In exactly a month from now, 60 of us would have completed our Exec MBA. A journey that started in March 2012 … Meeting everyone for the first time in May and then classes starting from August. It seems unbelievable that we did it 🙂
I was talking to Venky, Arup and Punitha the other day and all of us said the same thing.. How did we manage to take one week off every five weeks ? How did we find time to study for an hour or two everyday and then longer on weekends? The classes ended in Oct of 2013 and it took me a month to begin enjoying a movie and not feel guilty that I was wasting time. It took me another couple of weeks to realise that there was no pre-read and no test to prepare for… But what all of us really were missing was getting together every five weeks !! Some of us managed to meet in our own cities, but we missed meeting everyone.
I attended an intro session in between and while I told the probable students about what they will get out of the program, the questions that would change, the top class professors that they will get to learn from, the pedagogy, the fact that they would interact with 59 other superstars … All true, but the biggest thing is making friends at this stage of life when usually you are just trying to keep the old friends !!
The Whatsapp group keeps buzzing, the jokes range from the harmless to lurid, depending on whether Bhat is a part of the group or not, somebody is asked to wake up and someone is told to sleep and all, Porter’s five forces comes up for discussion and Amit did a better analysis of Whatsapp’s acquisition than what came in the papers later !! Fighting with Siva over ether, Challa Garu insisting that every joke I post is a repeat, while letting Vidur repeat them and Sanchita’s valiant efforts to get the “all girls” group going, the big discussion on how Rajendra and Vandana were part of the 2% and thought of some other country other than Denmark, the bean list that Antony is topping…. As stress tends to overwhelm you, Sajid’s joke makes you smile and sometimes makes you turn red.
It’s funny how the concepts that we learnt come to us at just the right moment, even ones we thought we weren’t listening to carefully .. Just goes to show, how well the professors taught. This is a funny time, we are slowly disengaging from the academic pursuit and moving towards applying all we learnt at work, some old habits are coming back but some thoughts have changed forever. Funny also how some of the words our professors used come out of our mouths, easily and naturally.
I guess I am just wanting the next 30 days to fly by so we can all meet again and get our certificates and have some more fun. PGPMAX 2013 – every one of you is a Rockstar !! See you soon.