Road to Freedom

I finally gathered the courage to resign from my job. To celebrate prior to handing in my resignation letter, I decided to take a trip to Paris, France to see my friends. The friends who through my turmoil and suffering at work, had decided to stand by me and tolerate my grumpy self. I left for Paris at the end of August and had a wonderful time.

Paris as usual was beautiful, the food was excellent, the wine was perfect (parfait) my friends as usual were adorable and the shopping was just the therapy I needed. I could not control myself, even though I had specifically told myself I was not going to shop, but what is the point in going to Paris if I can not even buy a pair of shoes, which finally led to not two, not three pairs, but four pairs, but enough of my frivilous side. My excuse is, I shopped for people ;-).

My days were filled mostly with sharing cherished moments with my friends and their families, sitting for hours talking about everything and nothing, sharing good laughs, people watching and gossiping (which the french are very good at...if you think Ghanaians are bad), drinking "Monaco" (red beer-- Please try it) from 10am till God knows when, visiting the beautiful churches to pray that the decision I was going to take in the next 3 weeks was what needed to be done.

However, after lazing around, I decided to do one of the things that had led me to Paris, visit Insead. One of the major decisions I had to make was also figure out which business schools I was going to apply to, that is if I pass my GMAT. On a monday afternoon, Alexis (a good friend from NYC, who is from and lives in Paris, and currently attends Insead) and I decided to drive to Fontainebleau, the hometown of Insead on their first day of school. Fontainebleau, is 45 minutes outside of Paris, a quaint little town. I was finally going to see the school he had spoken so highly of, which through the process, I had grown to fall in love with. Upon my arrival at the school, I expected to see another Harvard but Insead, was quite different and in its own special way understated. The buildings were different, modern architecture but not too glamorous. There was no campus with dormitories for students, but instead students had the opportunity to stay with groups of friends in houses, that looked like mansions and old castles. Inseads diversity with regards to female to male, was close to zero, yet still, I fell in love with the students. The students were from all over the world (which was the kind of diversity Insead could boast of) , had a lot to say and share apart from their food and homes. I got the opportunity to experience not only the acdemic life of Insead, but also the social life. A community that seemed to be tied together, not in little groups held together by their nationalities, like most US schools I had visited, but together by common goals and a strong sense of global community.

At the end of my trip, I had fallen in love with Paris again, fallen in love with Insead for the first time and hoping that I would take my GMAT some day and hopefully get accepted.