The first three exams are over. Thursday we started with Corporate Financial Policy with lots of questions about raising equity, share repurchases, convertible bonds and option pricing. I like theses topics and think I did pretty well in the exam.
That afternoon we had a 4 hour group exam in Organizational Behavior. Oh man, I was really not looking forward to that. In retrospect, it wasn't even that bad. Group work went fine (looks like we actually learnt something) and we delivered a pretty ok report. It's always a bit of a lottery when you get your grade back from courses like this, but I feel much better about it then in P1.
Yesterday: Marketing. I enjoyed the course and the cases, but the exam was a bit different. Not question like, but very much when it came to the topic. We had to write a marketing plan for Olay Daily Cleansing Cloth. You of course know that this products are dry textured, soap-free cloths that combine lathering cleansers and conditioners to remove dirt and makeup and at the same time exfoliate and smooth the skin's texture. Also, it was quite obvious that 28.4% uses toners or astringents in their total facial routine and that the overall fragrance and if lather rinses from the cloth easily are important features of these products. No idea what I'm talking about? You're not alone, so didn't 80% of the people that did the exam... After having done all kinds of cases about televisions, cars, camera's or cokes, this subject was kind of a surprise. You could hear the whole class thinking: "what the f*** is this case all about???". Anyway, it's sometimes a good thing that INSEAD uses the z-curve to grade. Talking about one hell of a lottery...

This is again a weekend full of studying. I was planning to start at about 10 this morning, but since I yesterday left the bar with more alcohol inside me and less cash on me than I had in mind at the beginning of the evening, I actually woke up at 1pm. That's a nice start. At about 2pm I staggered into INSEAD, had a liter of coffee and began studying my Strategy. I'm really wondering if I will make my exam the way it should (=the way it works in real life) or in the crappy, impractical, nonsense way the professor taught us. Do you hear the slightly cynical undertone there? Most courses at INSEAD really are excellent, but unfortunately you'll always have some exceptions. Since I actually happen to know what I'm talking about when it comes to strategy and I cannot control the urge to correct every error that I hear the professor making, I'll probably will get screwed over big time anyway. We'll see how this works out.
Good thing we also have some fun stuff going on. I just came back from a nice BBQ with about 100 other students. It was already some sort of goodbye party, as we will spread out over the world in the next 6 months; some go to Fonty for 1 or more periods, some do the exchange with Wharton (US) and some stay in Singapore. It's really strange when you think about it. One the one hand it feels like we just started, but on the other hand we already experienced so much that it feels like ages.

Anyway, since I didn't really do enough today, I'll have to get back to studying Process & Operations...