On the whole, field trips were one of the low points of my elementary education.
Now, about 20 years later, I found myself on a flight from Helsinki to Shanghai, making my way to my first organized group outing as a grad-school student. In essence; a field trip for big kids.
As an adult - a professional and a business school student - the definition and context of the “field trip” is a bit different. The ESADE China Study Tour was my first foray into the realm of adult field trips and I must say, it was quite unlike my former yearly trips to the Miami Zoo.
There were no permission slips, this time the preparation included admission essays, plane tickets and visa applications. The logistics of planning the routes and dates were not as simple as remembering to get a piece of paper signed by a parent or guardian.
In business school there are no cool people. There are no uncool people. There are groups of students with similar interests who hang out together and no bus hierarchy exists. For this I am grateful.
There are, however, a number of similarities between my childhood field trips and the week I spent with ESADE at BiMBA University in Beijing.
Like school field trips, everything was pre-emptively handled and prepared - we were given mandatory timetables and schedules. If breakfast took too long, the lecture would begin anyway or our transportation would leave without us. Yet, hanging out with the teachers was way cooler than avoiding them. Beyond defining what is cool and what is not - China was an eye-opener. My greatest expectations were exceeded.
The trip was extensive and our days were full and tiring but in the end, we left China with a depth of awareness and understanding far beyond anything we could have gained in a classroom in Spain. At the same time, for many of us it was the tail-end of summer - and our approach to the MBA experience was much more relaxed than had it been in the middle of the year in our regular classroom with our regular books and regular material.
While some students would go in search of Peking duck (we were, after all, in Peking), others would line up outside the clubs. Some would go to the posh bars at the tops of world-class hotels and others would go back for a quiet evening socializing at the hotel. Of course, the markets were frequented and we had feast after feast of local cuisine - generally with the program.
Another advantage of an adult field trip vs. child’s play was the accommodation. When I was 15, I went on a journalism trip to New York and stayed in a Howard Johnson with bars on the windows and a narcoleptic bellboy. On debate trips (yes, I was on the debate team too), we would often stay in campus housing.
ESADE, on the other hand, put us up in a five star hotel next to the university. The beds were big and soft, the water was purified and we actually had HBO and wireless Internet.
As for the food, I had specially ordered meals. As a child, the school staff couldn't bother to make one ham and cheese without the ham. Whereas in China, I was constantly looked after and provided with an abundance of tofu in every shape, size and flavour. This was a huge contrast from the high school Disney trip where I ate Mickey Mouse pops for three days straight.
Our “study tour” was orchestrated to provide participants with an introduction to business in China, taking into account the culture, history, business practices, milestones of the country, challenges, traditions, and differences. Our lectures ranged from “Confucianism and Business Practices in China” to “Chinese Economic Development and current economic Policies”.
We had a number of company visits and attended a “Finance in China” panel session proceeded by a morning Tai Chi exercise class. We attended an acrobatic show that beat Circ du Soleil and a Pedi cab tour of a Hutong (old lane areas) in order to see the dramatic changes that the rest of Beijing has undergone.
Like any travel or foreign experience, it is always the minor details or the parts in between that we remember the most. It’s when we are not trying to learn or not looking for the best angle to take a photo when the greatest lessons take place.
Amid these lessons, I gained an appreciation of my adulthood - of being a student as an adult. Moreover, of being on a field trip as an adult. The ominous field trips that I once dreaded have now become one of the best memories of my time in business school. Its funny what a couple of decades, infinite life lessons and a bit of maturity can transform.
Of course, when speaking of maturity, we are in some senses just big kids. In elementary school, in classes and on the bus, I passed notes. Notes about the boys I had crushes on and the girls I thought were mean. Then, in China, during a lecture given by the marketing manager of Johnson & Johnson describing the Beijing 2008 Olympic efforts, I felt a sudden long-forgotten urge to pass a note. Being that in business school we are all kind of one communal clan, and often at times I am too distracted to search for the cute boys or find out which ones are the mean girls, I decided to pass a note asking how my fellow students felt about the adult field trip.
A few hours later and a couple of strange backwards glances, I received the pages of scrawled writing and proceeded to note that no, I am not at all alone. I think that most of us would agree that our grown-up school excursion was far better than anything we had been subjected to as school children.
And although no individual has the capacity to truly change that much - we do develop and our interests and objectives change. There are clear and vast differences between the old days of practical jokes and popularity contests and 40 business school students flown across the world to be immersed in one of the world’s oldest civilizations.
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