{"id":12617,"date":"2020-04-14T15:13:35","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T13:13:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.esmt.berlin\/voices\/?p=12617"},"modified":"2023-05-03T15:48:44","modified_gmt":"2023-05-03T13:48:44","slug":"courses-and-classmates-spanning-the-globe-my-international-emba-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.esmt.berlin\/voices\/courses-and-classmates-spanning-the-globe-my-international-emba-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Courses and classmates spanning the globe \u2013 my international EMBA experience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Nazareth<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One\u00a0late afternoon in early March\u00a02020, I stood in front of a room\u00a0full\u00a0of my ESMT\u00a0Berlin\u00a0EMBA classmates, about to introduce the speakers that would\u00a0take\u00a0the floor. The audience consisted of people that had been on this EMBA journey with me for the preceding eighteen months.\u00a0I had laughed and argued with many of them, agreeing and disagreeing as we worked together on\u00a0various\u00a0assignments, our business simulation,\u00a0and everything else that ESMT threw our way. Of course, there had also been many hours of eating, drinking, and partying\u00a0together.\u00a0Now this group and I were gathered in Johannesburg,\u00a0South Africa, partway through our International Field Seminar,\u00a0at\u00a0a visit\u00a0I had organized\u00a0to\u00a0Impact Hub Johannesburg.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This visit, coming towards the end of my EMBA experience, was a great occasion for me to reflect on how the whole thing started. I live in Armenia, where I work as an independent consultant on corporate social responsibility and social entrepreneurship. If you strip\u00a0back\u00a0away\u00a0the fancy talk, this means I\u2019m a freelancer \u2013 someone with no boss,\u00a0but\u00a0dozens of different clients. It\u2019s a lifestyle I chose for myself when I quit my last full-time job 5 years ago. As a freelancer, I had become a member of\u00a0Impact Hub Yerevan, which\u00a0is an\u00a0organization that\u00a0runs\u00a0coworking spaces globally\u00a0and is\u00a0generally\u00a0a\u00a0cool environment for solopreneurs, start-ups,\u00a0and other organizations to mix and learn from each other.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was at Impact Hub Yerevan that I first learned about the opportunity to pursue an EMBA at ESMT Berlin. I was excited for two reasons \u2013 the program content seemed great, plus there was the chance to apply for a scholarship. I did not have an employer that could foot the bill, and the tuition plus travel costs were beyond something I could afford \u2013 work in Armenia is not at the same pay scale as in Western Europe or North America. There was also an additional cost.  Being in Berlin for a week every couple of months and the workload between modules would reduce my capacity for consultancy work to a certain extent. But I dove in headfirst and got the good news a couple of weeks later \u2013 I was accepted into the program and had been offered a generous scholarship by Allianz, covering my full tuition and including a travel allowance! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fall of 2018, when all this started, seems a long time ago now. The group of fifty-plus professionals that I first met in October that year is still on my mind all the time \u2013 my phone buzzes with a WhatsApp message or more almost every day. The best part of my ESMT experience has been this group of people. But there are many other contenders, very close to the top spot. The content has been amazing \u2013 I enjoyed both the \u201chard skills\u201d courses like Finance and Operations Management (they pushed me to develop in areas where I was quite weak) as well as the \u201csofter\u201d ones like Decision Making, Organizational Behavior, and Business Ethics (where I had already done plenty of reading before the EMBA but found myself with a lot to learn nonetheless). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It all culminated in an amazing international experience in South Africa in March 2020, with a group of people that I am proud and happy to call my friends. ESMT did not just limit itself to Berlin and South Africa – I did Global Network Week in Mexico City, took small network online courses with universities in Costa Rica and the US, and I learned a lot from my classmates and their experiences in 30+ countries. I don\u2019t know who\u2019s reading these words now \u2013 if you\u2019re one of the many great ESMT alumni out there, perhaps my flashback has woken up some memories of your own, with your classmates. If you\u2019re considering ESMT as a place to study, perhaps you can think of it as a \u201cflashforward\u201d \u2013 I know that my experience with this business school is not unique, and it makes me happy to think that thousands of people have had a similar experience or will<\/em> have<\/em> one in the future. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/span> 3<\/span> min read<\/span><\/span> One\u00a0late afternoon in early March\u00a02020, I stood in front of a room\u00a0full\u00a0of my ESMT\u00a0Berlin\u00a0EMBA classmates, about to introduce the speakers that would\u00a0take\u00a0the floor. The audience […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":753,"featured_media":12621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[732,772],"tags":[265],"ppma_author":[1735],"class_list":["post-12617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-emba","tag-international-field-trip"],"yoast_head":"\nCourses and classmates spanning the globe \u2013 my international EMBA experience<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mexico City, South Africa, small network online courses with universities in Costa Rica and the US - ESMT did not limit itself to Berlin.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.esmt.berlin\/voices\/courses-and-classmates-spanning-the-globe-my-international-emba-experience\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Courses and classmates spanning the globe \u2013 my international EMBA experience\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mexico City, South Africa, small network online courses with universities in Costa Rica and the US - 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