School Update (Dave's first blog entry)

Ok, ok, ok, it's been almost two months and I haven't written a single blog entry. So now that I've already completed 5 classes and my school schedule lightens up considerably from here on out, I hope to be able to make more regular contributions. For my first entry, I thought I'd let everyone know what business school has been like over here in Paris since people are always asking me "how's school?" and I guess it's one of the main reasons we're here in Paris.

I'm currently doing a semester abroad at HEC (Hautes Etudes Commerciales), which is located in Jouy-en-Josas, just outside of Paris. It takes me anywhere from an hour and fifteen minutes to an hour and a half door-to-door. I usually take the Metro to Gare Montparnasse, where I catch a non-stop SNCF train to Versailles-Chantiers, where I then catch the RER C train to Jouy-en-Josas. From the train station at Jouy, I either take a bus or make the 15 minute walk to campus. It sounds complicated, but it's not so bad once you get the hang of it.

The HEC campus is really nice, although it's sort of in the middle of nowhere. I feel bad for some of the exchange students who are living on campus because they have to commute the hour and a half just to get to Paris. At least on the weekends, I can step outside my door and I'm in Paris.

I thought I'd give a quick re-cap of some of my classes so far:

• Marketing of Luxury and Differentiated Products (taught by Vincent Bastien): This class has been really great. The teacher is the former CEO of LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy) and the former CEO of Yves Saint Laurent as well. He's energetic, smart, honest and realistic. It's been a real eye-opener learning how to market luxury products and how the strategies and issues are very different from marketing "normal" differentiated products.
  
  
• Consumer Knowledge (taught by Corinne Dauger): The teacher for this class really made it worthwhile. Ms. Dauger used to work for Proctor and Gamble here in France and also worked at Hermes. She told us a great story about the genesis of the "Vizirette", a small ball that was introduced to slowly release liquid laundry detergent in washing machines in France. This class may not have been as "academic" as a comparable class at Haas, but the real-life experience of Ms. Dauger more than made up for it.
  
  
• Customer Lifetime Value Management (taught by Janghyuk Lee): This class was crammed into five sessions over the course of about a week so it went by really fast. Some of this class was review from the fabulous Information and Technology-Based Marketing Class that I took at Haas last semester, but I found the class materials and the approach valuable. It was good to re-visit the subject of calculating customer lifetime value and get some new perspectives from Prof. Lee.
  
  
• The Hidden Side of Organizational Dynamics (taught by Gerard Pavy): If you can figure out what this class is about, please let me know. In addition to the fact that it was difficult to understand Mr. Pavy's English, he also colored our class material with such flowery terms as "diachronically" and "intersubjective". There were also lots of fun-looking, complicated diagrams that didn't make a lot of sense. We spent an entire class period on differentiating between hysteria and obsession. Mr. Pavy also talked about "being nasty", "perversion", "sado-masochism" and the Oedipal complex. Fun, eh? Wait, maybe this class wasn't so bad after all.
  
  
• International Negotiations (taught by Stephen Weiss): This class was crammed into two full days from 9 am until 6 pm, but boy was it worth it. I had never taken a negotiations class at Haas, so I was anxious to take this class and Mr. Weiss made it worthwhile. He moved really quickly, but we still managed to work in several role-plays including a one-on-one, a three-on-two, a three-on-three and a multi-laternal (two-on-two-on-two) negotiation. I really got a lot of practical skills out of this class that I'm sure will come in handy in the future.
  

So, that's my school round-up so far. I'm also taking a beginning French class which has been a lot of fun. Additionally, I'm in the process of reading Trading Up and Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong during my commute to and from school.