This is not supposed to be a guide for new students, because I think everyone is going to live this experience with different aims and personalities; this is just a quick summary of how three months at this school has already changed me.
Excitement, fears, thrills. I could feel a hundred contrasting emotions on that 6th of October, when this challenge started. New faces in front of me, curious but standing at attention and the first question that came up in my mind was: are they going to be my best friends or my worst competitors?
Classes
It feels like being thrown into the middle of an automatic mechanism, which is not letting you take your time to adapt to the new situation.
It pushes your abilities to the limits of their concentration, involvement and stress, making you understand really quickly how important “time management” is going to be for you for the rest of the year.
Methodology: Case study
Cases, cases, cases; this is how it works. You think you understand everything about those 15 pages, but then you go to class and, led by the professor, you start to discover a whole new world. Sometimes you even think, how could you have been so stupid as to have not reached the conclusion point on your own.
But I guess this is the magic. The beauty, in all of this, is realizing how 27 brains, opinions, points of view together are way better than one, way better than yours alone.
What’s happening? You start to learn when to trust other’s ideas, you start believing in your stable group, you start to need them. But at the same time you feel you’re shaping yourself more and more. You realize how confident you are, how quickly you are learning and also how important your contribution can be for the rest of the class.
And trust me, that is a huge satisfaction.
Exams
You can’t even believe that two months of classes have already gone; that now it’s time to show what you have learnt and ‘rock that paper up’.
Anxiety, fear, nervousness, concern; obvious emotions that everybody feels before an exam, but that is not all. You really feel the desire to succeed, to do well and to be proud of your work. You want to prove to your classmates and to your professors what you can do, because this course is not just an individual’s course, you are growing with others and every-day you are safely competing with them.
THEM
Now you know who they are.
They are your support, your enemies and your family.
You will spend more time with them in 9 months than you’ve spent with your mum in the last 5 years of your life. You start to have feelings for these people that know your strengths and your weaknesses, because with them you can’t fake anything, you’re constantly exposed.
This is what really makes me happy.
I have the feeling these people are making my year better than I ever expected. Diversity, unknown cultures and unusual habits are teaching me more than a thousand subjects together.
This is the reason why I’m glad I’ve chosen this school.
This is EADA.
Written by Michela Secci, International Master in Marketing 2015