Wednesday, August 6, 2008

A walk amidst the clouds

Living on a hill has its benefits.

I have been in Lavale for four months now and finally did I find some time to visit this space and relive the old routine of typing some shit.

An MBA life is curiously enchanting. You rarely sleep before 2 A.M. You learn to read up for presentations an hour before. In fact guys get to learn a trick that girls have mastered instinctively - Multi tasking.

The campus is in its first year of operation and by now most of the glitches have been sorted out. The air is clean and healthy without a trace of the slightest pollutants, and for someone who hails from the perennially polluted Mumbai, this is a pleasant change. Of course, since this isn't Mumbai, electricity and water shortages are omni-present challenges, but the administration is dealing with it to the best of its limited capabilities.

To tell the truth I haven't found an MBA course to be much helpful so far. It seems to be just repackaging of common concepts and the examinations especially are pretty bullshitty. I expected post-grad exams to do a serious testing of your concepts and check your utilization of those concepts in practical scenarios. But so far all the exams have been similar to our school exams wherein we by-heart a topic and then vomit a short-note on it.

Of course, its not all crap. There are some good things in the course also. But all the good things only come to those who are willing to participate in either the student council activities, the inter b-school management fests or some case-study competitions etc. If you just depend on the school curriculum you are pretty much not gonna learn anything.

And finally, the biggest learning comes through the 2-3 months of your summer internship process. Thats when you get a feel of what is in store for you post degree and how suited you are to it. It is a time to experiment and hence it is extremely vital that you either a) Enter into a good b-school which will attract the best companies across India b) or have good personal contacts to get you into one of those companies.

So far, I have seen things which haven't been upto my expectations, but who knows maybe my expectations were themselves flawed.

As Bryan Adams (or maybe Aerosmith) sang, "life's a journey not a destination."
I have embarked upon an interesting journey. I have consciously chosen to throw away the safety net of my IT job and swim into deep unknown waters, especially with the economy being in such a roughed up state.

Wherever i may reach, it will definitely be far away from my current comfort zone.