What's the next after Bafabafa?

All of us know what Bafabafa is from the foundation week. This game is very good for people to be aware of and to appreciate the cultural diversity. I played it over 10 times before coming to the school. It was successfully implemented for different purposes across AIESEC, the organization I participated. However, I found that there is no continuous session until Cross Cultural Communication or Global Negotiation when comparing with the process I’d been through in AIESEC.

As a third-trimester student, I am wondering whether we can make our Thunderbird experience better. Should the school consider designing something unique and helpful to facilitate students? Because T-birds are from all over the world, can’t we use the great resource on our hands? Do we integrate students from different continents well when we say “truly global”? The questions have remained for a while.

I’ve talked to some classmates on campus. They have very interesting and thoughtful feedbacks for after-class and in-class ideas. First, cohorts can play a continuous role to help students integrate into Thunderbird because people have strong connection based on their foundation week. Members were well-diversified and went through the team building process. We need to understand that people tend to stay with whom comes from the same region/country/culture because studying MBA and living in an unfamiliar environment are quite challenging. Many of us don’t even have English as our mother tongue.

Second, beyond the projects or in-class discussion, be proactive to reach other students you never talk to. Be curious about their cultures, their perspectives, and their ideas. I guarantee that you will learn so much from them, and this experience will absolutely differentiate us from other MBA students. Go to the pub, form a team for case competition, or have a party for others who don’t know about your cultures. Too many MBA students focus on tough numbers or fancy models to analyze the problems like they did for the case study. However, the real world is not that simple. You can’t deal with it only based on those hard skills. The soft skill is essential. Both skill sets will enable us to do a better job.

Last, we can turn CCC from lectures into real practices. Some classmates argue that we are doing this class everyday since we arrive. The school can either design a CCC waiver exam or consolidate those similar classes into a one-day seminar. Or we can have a program like campus ambassador, but offer summer camps to high school students who are interested in global dynamics. This idea is to associate the community service and our branding. The school can also make money as Colorado University does for emerging language tools. We students will learn further through the facilitation process.

From in-class or after-class, what can we do after Bafabafa? Use our cohorts more effectively, develop our skill sets through any activity, and live with it by facilitating others. The answers are among us. I hope that this article is simply an initiative for discussion and then our actions to get those things done. This is our school. We can make it better.