The Search
The reason why there are so few articles on my web site is that the MBA course I am doing is keeping me busy with countless “Copy+Paste” assignments, reading imp mgmt books like the latest one by Lallu Prasad Yadav or indulging in “value-adding activities” like burning DVDs of “That 70s Show”.
Now that we are in to our second year, having completed the Summer internship where we “applied the theoretical concepts learned in first year to actual practical applications for finding optimum solutions to real world Business problems keeping in mind the long tem organizational goals and vision”, I tell you guys life’s not the same anymore.
I don’t know if others agree with me but the lectures in this Sem seem to be so long that I fear missing on the eventful world out side.
Suddenly in this semester, the gym is the “in” thing to do. As if the gym on our campus is not enough, people are joining other professional gyms by paying atrocious sums of money. I stayed away from this mess for a long time, but when a new Gym opened right in front of my house in Kothrud, I also took the plunge. My roomies here had a bet that I wont last more than a week…………………………………..they won the bet.
You see ,some decades ago, I used to be an athlete who used to run daily and keep away from drinks so as to maintain a proper physique. Now I have become a drinker with a running problem.
Last week our Corporate Interface Team (CIT) had organized an “Entrepreneurship Meet” where we had eminent speakers deliver lectures about their start-ups, the hardships they faced and the “essential qualities” of an entrepreneur. Suddenly no one on campus is talking about placements but about being an entrepreneur. I wondered (with due respect to CIT) whether it is possible to be a entrepreneur just by attending these kind of meets?
One speaker that stood out amongst all (including the famous Mumbai Dabbawallahs) was Mr.Mahesh Murthy who made clear the simple fact that we (students) are all different and have different aspirations and still when a company comes for placements, we all apply to the same company. The tone of the speech was similar to the one of Larry Ellison’s speech at the graduating class of 2000 at Yale University. He talked about us trying to “fit in” rather than “fitting the world in” to our aspirations.
The problem is you see that there’s so much competition in India. Even if you are one in a million, there are still thousand people like you.
Also it doesn’t help that the curriculum is not updated with students learning from books which have been written in the 60s. Every year thousands of MBA grads across different B-Schools enter the industry, all of whom have been injected with the same dose that its important to satisfy the customer. In fact our marketing textbooks say that it is no longer enough to satisfy the customer, the customer should be delighted. Moving ahead from delight, another one talks about customer thrill. What next – Customer orgasm ?
Life in a B-School is indeed patterned. Like the Oracle in The Matrix said “You have already made a choice. You are here to find out why you made that choice”.
Like Neo , I am also searching for an answer.
One response so far
Very rightly said gaurav. Most people don’t even know what they are looking for in an mba. ……Very few colleges like the IIMs do encourage Entrepreneurship……Rest of the colleges just talk about it.
But like Neo, keep searching for an answer and u will find one !