No, I am not going to write about the bible. I felt like talking a bit about IESE’s strange traditions and customs that have developed over the years within the student community and are carried over from year to year. So if you ever come to visit us, go on exchange to Barcelona or join IESE as full-time MBA student, let me fill you in on the details.
BOW
BOW stands for Bar Of the Week and is a weekly event taking place every Thursday night. The BOW committee works relentlessly to find new and exciting Barcelona bars each week. On Thursday, usually around 11pm MBA students start arriving at the bar of the week where they get a special discount on drinks upon presenting their student card. Usually between 50 and 150 students can show up to this event and sometimes the occasional professor slips in. Nevertheless, the BOWs regularly take a toll which is impressively demonstrated by empty rows in the Friday morning sessions. This does create a bit of a problem since attendance is obligatory at IESE and a specific number of missed classes can be a reason for a “Fail”. So, you have to pick your BOWs wisely or be disciplined enough to leave the bars after an hour or two.
If you are a soon-to-be student looking for an apartment in Barcelona, here is an additional piece of information: 99% of the BOWs take place in Eixample. Check out my blog post on where to live if you need more info.
COW
The COW stands for Cow Of the Week and is a weekly event taking place after the last class session on Friday during which a “cow trophy” is handed over. The trophy and the exact process are usually organized by each section at the beginning of the MBA program. The COW event essentially consists of a student presenting a summary of the “most intelligent comments”, the “sharpest analyses” and whatever else caused classes to be interrupted by the laughter of 70 students.
At the end of the presentation a “winner” is chosen who receives the COW (see image above) and takes over the responsibility of recording potential COW comments throughout the next week as well as prepare the COW presentation for the following Friday. I had the questionable honor of presenting the COW twice during the first year and am also responsible for picking out this admittedly ugly stuffed cow trophy as I was the unfortunate first person to receive the comment of the week.
LOW
LOW stands for Lounge Of the Week and is a relatively new tradition that is held alive by second-year students. It is basically the same as a BOW, but takes place irregularly on Tuesday nights. Not too long ago, the IESE administration decided to clear most Tuesdays in the second year in order to provide a time window for the students to freely pursue any career-related activities. While many second-year students make use of this free time, some also take this as an opportunity to enjoy Barcelona on Tuesday night longer than usual. This is how the LOW was established and it has been quite successful thus far.
SPAM
Unlike the previous entries SPAM is not an abbreviation. It merely refers to spam, junk mail that annoys you and fills up your mailbox. At IESE it is a common practical joke to spam the whole school with embarrassing emails - with the small, but important distinction that the sender is never ever the author. Almost all of the fresh first-year students, exchange students and even “veteran” second-years have committed the ultimate sin and forgot to log off from a public university computer or leave their unlocked laptop unattended. It takes two minutes - and I am often surprised how creative people get within such short time frames - and a prankster will send out an embarrassing or annoying spam email from the unlocked mailbox to hundreds of accounts in the university community. This is childish, but usually it is funny as hell. My personal favorite spam mails are those that do not embarrass the forgetful person, but rather annoy him or her by creating even more spam. The last instance in this “category” I remember was a mail from an American exchange student who wrote that he had received a crate of several hundred iPhones from a friend at Apple for free. He proposed to sell them unlocked for $100.00 each to his fellow students. Apparently his mailbox was flooded at once since he had to send a follow-up email 10 minutes later clarifying that someone else had written the phony iPhone mail.
Dinners
Dinners play quite a big role in the social life of the IESE MBA experience. Dinners are organized on a frequent basis between smaller groups and larger groups. While small dinners usually involve students and sometimes professors spontaneously meeting at a restaurant or an apartment in the evening, the large dinners are thoroughly organized events. There is usually a section dinner (all students from one section) each term, one or two first-year dinners (all first-year students), one or two second-year dinners (all second-year students), a dinner where first- and second-year students mix and meet, team dinners (all students from a specific study group), exchange student dinners, ladies dinner (all female students from one section or class) and many more. Barcelona has fantastic restaurants and options are abundant.
Just to clarify: despite what the above might imply, IESE is by far not a party college! From my own experience while on exchange at another leading European business school, the descriptions of my fellow students who also went on exchange to one of the many other available exchange (business) schools, and based on the comments of exchange students who come to IESE, we truly work a LOT compared to other MBA programs! The IESE administration has a bit of a fixation on academics and the workload is absolutely intense. This is maybe the reason why students find outlets and make the most of the free time. In the end, it is up to each individual how to balance work and free time.
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