Term 1 exams got over yesterday and it feels like 6 months have passed by! Such is the pace of a one year MBA programme. Though most of our time was devoted to team meetings and finishing assignments, we always made room for fun.
As this is my first post here, let me introduce myself. I am Adithya and I am from India. I would like to thank RSM for this opportunity to blog about life this year.
The RSM International Culture and Social Club aims to provide a platform for the students at RSM to learn about different cultures in an entertaining manner. It is also known as the Party Club. After a very close election, I was elected to head the club this year. A month had already passed by and the Chinese New Year had just arrived. This provided the perfect platform to kick-off the club’s activities.
The club’s activities kicked off with the Chinese New Year party. Our Chinese and Taiwanese friends, representing 10% of the class, were excited about organizing the event. We wanted the experience to as closely as possible match the real thing. The Erasmus International House (I-House) Common Room served as the venue. Decorations included traditional Chinese paper lamps, wall hangings, and posters explaining each of the twelve animals that form the Chinese New Year cycle. In addition to the social lubricant (also known as Beer), there were dim sums, Chinese style chicken, eggs and other delicacies for everyone to relish. The Chinese are known to play games and gamble during the New Year’s eve. We laid out two tables for dice, with candies replacing money! The party was a huge success! Our Chinese and Taiwanese friends had set the benchmark!
The Chinese New Year was followed by the RSM International Food Festival. The event was organized together with the RSM Charity Foundation, with all the proceeds from the event going to the RSM Charity Foundation. This was the first time of the many times we would use Maria’s Cantina for our events. Over 20 countries were represented at the Food Festival with our classmates exhibiting their culinary and eating skills. Not only was the event a success, with over 140 students, staff and family members attending the event, there were requests to host this again in the summer, which I am really looking forward to doing so! The night concluded with a dance session, with the attendees jiving to songs of countless languages! Of course, there was beer as well, which brings us to the next and the final event of the term – The Karaoke night!
The Beer Appreciation is a club that aims to, well, appreciate beer! The Karaoke night served as a perfect opportunity for both clubs to collaborate and ensure that our fellow MBA12s had fun before heading into exams week. Maria’s Cantina served as the venue again. The evening began with the MBA staff members testing out their vocal skills, before students (and beer) took over. The enthusiasm was summed up by the below performance, where the entire class got Rick Rolled!
April will soon be here and The International Culture and Social Club is looking forward to Queen’s Day, followed by the trip to Keukenhof tulip gardens! And before I sign off for now, Happy Nowruz to my Iranian friends!
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It sounds like you guys are having great and informative fun out there. It is really admirable that your class is such a mixture of students from a diverse corners of the world, which means that you get to share first-hand experiences from those cultures and foster life-long personal relationships.
I am Phila Madondo, and I live in Pretoria (South Africa). I recently got inspired to re-ignite my dream to do an MBA at the QS MBA World Tour event which was held in Johannesburg at the end of March. I am hoping that I will manage to fulfill my dream of commencing with my studies in January 2013; next year is too soon for me since I have been working for more that 15yrs now, and hence I have to clean up my commitments (work, family, etc.) to be able to do a full-time course.
My first degree is in Electronic Engineering (1994), and I am currently registered for a Masters in Engineering Managent at the University of Pretoria. This is a great course, also in the mould of an MBA curriculum, but with a much stronger focus on the Engineering enterprise. The course is offered over a two-year period in a block release format: 2weeks of attendence at the begining of each semester and then self study and preparation of the exam at the end of the semester. My only challenge is that I dont feel that I will have done justice to this course since I have had to juggle work and family commitments while doing the course, and found myself having to settle for minimum requirements in the assignments and other academic work that I had to submit.
Anyways, keep posting about your MBA journey, and it will keep inspiring people like me.
Warm regards