First Day of School...

Started classes today, and it looks like it should be a pretty good quarter. There are 20 students in our class: 40% French, 35% female, average age of 34, and an average of 11 years work experience. Needless to say, I'm the baby of the group. My guess is that if I wasn't an exchange student, I would be placed in the IMM (International Masters' of Management) program, as it typically has younger grad students, but since I've already had a year of MBA coursework, I'm in the International MBA program.

I took a trip to school on the tram yesterday just to make sure I knew my way, and it took about 15 minutes. Even so, I left at about 9:15 this morning to make it to school by 10:00. I didn't want to take any chance of being late on the first day. Sure enough, I made it to school by 9:30, and was the second student to arrive. I met Gihad who had arrived right before me, and she seems like such a sweetheart. She's from Sudan, and has been a pharmacist for 8 years. She's been living in Nantes for 6 months, and, like me, has gotten a bit bored with it. She was just as eager to meet new people as I was.

We then met several of the men in our program... and that's when the age difference between Audencia MBAs and Fisher MBAs became incredibly apparent. I'm very interested to learn about business from their perspectives, and I just hope that I'm able to make contributions that are valued by them.

We met two more girls in our program, Pan (from Thailand) and Mai (from Vietnam), and we had coffee and juice with the dean, associate dean, director of programs, and some of the faculty. The rest of the morning was typical orientation/introduction stuff, but considering I don't really know anything about this school other than it's an exchange partner with OSU, it was all good information to have.

I ate lunch with a lot of the guys, and we ended up talking quite a bit about American pop culture. We talked a lot about the media coverage that Michael Jackson's death got here in Europe-- I knew he was an international star, but I really didn't think the media attention would have been nearly as strong here-- apparently I was wrong. We also talked about Patrick Swayze's death, and while some of the guys didn't know who he was when I talked about Dirty Dancing, as soon as I said "Ghost" with Demi Moore, they seemed to remember him. Interesting which movies strike a chord with which audiences.

After lunch, we went to the cafeteria for some coffee and more chit-chat. I met Cherif, who is originally from Senegal, but who lived in the States for several years. In fact, when he learned that I was from Ohio, he told me that he did his undergraduate work at Xavier University in Cincinnati. Incidentally, I lived in Xavier's dorms this summer while I did my internship in Cinci. Small world. We talked to our classmate Carlo, who is from Peru, and who said that he might want to visit Ohio. Cherif and I really couldn't think of anything great that Ohio has to offer except the Buckeyes (during a good season), and the fact that it's close to Chicago. This is now a running joke with me and Cherif anytime someone mentions Ohio.

As the day wrapped up, I spoke with Cherif, Pan and Gihad, and we all decided to have dinner together tonight. I invited my weekday roommate Antoinne to dinner with us, and we met up with Pan, Pan's friend Ying, and Cherif at a pasta place (similar to Noodles in the US), and just talked about being some of the youngest in the program. Pan is 26 and Cherif is 28. They both said they felt a little odd today being so young, but since at least the three of us are on the same page, it doesn't seem to be as big of an issue as I had originally thought. Gihad and another classmate Abdel came out a bit later, and we headed to Place Royale to sit by the fountain. We spent some time just getting to know each other better and then called it a night around 10:30.

We have tomorrow off, and then two days of business simulations! If it's anything like Fisher Tycoon, I'm not super excited about it. However, after getting to know some of my classmates tonight, I think it could be a lot of fun to work on a team with them, so I'm sure the experience will end up being a positive one.