So, finally decided to go to NUS - National University of
Singapore – for my MBA. I am still little diffident regarding the minute
details not working in my favour. Something like loan or visa or something else
quite simple but quite important missing from my preparation. But for the
moment it’s the end of three days of deliberation.
I am still not sure that I want to do an MBA. I hate hectic
schedules. I am very comfortable with back office jobs where you could be laid
back at times and where your skills are self-evident compared to the other part
of the building where you have to pretend to be doing something and highlight
every time you didn’t take a coffee break within two hours as a hallmark of
dedicated worker. But almost 7 years in an organisation such as TCS Kolkata and
I feel the lethargy seeping into my bones. It looks like I am getting dumber by
each passing second and losing my interest in the work. Suddenly almost
everything is at cross with me. To add to this all, there’s a kind of ignorance
on part of my organisation or the people who led me in recent times about my
situation. And when my efforts to get out of this organisation failed I
realised that MBA can save my day here. Contemplating on my failure to land a
job with other companies, I guess I was too cosy in my current job – with
hardly any work pressure and a reputation based on things I supposedly did ages
ago. And it was not failure all the way. I was successful in impressing one of
the guys who agreed to pay more then – around a year and half back – than what
I am earning right now. But, of course it was too much for me to get out of the
couch. I felt kind of scared about this whole shifting to another city
business. But there were other truths as well. For example I realised that I don’t
really have any great marketable skills, that I am still a very diffident
interviewee, that industry has a few square holes and I as a fluffy round mass
will not fit into any of those.
So here I am – in pursuit of making myself marketable,
acquiring some confidence, some finesse and hopefully gain some respect in my
own eyes. Coming to today, I talked to these two alumni – one from both
schools. One of them, Rajeev, sort of surprised me when he asked me to list
down the three positions I would like to see myself in. I don’t know anything
about that. and frankly, I never expected that discussion to be so precise. But
I managed to mumble something, which as far as I think, didn’t make me sound
unprepared and insincere. But he also mentioned that having such fixed goals is
not the best way to negotiate b-schools, where one should have an open mind as
much as possible at least in initial days when there’s a lot of new stuff to
tackled and internalised. And one never knows if one of these new stuff might
the just the right thing for me.
I believe this has been a general contradiction of sort with
whole MBA application and admission business. On one hand they expect you to
have a fairly reasonable career plan and on the other hand an open mind where
you can unlearn and learn many thing over and over again. The role of b schools
in facilitating a change of field has been considerable. But that hasn’t always
been as per plan. It’s natural for students to fall for something else
altogether, getting hooked onto it and then make it their bread and butter. So,
not really sure if I understand the emphasis of having a clear-cut defined
role.
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