ground (again, some will add) and move to Lausanne. On top of that came the Christmas and new years celebrations for many. When I think back on how much time it has taken me to get everything in place I can only extend my deepest respect to those people who have moved their entire families; some even from the other side of the planet. I have left my girlfriend at home in Copenhagen, so we will be forming one of the ‘Skype/EasyJet-couples’ in the class.

Although today is the first official day the campus has been buzzing since Monday. Actually the first people started connecting and meeting up more than 8 months ago. On top of that came a New Year party, a skiing trip and a number of meetings at the famous White Horse pub. More about that in a later entry.

Thorsten

Christmas in Madrid and New Year in Lausanne

It has been a busy couple of weeks. After celebrating christmas in Denmark on 24 December, we got up at 4.00 the next morning to catch a flight to Madrid, so we could celebrate the Spanish christmas with Susanas family on the afternoon of the 25th. Actually Christmas is not that big of a deal in Spanish. They make a lot more out of the 'Three Kings' celebrations on 6 January, which also is where they give each other presents.

It was the first time for me to meet Susanas family and friends for real. Despite some differences in languages I got an impression of the warm and welcoming Spanish mentality. It doesn't take long to feel at home there. Susanas sister, Mar, had gotten us all tickets for Cirque du Soleil. A fantastic show with absolutely amazing acrobats. I have never seen anything like it!

On 29 December I went to Lausanne, where I took over my new apartment. On 30 January my three Indonesian friends Anya, Binky and Adi came to visit for 4 days. In that very short period of time they managed to go as far away as Chamonix, Jungfraujoch and Zürich. They really utilized their Swiss railway-pass to the max!

They also joined for the New Years party that was held together with almost 60 of the new MBA students, partners, friends and children. The whole thing was arranged by Albert, one of my new German class mates. It felt a bit like being a MISE trainee again with all the new people from many nationalities meeting for the first time, but the atmosphere was great!

On 1 January Susana arrived from Spain. The next day we said goodbye to Anya, Binky and Adi over a great Swiss fondue. A love fondue, but it is a dangerous invention that definitely is going to cost me some kilos this year.On 3 and 4 January a skiing trip had been arranged by fellow student Ruslana in Champery, about 2 hours away by train. We had fantastic weather and great snow! We stayed in a small, hotel run by a British couple. We (20 people) filled the hotel, so we got an excellent service and really enjoyed ourselves.

5 and 6 January was information sessions, where we had to get a lot of practical things done before the school officially kicked off yesterday, the 7th of January! Busy days!