B School and Self Development – My Memoirs
The main concept is that the first year of business school forces us to increase our intellectual apparatus, while the second year draws out more emotions than any of us imagined. We’re getting two types of education in our MBA. One teaches how to make a living and the other how to live.
The first year of the MBA brought together a diverse group of students from all over the world who underwent an intense and new experience together. I believe each of us came away having learned something. I can speak the language of business. I know about influencing situations, brand identity, risk management and strategic planning. I get a geeky thrill from saying rate of return, ROI, or hedging.
Over the summer break, we dispersed around the country and the world for summer internships. We came back for the second year physically present, but our minds are in many places. The second year is much more about personal development.
Managing our own education, our career search and development is in one way or another, the purpose of everything we do in business school. And like many other classmates, I arrived at business school determined to tackle this challenge.
In the year and half, many classmates and I felt we had built a comfortable little business school world. This little world will end soon. We will have a new transition and we’ll go where opportunity takes us, which the next few months will tell us. It is emotionally weighty. It is clear that my classmates are gifted with self-confidence, intelligence, talent and health. These are very driven people who will probably be just fine after school. But the emotional side of the MBA experience has the power to sew insecurity even among people with the skills to do anything they like with their lives.
We concluded our biggest takeaway is that we should resist being short-termist. This means we do not have an excessive focus on short-term results at the expense of long-term interest. For example, it is important to be honest with ourselves about which jobs are the right ones for us. We just simply learn and grow at every opportunity.
In addition, we need to work on our lives outside the ambiguities of the future or pressures from school to have a meaningful life. Because, even among the best of us, business school taught us that there is no such thing as an ideal state of ease and success.
It was meant that an MBA from a top school would be a challenge, some anxiety, some disappointment, even some failure is normal. When I have a miserable day once in a while, or several in a row, I constantly remind myself that I am getting an MBA because I want to learn and grow; that every minute of hard work is making me a better, tougher and more capable person.
Day in and day out, I nonchalantly saunter around campus, to class, library, or the commons, enjoying myself as though this past year and half at business school was no big deal. It was a big deal. And this experience will come to an end soon.People will have to check in with me again in a couple of years to see how my classmates and I stand. But it’s my belief that after business school, even if you had a bumpy start, all of us are going to do just fine. The tough-mindedness that got us accepted into a top school will grant you clarity. Thus far, the words master’s in business administration have captured so little of what I have learned.
Syed Kazim
Assistant Professor
Department of Management Studies
Acharya Bangalore B School
