My Socially Responsible Weekend

Friday was the start of the 5th Annual IESE Doing Good Doing Well conference, a weekend to promote socially responsible business. I skipped lunch to go to the keynote speaker, who spoke on the evolution of capitalism to include social responsibility in business.

Then there were the Strategy presentations, then I skipped the rest of the conference to take a nap.

Woke up at 20:00h, showered, ran to Antonio's birthday dinner, arrived an hour late. When I got to the tapas bar, La Taberna Del Cobre, Antonio was the only guy surrounded by a table of beautiful Section B women. It was hilarious, and somewhat comforting. I was the only Section A girl.

As they were telling the stories of Section B, this strange feeling passed through me. This cohesiveness, this family, this laid-back attitude was what I always imagined my MBA to be like. That was how Tulane was like. Instead I think that Section A is sometimes run like boot camp: no one arrives late, no one speaks out of turn, no phones go off, everyone prepares the cases, everyone is serious. In Section B, when someone makes an out of place comment, the whole class would defend him. In this way all the shy people are encouraged to speak. I always wanted that. That is how I came out of my nerdy shell in college. (Yes, I was a nerd once).

After a while some second years and more of the Section A crowd joined the dinner. We chatted and reminisced, then headed out to Handbar. I went with some Americans to the Latin party hosted by IESE, ESADE & EADA, 3 prominent business schools in Barcelona. It was funny, we arrived at 0030h, and we were the only 5 people in the club... 5 Americans extremely early to a Latin party. It was so embarrassing. Plus, they were playing Michael Jackson.

Fortunately, the crowd livened up and I was able to dance some salsa, merengue & vallenato songs. It was interesting meeting the ESADE and EADA people because it was like looking into another portal: I had applied and was accepted to both schools, and might have gone if things were different...

I had a socially responsible night & headed home early at 330h.

At 800h, I was up again and off to the DGDW Career Forum. So there were these tables, in the comedor. Mike Rosenburg announced: "These tables back here are looking for summer interns. These tables over here are looking for full time hires. These tables up front don't promise anything. After 15 minutes I ring a bell, and you switch. It's like speed dating."

And I thought: Wow. This is amazing. I wish real dating were just like this. If I can know up front which guys are looking for serious relationships, which are looking for flings, and which are not interested at all, I'd be all set.

After the Career Forum, I went to Bala's seminar about ethical investing: do socially responsible funds earn higher returns? Believe it or not, this is a very interesting topic to me. Here's a taste:



"Because in the long run, we're all dead!"

Things are shaking up. Section A was strange today. People actually came in late, and some phones went off. One guy's text message beeps kept going off and it was obvious that he was exchanging messages during class but did not bother to turn off the sound. People came in very late. I felt so sorry for the teacher. After class, Section A received a note from Section B on how to have more fun. Awesome. It's about time. I can feel things shaking up...

After Spanish, we had our second salsa practice for Spring Fling. Our program is very fun, to "Con Fuerza" by Calle Real. It's a somewhat sexy program, but not in a seductive way. In a powerful, yet beautiful way. I think we are going to have a lot of fun.

For the MBA Olympics, we are going to have a completely different choreography. I hope we do it to Eddie Torres' "Caravan"...