Managing the MBA Busy-ness

"While I would love to join almost all the clubs that HEC offers and have managed to join a few, I have decided to focus my energies on the Net Impact Club"

By Christine Marie Shepherd

I returned from my trip to Portugal—a much needed three-day vacation from school—on Nov. 11 in such good spirits that the Paris train strike that doubled my travel time home seemed comical. With a refreshed motivation and eye-sparkling memories of my travel adventures with some of my new friends, I returned to HEC Paris (HEC Paris Full-Time MBA Profile) and commenced my five-week countdown.

Before the semester's end at noon on Dec. 18, I faced seven exams, two presentations, and one project. On Dec. 17, with one exam to go and a HEC Paris campus blanketed in a breathtakingly beautiful layer of snow, I fought hard to stay focused. While the majority of my classmates and I reverted to age 10, ignored the fact that another final stood between us and our holidays, and launched into a full-blown snowball war, by 11:30 a.m. on Dec. 18 we did it. We all handed in our completed human resources finals, effectively bringing our first semester, one in which we constantly battled to balance our hectic school schedule with moments of personal relaxation, to a close.

Of course, we could not leave campus without a little celebration. Before boarding my 5 p.m. train for Amsterdam—I would spend my holidays in the Netherlands—I, against my better judgment, after a few sips of champagne and to the cheers of more rational, fully clothed spectators (including classmates and the MBA program's executive director), walked barefoot in the snow and jumped in HEC's freezing cold lake with several of my classmates in a celebratory "Polar Bear Dip."

Now after two weeks of vacation, holiday celebrating, marvelous home-cooked meals, and much needed hours of sleep, my slower pace has opened my mind to thoughts and reflections of my first four months of business school. I've pressed the pause button, enabling me to make my first observation about the HEC Paris MBA program—time flies. I know time always flies but at HEC Paris we keep ourselves so busy that sometimes at a day's end I feel like my morning's activities happened weeks prior.

Conference Organizing

In the end, I think I knowingly create much of the busy-ness I experience. The HEC Paris program encourages us to explore our talents, our interests, and build our skill sets by joining clubs of which we have our pick. HEC boasts several professional clubs like consulting, industry, finance, and entrepreneurship among others, as well as several regionally related clubs like the Asia Pacific Club and the Latin Club and the French Club.

While I would love to join almost all the clubs that HEC offers and have managed to join a few, I have decided to focus my energies on the Net Impact Club. Specifically I have signed on to help with the Seventh Annual HEC Social & Sustainable Business Conference that Net Impact helps coordinate. With this year's conference slated for May 28-29, my co-organizers Rahul and Brendan and I have much work to do in conjunction with our dean, professors, many dedicated and talented classmates, alumni, etc., to develop the conference theme, secure a rock-solid speaker lineup, spread the word, and manage to pull off an event that involves high-level speakers from all over the world and attracts an average 350 attendees. I chose to bury my head in this endeavor because I felt it would allow me to leverage some of my previous experience in conference planning and flex some of the knowledge I learned in class while exploring the potential businesses and business practices can have on society and social problems.

Planning the conference has also enabled me to have contact with a few students from the class above me. In fact, my club involvement has facilitated the majority of my contact with students in earlier intakes. As the HEC Paris campus sits just outside Paris's city limits, many students move off campus into Paris after two semesters.

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