There was only silence at the entrance to the university while the ceremony was being held. Now the same place is full of graduates with gowns and mortarboards, hugging and kissing each other while camera flashes go off. Their faces are a picture of satisfaction and happiness as they jump and shout and throw their mortarboards in the air in their exuberance. This is the IE Brown Executive MBA’s third intake. It’s made up of twenty-five students from seventeen countries who over the last thirteen months have been focusing all their efforts on ensuring that this day would finally arrive. I really like this sense of academic pride. They’ve reached a goal for which they have fought with great dignity. After the typical photos the new graduates wander back to the old cloister. Silence descends once again on the university entrance as a new and promising future opens up before them.