The IIMA experience

I couldn't decide which blog of mine to post this in, chose the MBA one as I'm applying for PGPX.
Taking a step back... I've had a series of not so constructive managers / peers to work with. Some of them were downright bad and lousy to work with, some were not located in India hence, out of sight syndrome and cultural differences effected. I now have a boss, errr recently turned into matrix manager who is very supportive. This helped me look for self development programs and where else should I have looked besides the top b schools, had to limit to India couldn't overshoot his generosity to sponsor.
So I get sponsored for this MDP program at IIMA. I arrived here earlier than expected, damn the availability of flights and I land on a Sunday with barely any visible soul on campus. I must admit that I did not do any research on my place of travel for the first time - translates to not connected with any current student, didn't know where the Library was, didn't know where to go outside the campus which I anyway had no intentions for. I spent half a sunday on IIM campus doing literaly nothing! well I did have a lot of office work and could complete some of it. By dinnertime I met some more teammates. When it comes to training I believe in power of preparation - we were provided with material with list of participants and groups in which we'd break up into. The first thing that struck me during my first lunch here was that I was the only woman in the dinning hall and the only person in casuals, later I did see one more. Same was the case during dinner time. I'm the only woman in my class of 20 for this MDP.
The experience so far has been good, not out of the world but there has been a lot to learn. Our professor Dr. Jerome Joseph shares his opinions on various topics and has been reasearching for years. There is so much take away from every session, added with the peer experience it is enriching. The participants are from various industries various stages of their career and most are very vocal. A person who talks as much as I do has had the challenge of finding time when to speak. It is also an interesting experience to work in our group of four consisting of much diversity. The classwork and homework is pretty gruelling too except that we spent an entire afternoon watching the movie 'Chak De' which all of us felt was a bit of a drag. Our first evening for group work was spent doing a presentation and by the time we were done it was dinner time already.
I've always been intrigued hearing from students that they sometimes schedule their group work meetings for late night and now I saw why. We only have one topic to work on in MDP and we spent 3 hours getting a presentation done, can imagine what it would be like working on multiple topics and with multiple teams. And working in teams has always been a challenge for me. I'm some kind of a assumed leader ending up intimidating and sort of bullying people which I've noticed sometimes stops them to throw their ideas or may be stop them from forming their ideas. If I analyze this further, I tend to form quick ideas or framework for anything and don't have the patience to keep my mouth shut until someone else comes up with theirs. This leads to people listening to my idea and go with it may be improve on it instead of bringing their own to the table. Yesterday I happened to jump in quick but took a step back and tried to blend with the team. We did discard my original thought on how to approach but picked elements from it.
Since I'm at IIMA I thought of meeting and asking questions about PGPX. Unfortunately, the only time I found yesterday was during lunch break and the office was empty. Will try to get in today during our first break. I do have some questions for them and anything more is always a help. Will post the findings and more on my experience.