SWITZERLAND ON A WHIM.  Palo Alto, California. March 19, 2004. 7:45 a.m. The phone rings. Woken from a sound sleep, I am suddenly very conscious as I spill out of bed to grab the phone. "Hello, Amy? This is Katty Ooms Suter from IMD. I hope I didn't wake you?" "No, of course not," I say, hoping my voice doesn't give up the truth. As my cell phone crackles with static (I really should have chosen Verizon), Katty tells me the news I have been eagerly awaiting – I am being offered a place in the IMD (International Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland) class of 2005. Now, I am awake.

Looking back, it all started on a whim. Which, come to think of it, is how my best career decisions have been born. As a senior in high school, I was set to major in French. Where I'd have gone with that, I'm not sure, as I didn't want to teach or translate. But my Dad, despite having come of age in the 60's, was not in tune with the "don't worry, be happy" kind of hippie mantra (he's an accountant by training). So French was scrapped, and I was urged to focus on something a bit more, shall we say, lucrative. That is how I signed up to be an electrical engineering student.

It has been a good run. I excelled in college, went on for my master's in engineering at a prestigious university, Carnegie Mellon (go Tartans!), and have developed cutting-edge technology for consumer products (including LaserJet printers and flat panel displays). It was pretty cool to walk into the local electronics store and see my products for sale.

By autumn of 2003, after working as an electrical engineer in the Silicon Valley for five years, I was dabbling in marketing the products I helped design. This taste of marketing appealed to me, and I wanted to learn more. Plus, I had kept up my French and tacked on a bit of Japanese, as well, and I still hoped to take advantage of these skills for more than just swearing at bad drivers. It occurred to me that marketing for an international firm or doing marketing overseas would afford me the opportunity to use all my various talents. All that remained was to gain the experience I needed.I figured I could move into a full-time marketing position, which would be an excellent place to develop solid business skills. But it only addressed one of my goals. The others, gaining international experience and exploiting my language skills, would not be met. I briefly thought of attending business school in the U.S. But, I knew I would learn so much more about business practices outside America if I studied abroad. Besides, the French pastries beckoned.

Though bits of these ideas had floated through my head at various times, they all came crashing together last fall. At the end of September business school was a "someday, maybe" kind of a thought. A week into October – here's where the whim comes in – I had committed to taking the GMAT (oh, yeah, and studying for it too) and applying to two schools by the end of November, just eight weeks away. I soon added a third application, due by the end of January.

But by the time I finished writing the 22 essays required by the three schools (no typo there – I really composed 22 in three months), the whim had turned into a "duh, of course!" Writing about my achievements, failures, strengths, weaknesses, and leadership roles really helped me cement my ideas about my career goals and how to reach them. Attending an international business school to develop my leadership and cross-cultural skills just made perfect sense.

So which lucky schools were honored with 22 of my best compositions? INSEAD (an international MBA school in Fontainebleau, France) and HEC (Hautes Études Commerciales, a top French university of business) were on my list because of their stellar programs and their locations in France. I almost dropped the third school, IMD in Switzerland, after reading this blurb in the BusinessWeek Guide to the Best Business Schools: "Ask residents of Lausanne, Switzerland what they know about the MBA program in their town, and a first response could be that the students are 'monks.'...the students don't see much of the...town during their 42-week...program."

But I kept learning about IMD. The program is, to put it mildly, intense. It is a 10-month, accelerated MBA. The first five months (January to May) consist of what IMD calls "Building Blocks." This translates to six days a week of concentrated class work interspersed with group work, in subjects ranging from finance to organizational behavior to political economy. At IMD, "intense" means classes from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (except Saturdays, when we'll quit at noon), much like a workday. Except, unlike a typical workday, the students go home for dinner, only to reconvene an hour or so later to study together until late at night (or often until early the next morning). According to a survey of the class of 2003, the average amount of sleep per night for the class for the first three months was 4.8 hours. (A figure only slightly higher than the average number of languages they speak, a paltry four. Intimidated? Who, me?)

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