Going to school at EDHEC

I think it time for me to write a blog post. Mostly since I’m procrastinating my criminal risk paper. 😇

I feel the need to walk you through a typical week for me since in general my program is so different from an undergraduate program or even a typical master’s program.  And, despite what my Instagram looks like, I am not on vacation. 

A little background on my program.  I am in Nice, France in an English-speaking Global MBA at EDHEC that is scheduled for 10 months with potential to be extended IF my final project is an internship and IF that internship is longer than 2 months.  EDHEC’s global MBA really focuses on accepting a diverse student population. My current class has about 85 students from roughly 30 different nationalities. I am also part of the consulting club and the women in leadership club.

What a lovely building... that I view from the inside all day

My schedule is supposed to be class from 9 am – 4:30 pm with an hour and 15 min lunch break.  In reality, while class always starts at 9, my day rarely ends at 4:30.  Once a week I have French class from 5-7pm with homework and exams. 1-3 times a week I have sessions happening during lunch. 2-5 times a week I have “extracurricular” academic meetings or speakers after class. About once a month those extracurriculars bleed into the weekend.  Every other week they creep into meetings before class even starts. None of that includes group meetings for team assignments as those are scheduled on an as needed basis. The time after the extracurriculars I spend studying or working on assignments.  If I am really optimistic with my progress or too stressed, I might pop down to the gym for 30 minutes to an hour. Except when I have morning meetings, I usually get to school around 8:45-9am and get home around 8-10:15pm. School closes at 10pm and it takes me about 15min to get home. I have yet to arrive home done with all the work I needed to do in a day.  😓

On a normal week, I will have multiple classes that rotate through morning and afternoon sessions. Classes are usually 40 hours of lecture time over one to two weeks. This week for example I will have Philosophy (which is continued from earlier) and I will be starting Marketing and Managing the Internationalization of the Firm both of which will be continued next week. Instead of normal semesters the school revolves more around intakes, one group started in January and the other in September.  Some classes are mixed with the January intake in which case we are divided into 2 groups where one group has morning sessions of a particular class and the other group has the afternoon session and visa versa.  Other times it will just be my group, the Septembers.  We just had our first week break, will have a slightly longer break over Christmas and new years, and one last week vacation in February.

Aside from those breaks, my normal view looks like this. Thank God for wine!

My success is in part made possible by my ability to function on less sleep, coffee, Dale being a good house husband, and Koki’s seemingly indifference to my clear and abrupt abandonment. There is a clear consensus among my classmates that I am extremely lucky to be here with such a supportive spouse and am healthier and less sleep deprived to prove it.  Although my pizza consumption has increased exponentially.  Which if anyone who knew me before undergrad might know that pizza was one of the biggest contributors to my freshman 20. 

Ok I really need to do my paper now….right after a snack.  Which is not pizza. 😕