When at b-school, it is a good thing to keep asking oneself these questions everyday

• What were the reasons why I wanted to attend an MBA program?

• Am I digressing too much and losing focus?

• Am I getting complacent and trying to rationalize my routine?

• How can I improve my learnings by leveraging my colleagues’ knowledge?

• How can I relate what I learn to what I did back at my work or what I expect to do when I leave the school?

• Would my current level of knowledge have helped me in performing better in my previous job?

• Have I become an expert in an industry or an area or have I at least started to prepare in that direction?

• Have I kept my resume ready?

• Can I get more organized and if yes how?

• This is my last chance, before retirement, to not report to anyone. Given a chance, is this all that I will or want to do? Aren’t I responsible for an enterprise called “Myself”?

For me, Term II went by at the speed of thought. One needs to be highly organized and disciplined to optimize returns from an MBA program. Even a couple of days of slackness can put one behind by many miles. Forget about grades. It takes the joy out of the entire learning experience. All that one will keep doing is trying to catch up with what was missed out and it becomes laborious and boring. I am happy that I more or less stuck to what I had committed to myself at the beginning of the term. It was learning and consolidating the learnings to be able to relate them to the real world.

PS:

Term III again has some very interesting topics – Entrepreneurship; Operations Management; Management Accounting; and Corporate Finance. We also have a special course of Leadership Development, which again is quite interesting.