On 7 November, it was time for our last cabaret. In P3, I had already witnessed the last cabaret which was mainly organized by the then-leaving 12J promotion, and this time around it was my promotion that was preparing to leave INSEAD. A very strange feeling if you think about it.
I was involved in the cabaret in two ways: Firstly, I was part of the band that concluded the evening with playing four songs. Secondly, since I was at Fusionopolis Theatre where the cabaret was held on the day of the event anyway to set up my equipment (and I didn’t have any classes or anything yet), I ended up helping with setup and organization of the whole event (which in the end meant that I didn’t have to pay for my ticket, sweet!)
As for the band part, I was very glad that I had brought my bass guitar with me for P4 and P5, since I had missed playing it a lot in P1-P3. With a few quite talented musicians (mostly from my promotion plus a keyboarder from the next promotion), we met twice before the cabaret for multiple hours and arranged four (cover) songs. It was great fun playing again, making music in a group, and being on stage.
Of course, the other performances were great as well. There were the classics like the men’s ballet, the rugby club’s performances, and the obvious candidates like Bhangra dance. But there were lots of really creative and great performances as well, and just naming a few of them wouldn’t do any justice to the others. Obviously, a lot of the performances of my promotion had something to do with looking back at the year, and preparing to leave all of this behind – it made me somewhat melancholic. Even though after a year the thought of going back to work is not as distant anymore as it was in the beginning (and I am still glad that I went for a one-year MBA program as opposed to a two-year one), I am now starting to realize that in a few weeks this intense experience will come to a close, and many of the people that I spent so much time with I will not see again for quite some time, and most certainly not all of them together at the same time again…