Getting inside a group of 45 people midway through a journey sounds like no easy task. I come from Italy, and I am part of the first batch of a newly launched MBA program providing a double diploma from LIUC (the Italian business school) and Iéseg, which is composed of two semesters, the first one in Italy and the second one in France. On January 4th I landed in Paris to begin my second semester, leaving my family and cats behind for the first time in my life, but the thing that scared me the most was the fear of becoming an outcast, since I was expecting those 45 people to already have created smaller groups where there was no room for me. Oh boy, was I wrong. On the very first day we were assigned a group project and this is where I got to meet four of my new classmates and this was the first event that broke my fears: everyone was super inclusive, they were really interested in myself and in my personality coming from a relatively loved country in the world, hence they put me at the center of the group, making me feel like a star. And within this group I was able to work in particular with one person which is now a precious friend that I will never give up on for my entire life.
I am a very outgoing person but I usually lack the guts to make the first step, so my classmates helped me in this. Today I have talked a lot and I have become friend with each and every person in my class: all of them have their interesting stories to talk about and our cultures are really different coming from all over the world, but this has not prevented us to become friends and I find this to be a wonderful thing.
MBAs are very different from bachelors, here the people care about their work and about their classmates and they tangibly show this on a daily basis. And I was able to truly feel this warmth when one of my classmates told me something about getting married so I congratulated her and she replied “oh didn’t you know? I’ve been talking about this for the entire year!” and when I told her that I was arrived less than one month before she said “oh right I forgot you just arrived, I don’t know why but it feels like I’ve known you forever!”. This showed me how close I had become with my classmates in a very short amount of time. I wish everyone who decides to take on a MBA in their life to experience the same emotions I felt on that moment, which will never be forgotten. Don’t be scared about people teaming up, just be part of those teams!
IÉSEG International MBA Student Blog 