Home away from home, From Africa to China – Life at CEIBS : By Samwel Odundo, MBA2017 |
6 months have passed since my graduate school life began, but here I was celebrating Chinese New Year. Shanghai, the city buzzing with activities, was at a standstill at around 11p.m on the eve of the New Year. My 2 colleagues (from Brazil and Nepal) and I were from a group dinner hosted by one of our Chinese class-mates at his residence. This was a normal show of togetherness in China as our friend hosted us, amongst other international colleagues to share in ushering in the New Year.
And reflecting back on the journey that has been from Africa to China, Shanghai and in particular CEIBS has been my second home. Nonetheless, this journey began a year before in 2014, when I had the privilege to attend CEIBS Pre-MBA boot camp. For me, the visit then was purely for tour purpose. However, at the end of mixing it up with ambitious fellow peers and top-level faculty, I decided to rethink the opportunity at hand. It was on my flight back to Nairobi after the boot camp that I made a resolve to return to CEIBS, and now this is my home for the MBA journey, and who knows what next...
And just as a home is not in the living quarters alone, I got to quickly establish friendship with my new classmates from all over the globe. This was like a record-play at the inception meeting: Hello, where are you from, industry background and the whole “pleasure to meet you” catch-phrase. From the initial exchanges, I was at least able to remember a number of my class-mates names courtesy of Wechat, China’s social networking application. Little did I know how Wechat would deeply form part of my lifestyle till date. I was so used to https://gmatclub.com/chat back home in Africa, but China introduced me to a new level of social networking bringing people closer together.
From when my MBA program rolled out till date, I have been able to build on my friendships to make CEIBS a true home. For the most part of it, cross-cultural understanding with the aid of learning Mandarin has facilitated this. As a football fanatic, the newly built football pitch at the school mirrors my weekend life in Kenya. The chance to blow off the academic steam off at the pitch with colleagues, even at -20C during winter, is fantastic. And definitely, Shanghai night life is always buzzing with activities throughout the week. Of course, bar for the Chinese New Year. As from March, we proceed to the 2nd phase of applying what we’ve learnt in the program to solve organization-specific problems. This is through the Integrated China Strategy Project. After all, my new home has let me embrace “China Depth, Global Breadth”.