• The weekend was consumed by the business presentation skills workshop. We get to make about 4-5 presentations, some impromptu and some prepared ones. The presentations got videotaped and then analyzed with comments from group members and the workshop facilitator. There are good take aways. We don’t realize some of the mannerisms that we carry and don’t really know of the words we keep repeating. Did I become a better speaker/presenter after the workshop? Sure, I now know of my strengths and weaknesses and hope to manage these to make better presentations.

• I was making a chart on what I have learnt so far. I wanted to know if I had become any better after coming here and to do that I asked myself some answers to the questions/challenges I had faced during my job. Was quite pleased to realize that I indeed have learnt a lot. The frameworks and conceptual understanding will surely help me when I go back. I also realize that there are many learnings that I can directly implement back at work place and make decision making more precise and my work effective. I can contribute to potential improvements in fields such as operations, costing, pricing where I had least knowledge before.

• Some have expressed reservations about my last post. The idea of drawing an analogy between a car journey and life/career was only to highlight what is required in terms of preparation and in no means implying that they both are similar. Sometimes intuition based decision making is quite helpful. I, for one, did not do too much analysis before I came here. But I had an idea on where I wanted to end up being. If one can boil down what one is looking from a b-school to a ‘couple’ from ‘many’, then a good job is done. Even if one wants to crystallize plans after coming to b-school, it makes a lot of sense to have no more than two options on where one wants to go. One cannot learn all the subject and master them. Being clear on which subjects one wants to focus on and extract maximum will help. One can either network with a large group of people or can make a few strong friendships – some thinking before hand will help orienting oneself. Some homework on how one can get more organized will help – if required buy a Franklin planner or get trained in using outlook, etc. It would be difficult, not impossible, to do general reading at the school. It makes sense to do whatever reading possible before coming to b-school. Finally, some people come only to get grades; some come to get a holistic experience. It makes sense to have some idea on what one wants. The point is once a person comes to the campus, because of the context, which is quite powerful, the way one thinks become different. Because of pressure from day one, it may not be easy to be as planned and meticulous as one wanted to. Priorities keep fluctuating and only after a couple of terms we realize that we ended up spending time on things which never mattered to us.

PS: Yesterday evening, my laptop conked off. I am told the hard disk is no more. Have lost data and my usual convenience 😦