Graduation

After weeks of "my last class," "my last paper," "my last presentation," etc...it's FINALLY over. Graduation was yesterday. The ceremony itself was nothing to be excited about, but I guess it was closure.

We had the dean of the MBA program, Jake, and the dean of INSEAD speak to welcome us. Then an Indonesian business woman spoke. She told her life story, which I suppose was interesting, but I'm not sure what the message was for a graduation. At first I heard, "it's not about the family you come from, you have to make it for yourself and learn to build your own assets, etc." And at the end I swear her last message was that family is the most important thing. Hmmm. 30 minutes was a big long, but I thought we behaved ourselves politely.

Our student speakers, Christophe and Wolfgang were pretty funny. They're just about as opposite as it gets, and they seemed to have covered all of the INSEAD experiences.

Usually in a graduation, when everyone's name gets called, and they all go up to get their diplomas I think it's boring and silly, but for us, there were so few of us, and I have some sort of relationship with nearly every one of us that I loved it. I felt proud of each person who went up, got their diploma and stood in between the deans for a picture.

The grad committee - headed by Richard (who is just awesome) - organized a lion dance to send us on our way out of the room. That was really neat. In the courtyard after we had Brazilian drummers, Indian dancers, and I think some other sort of dancer, but I can't remember right now. There was food from around the world - hummus, gado gado, burgers...and after we went to Oosh, which is where we had our "end of P2" and "end of P3" (and possibly "end of P4" but I wasn't here) parties. There were significantly fewer of us than usual. There was a special guest appearance of the Zero Coupon Band - or at least what is left of them, as most people are in Fontainebleau. A highlight for me was watching my marketing and pricing professor take a shot of vodka from the INSEAD J2009 ice sculpture luge. I won't post any incriminating pictures, though. :)

All in all, I'm still not ready to be done, but I'm ready to be done with being done - it's been a long ending.

INSEAD was an amazing experience. It was definitely the most intense time of my life - at least the first four months were - and I still can't believe it's done.

I suppose that when I don't see all of these super international, cool, smart, motivated people surrounding me everyday for the next few weeks it will hit me.