2nd Year MBA-A Road Which Will End But In Which Direction,God Knows..!!

Have you heard the wannabe MBAs talk once they have grabbed a couple of B-school calls ? Now, imagine the gyan that a half-MBA-graduate can give! Presenting a full year of experience of half a MBA..

 

 

Life is full of U-turns, right turns and left turns. Some turns lead you to 'no man's' land, while some land you in greener pastures. I do not know which turn I took, but I did reach 

The Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India(ICFAI) Hyderabad  for sure. Now, after a year of being there, when I introspect, I find myself in a place which has taught me a lot of values and touched me with various experiences. In MBA parlance we call it 'value addition'. MBAs (the colloquial word for an MBA graduate or even half a graduate) generally do a feasibility analysis of any experience that they get an opportunity to be a part of. And then comes the 'value analysis', i.e. the amount of 'value addition' that they underwent being a part of the experience.

 

 An MBAs domain is very well restricted to the set of souls pursuing the same management science as himself. viz, finance, marketing, hr, operations etc.. The emphasis here is not much on personality enhancement, but highly towards the factors that will add up towards getting a better job in the placement season; even if the added 'value' is much against their likings and interests. Let me try to analyse how much I have climbed up the value chain during this one lightning year.

 

When I think of the initial days of my settling down in the campus, a vignette of chaos and peace emerges. Having taken up a lethargic lifestyle the moment I landed up here, I kept on postponing things and they kept on getting piled up. Not long after, say in about a month, sleep suddenly became a rarity. I had heard of 'sleep' being a prized possession in b-schools here I was, experiencing it first hand. And if all things I heard about managers are to be believed, well, sleep has become a rarity for a lifetime.

 

Life slowly got accustomed to the B-school way of living. Classes from 9:15(earlier it was 9:30 though) in the morning meant waking up at 8.55 and reach the hostel mess at 9:10 (after attending nature's calls). By 9:12 you would have eaten biscuits in case you got up more late and would be trotting fast towards Academic Block, hoping that the Prof. hadn't yet taken the attendance. If lucky, at 9:14:55 you would reach the door of your classroom after passing through the pathway and meeting with so many people who are also in a hurry .Now when you reach your eyes will sweep to find an empty seat in  the last row. To start with, doing an MBA teaches you acute time management.

 

People come to b-schools with dreams of becoming CEOs and CFOs, nothing less. Rarely anyone thinks about becoming CTOs and CIOs. Finance is the domain 75% of any b-school class wants to specialize in. After the first Fin paper, fin-enthusiasts are decimated down to 50% and by the final placement season the figure becomes 25-30%. Thus, on an average, the dreams and aspirations of nearly 50% of any class would be trampled by the Fin subjects in the course of 2 years. I wonder why anyone would love a killer so much! My Fin grades started on a good note in the 1st sem. And thereafter followed a negative arithmetic progression to '6' by the 2nd Sem; thus eliminating any resurgent hopes of selecting a couple of Fin electives in the 2nd year.Though with Marketing domain I have Banking as an alternative..!!

 

I was talking about value addition. Elaborating on it, there are endless things to do and experience in this campus. There were visits by CAs and CXO Level Employees of top notch companies  which we all flocked to catch up a few wise words. Needless to say, we had many corporate dignitaries coming into the classrooms and delivering talks and sharing their insights with us. These were the moments when, although momentarily, I thought of being in their shoes someday soon.

 

People have started to enroll themselves for  Salsa classes and the  girls have started enrolling for the Karate Classes . And yes, Swimming and The Art of Living(Yes+) are also great ad-ons available at our campus.

Holidays are the most awaited season in any B-School,we have very less though but going to Goa for a weekend is a facility which many have already availed .

 

 

The Placement season, the most awaited moment of a post graduate- the process takes 8months to complete, though placing 1000 students in that span of time is just incredible at my college, placement department is really hardworking. People try to experiment during the initial month of placement as I saw in seniors. Most IT guys look towards Fin or Marketing companies. . My biggest realization in the 1st semester, that Fin was not my cup of tea, made my life easier.CA, CFA,CS were the hot cakes of the season and the concept of 'Fin-Gods' found wholesome acceptance with the 'Gods' being given their due share of respect and importance. Soon people were knighted with titles of 'Mark-God', 'IT-God' and 'All-God'. Eventually, even 'Veg-Gods' and 'Non-Veg-Gods' found their place.

            

 

Exams were the days when one used to get enough time to think about the issues that one had postponed till time was abundant.  After 2 months of pain and exhaustion, exams days were the time to lay back and rest. Episodes of 'How I met your Mother' and 'Prison Break' played back to back to get relieved of the ever-building pressure, thanks to the Stuz and Techvibs team. Good enjoyable and popular movies also added the spice, thanks to the team Infinity, they are the real entertainers of IBS.

 

Thus, having spent a year in MBA, I can safely say that, “Yes, life in a B-school, sucks big time and rocks big time.” Lead others to a state of high entropy and then use our analytically strong brains to align broken pieces up to form a coherent view of things - this is what you learn in MBA. The one year in MBA has given me many good friends, who I know will stand by me in times to come, more appropriately in times of group assignments. The sweet memories, the bond of friendship and the hiccups of the tension-prone exam weeks - the treasures I would carry on to the final year. I know, for sure, it is going to be a roller-coaster journey from now on.