Dear readers

Finally found the time to write a little blog post and give you some additional insights on what has happened in the last few weeks within the mysterious walls of our beloved Ghent campus.

Right before the Christmas Holiday we had … Oops! Almost made a spelling mistake there. Let’s give it another try. Right before the Christmas Group Work Meetings we had our second business game called Goldstein.  This time the MGM cohorts were mingled. What I can tell you about the business game is that if you don’t like numbers well… Prepare to start liking them. If people tell you you’re going to dream in English when you study at Vlerick, they are wrong. You’re going to dream about numbers, at least after Goldstein.

After digging in a huge dataset and looking for that one magic number that would boost the ROCE* – which didn’t exist of course –  for hours and hours, most of the groups suffered from “paralysis by analysis”.  After a long period of number crunching and exhausting team discussions, the light at the end of the tunnel became clearer and brighter. Walking around on the campus at 4 o’clock in the morning and noticing that every breakout room is still full with groups finishing their presentation –  to be made the next morning at 9A.M. –  gives you the last energy boost you need to finish the assignment yourself.

* ROCE = Return On Capital Employed. A financial ratio that measures a company’s profitability and efficiency of the capital is employed.

Friday 4 A.M.; five hours before the deadline.

The magic did not (and will not) only happen inside the walls of our Ghent campus of course. There has been some travelling to the Brussels campus for Career Days, on which we like to grab the opportunity to meet potential future employers and to enjoy the reception afterwards. 😉 For the courses of Entrepreneurship, you will need to get out of the campus and go and talk to a lot of people to get a lot of information and to do a lot of analysis.

In the near future most of the magic will happen outside as well. As we are getting close to our Spring Break, we are getting close to our ski-trip. Immediately after that, we get the chance to specialize in a certain fundamental of management during a four week, in-depth Boot Camp. After spending 4 weeks on the Ghent, Leuven or Brussels campus we go on a one week international study trip to Istanbul. The only thing remaining after the international study trip is the In-Company Project (ICP). A lot of us – hopefully including myself – will grasp the opportunity to go on a project abroad. So the future looks really bright!

Basically, there are so many things still unwritten…  And there’s probably a good reason for that: words cannot describe the experience you gain at Vlerick. At least I know one thing for sure: Athosphere is something that definitely changed my life and the lives of my colleagues. If I had to give you one advice it will definitely be the following: grab your chance to get on this life changing ride!

Hope to talk to you soon!

Angelo Van Slycke

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Feel free to contact, connect,… if you have any questions! Or meet us at the info session on Saturday 15^th of February on our Ghent campus!

Mail: angelo.vanslycke@edu.vlerick.com

Twitter: @AngeloVanSlycke

LinkedIn: be.linkedin.com/in/angelovanslycke/