Dear reader,

After more than two months I finally found time to give you a first update!

I can still remember the start of our Vlerick Business School experience as if it was yesterday. Approximately fifty students, all of us wondering what the “business casual” dress code really stood for, gathered at 9 AM at the Ghent campus. The first chats with our new Athos-classmates started during the morning and went on during a sunny lunch break. After the first course in the afternoon, our first day at Vlerick ended at 5.30 PM – correction: that’s where it normally should have ended… –

Our group, MGM Athos, decided to meet at 9 PM at the AB Inbev lounge, because we wanted to “get to know each other in an informal way”. Without going into detail, I can assure you we did.
Credits must be given to Lore – our programme manager – to envision this, by having planned our first day off on Thursday (which a lot of us used to enjoy their first hangover of the year).

The next three weeks consisted of introduction courses and, whereas most of my university friends were still returning from their exotic holidays, at Vlerick the first exams took place already.

It gradually became clear that the “work hard” phase would surpass the “play hard” phase sooner than we expected. The Vlerick experience was (and is) having a huge impact on every single one of us.

During the first 2 months, Athos shared blood, sweat and tears together, trying to tackle the Deep Dive Challenge, group assignments, new exams and more group assignments. But in the end we are still alive and kicking! The reason for the latter is probably because of the fact that we also shared a 3-day seminar in Holland and a lot of fun, laughter, parties (and beers) together!

In an effort to combine both, it was no surprise that the days passed by in no time. Also some things have changed compared to day 1:

• Sunny lunch breaks are over, say welcome to lunch meetings to discuss strategic cases.
• We never use the word AB Inbev Lounge, it’s called Swa’s bar (named to the awesome bartender).
• Getting to know each other  is now called networking.
• Athos is now better known as Athosphere.

And to conclude, and probably the most important change: classmates have become best friends.

Talk to you soon!

Jeroen Van de Sompele
————–

Feel free to connect if you have any questions!

Jeroen.vandesompele@edu.vlerick.com
@JeroenVdSompele
be.linkedin.com/in/jeroenvandesompele/