MBA - More than what we see...

As I entered the NM campus on my first day, it felt like an achievement after those fish market GDs, monotonous roundabout interviews and sleepless nights in the anxiety of converting calls. I took a deep breath and murmured to myself, “I am going to make the best of these 2 years…study hard for a good job.”

Laden with the dream of a 12 lakh job, I entered my first class and it was FINANCE. And my professor started with terms like asset classification, pari pasu charge etc which went complete tangent on my head. Oh my God, it was a disaster. I had never felt so lost in my life. I was recovering from my first shock and headed towards my classmates for an introduction, clueless that it was the second shock coming my way. I met people who were already post graduates, others who had experience of 4-5 years. People had a defined list of companies they wanted to get into, the kind of specific profiles they were looking for….oh gosh. I had never thought that way. Then suddenly I bumped into a bunch of Mumbaites who were busy conversing in their typical mumbaiya accent, which made me feel an alien there. “There is more to learn than I had thought”
And then the journey began….

Those two years have been a blessing for me. Apart from the knowledge I acquired, there’s much more to it. Dealing with people, people management as MBAs term it, is my biggest learning. It was a shift from being an individual worker to a team player. Though I always knew each individual is unique, has different thoughts, I never bothered more about it but that was an indispensible part of my learning process. I analyzed various motivators for diverse people.
Those two years gave me endless opportunities to realize my potential. I could feel my confidence level rising with each step I took. I acquired a boldness to face anything that comes my way…fearlessness…”let it come” attitude. I can still remember that moment filled with pride and ecstasy when I won my first inter-college Business Plan competition. That gave me an immense satisfaction that I had been able to absorb good knowledge here, that I am aware of all aspects of business, that I am in no way less than IIM graduates, that its just the beginning and I have a long way to go.

I got a platform to do and experiment whatever I felt like. With time, I took more and more responsibilities and learnt to manage all of them effectively. I am happy I was able to deliver them to the best of my capability. Leading a team, managing events, thinking of new ideas to do things, speaking my thoughts in public forums, convincing people over my ideas, discussing and gathering learnings from others’ experiences…became a part of my existence.

‘Self Awareness’, I proudly accepted my trouble spots and worked on myself to minimize the bad effect. I now know what gets me forward and what holds me back.

I did much more than what I thought I would do. Am glad I pushed myself really hard, otherwise my learning would have been incomplete. MBA, I feel, is like an open space in everybody’s life, which can be filled with whatever one wants. Some people have spent their 2 years just in attending classes, some in bunking classes and having fun, some in the canteen, some just talking, some dreaming, some in the library, some acquiring new skills they always wanted to, some doing social activities…its all your choice..all your priorities.

MBA, if looked in terms of course curriculum, is just common sense packaged in business jargons. When I started, I wondered if making these stupid presentations and talking nonsense (common sense), fetch me high salary packages (not valid in these recession times). BUT, I’d day, theres something much more to it which normally gets unnoticed by people. That MBA attitude, that gets ingrained pays us more than the knowledge we acquire in those 2 years.

Those 2 years with all kinds of ups and downs, learnings and dislearnings, dones and undones, success and failures, have infused me with passion and enthusiasm to dream and do big.