I’ve made it to 1971 in my American popular music journey. This year marks the first major appearances of Rod Stewart, Carole King, the Bee Gees, Al Green, Bill Withers, solo Beatles artists, and many others. It also marks Tom Jones’s surprising (to me), continued popularity. As I find lyrics distracting, I’ve been listening toContinue reading “Leading People in Organizations”
Author Archives: Bryan Guido Hassin
Willpower
I arrived later to Steffen’s party last night and stayed longer than anticipated. It was a lot of fun and it seemed like everyone was there. When I’m around many people I really feed off the collective energy and I could feel that starting to happen as we took eastern European shots, drank exotic beers,Continue reading “Willpower”
Does life get better than this?
Last night was awesome: no studying, no partying; just great wine and even better conversation with a colleague followed by an early bedtime. Then I woke up early this morning and went for a run along the lake. It was cold by my standards, about 20 degrees F, so I really appreciated the Underarmour ColdGearContinue reading “Does life get better than this?”
Presentation Skills
Today and tomorrow are dedicated to studying presentation theory, making presentations, analyzing video recordings of our presentations, receiving (and providing) feedback, repeat. Our leader for these sessions is Steve Knight, who has been awesome so far. He has offered plenty of relevant advice to everyone, especially the non-native English speakers. My mobile phone all butContinue reading “Presentation Skills”
International Wisdom
On Monday we had a cultural values exchange–in ICA/E of all places! We were divided into groups by nationality (44 different groups!) and given a list of 12 virtues. Each group was then instructed to provide at least one proverb from its country about each virtue. Although there were many great ones, my two favoritesContinue reading “International Wisdom”
Ping Pong
Ping Pong has become a regular part of life here at IMD. After lunch it is a great way to get the blood pumping before afternoon classes. Most of the people who play are a lot better than I am, having played much longer and more consistently. This afternoon, though, I was briefly on fire.Continue reading “Ping Pong”
Saturday Night Fever
Last night was a blast. At least a third of our class made it out to l’Atelier Volant, a night club in Lausanne’s Flon district. Several girls in our class have been going there practically every weekend so I figured it must be good. Surely they would have hookups with bartenders, doormen, etc. Objectively speaking,Continue reading “Saturday Night Fever”
Brazilian High
Yesterday was awesome. It was full of surprises from our faculty, each one better than the last. Because some prospective students read this blog and because the surprises were critical to today’s success, I’ll refrain from any real explanation. The cool part was that it was our first day of cross-functional project work: addressing aContinue reading “Brazilian High”
Learning Russian
It’s approaching midnight as we’re working on accounting problem sets; seven guys holed up in a room all night after spending most of our day in here as well. Just spoken in Russian by our Czech to our Belarussian: “Odkryt okna byla tvoja lucnaja idea sevodna.” Excusing the probable misspellings, this translates to “Opening theContinue reading “Learning Russian”
Accounting
If I had to choose one word to describe Accounting professor Stewart Hamilton, it would be “curmudgeonly.” He’s a crotchety old Scot who is very emphatic that we should not question the “why” of accounting practices; we should just accept them. He has already yelled at me in class because I applauded him. I can’tContinue reading “Accounting”