My experiments with MBA - First Quarter at XL

As I sit in the class staring blankly at the slides being displayed, my mind wanders off (as it often does :D) and I start to think about everything that has happened since I entered the hallowed gates of XLRI. What have the past six months really meant to me? - Chaotic for sure filled with intense yet fun and challenging moments

Like everyone who gets a chance to be here, I too entered this place with a lot of energy, passion (the elusive quality everybody seems to be looking for!!) and a fair bit of confidence (a shade of overconfidence maybe, time will tell...)in myself and my abilities. Then it came..BAM!! Reality hit me hard in the face and I found out that I was not good at a whole bunch of things. And here are a few lessons that I have learnt during these six months.

Humility - You don’t really know as much you think you know

Getting into a B-School, you are likely to believe that you are up there, the best of the lot, the crème de la crème so to say (which to a certain extent, is true!!). Many people here graduated top of the school, gold medallists in college and an awesome job to back that up, but there is quite a high probability that many are still idiots (me included!) when it comes to business. And it’s not their fault. Business is something which comes with experience and that has no substitute. There may be examples to the contrary but what I say this is true for majority of the population. The good news is, MBA education will shatter your dream world and bring you back to reality.

I learnt I wasn’t here for a walk in the park. Even in such a short span I have learnt quite a bit in areas I thought I was good at and discovered many which I didn’t even know existed. Being humbled is one the best things that has happened since it will help me not only in my education here but also in my life. Learning stops if you have a chip on your shoulder and believe that you know it all. XL makes sure you realize that.

Stay Calm

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!

These lines from Rudyard Kipling’s “If” pretty much sum up everything that you need to do at a B school and in life, especially the part about keeping your head. Life at a B school comes with a lot of opportunities. But along with them come the deadlines and the stress associated with them. There have been days when I had to prepare for 2 exams the next day all the while staring down the barrel of 3 deadlines. Times like these can be pretty overwhelming. The only way to deal with this is to stay calm and believe in yourself. That and believing in the age old maxim “This too shall pass”  J.This will continue to remain true for ever. B schools just give you a taste of and prepare you for life ahead.

Bite off only what you can chew

Everybody has their strengths and weaknesses, acknowledge them

Just because you are not good at something does not mean that you are no good. There are people here who are absolutely brilliant at some courses and almost pathetically bad in some others. Over a period of time I realized that living my life with this attitude was simply not healthy. I too had my strengths. Just needed to figure out my strengths and leverage them.

This is also true in life. It’s okay to have both strengths and weaknesses. In fact it’s only human to be so. We are all imperfect (except of course if you are Sachin. He is perfect. He is God!).Play to your strengths, acknowledge you weaknesses and work on them. Success will automatically follow. This certainly is one of the biggest takeaways from my time here till now.

Make friends, not contacts

A lot is said about how you need to “network” and build “contacts” in a B school. I saw a lot of people get into the mad rush of networking without really knowing where they were going with that. I too tried to become a part of the crowd and was tempted to do what everyone was doing. But the last few months have made me realize one thing-To Make friends, not contacts. Be social, interact and try to build relationships with people as opposed to a network in the MBA sense of the term. The friends that you make and the kind of relationships you build are what determine the course of your life

And now we come to the most important part of this article. The most important thing that life here has taught me, the magic ingredient, the holy grail of all MBA’s and it is..wait for it...GAS!! ( Globally Accepted Shit, Is it??). Don’t have a clue about the problem or its solution, GAS away. The answer to life ,the universe and everything else is not 42 (Sorry Douglas Adams!) but GAS. For those who did not get the context, either read up Douglas Adams or better dismiss this line as a piece of GAS and move on.

There are many other things that life here has taught me, but the professor is really starting to stare at me and I need to concentrate fully on sleeping with my eyes open and giving the impression that I’m listening. Signing off till the next time.

– Srilu.