Day 88: Peculiar conditions?

Walking the corridors here at INSEAD, you get the sense that there are 2 peculiar conditions currently afflicting my current class. The first is a physical one and the second is a philosophical one that might indirectly contribute to the first one.

The first condition I am talking about here is the newly dubbed "INSEAD cough". Seems like after a couple of months in, people start developing a cough that does not go away that easily. I know a classmate of mine who has been afflicted by it for the past 3 weeks and still gets coughing fits from time to time. He has already seen a doctor but it still refuses to go away even after a course of antibiotics. Probably doesn't help that all of us are often in close contact with each other due to classes, other activities or the fact that ~90% of the students here live within the INSEAD "bubble" that consists of the triangle between Heritage, Dover and INSEAD. Quite an ideal environment for a cough to spread really.

The second condition is one that some of my classmates have talked about before and it is called "FOMO" (Fear Of Missing Out). This is essentially a condition where you sign up for everything that sounds interesting only to find out that you're triple booked just about every evening this week. There really are sooo many things happening on and off campus on any given night of the week.

Take today for example. I could have:

• learnt how to make temaki sushi at someone's apartment
• gone to a classmate's birthday drinks
• participated in the Healthcare Club's networking drinks with alumni
• attended a meeting of the Entrepreneurship Club
• have Thanksgiving dinner with my college alumni (I chose this option because I had committed to it earliest)

There were probably other events that were happening that I was not even aware of! The temptation is to try to go for all of them even though it's physically impossible to be in multiple places at the same time. If you try to run around from event to event to event, you just end up running yourself into the ground and hence perhaps the INSEAD cough. As it is, people are looking pretty tired and burnt out at the moment, possibly also because the workload seems to be ramping up too.

The programme really is a massive exercise in prioritisation if you ask me. There are so many "required" readings to do that you have to figure out which are key and which you can afford to skip if you want to maintain your sanity and any form of social life. The same with your social life too though. There are so many groups doing different things that you just have to figure out what you are really interested in and stick to it. All this comes back to the theory of the MBA triangle matrix mentioned previously.

It is inevitable that you will have to sacrifice something along the way or prioritise one thing over others. The sooner you come to terms with that, the more at peace you'll be.