We write to taste life twice, in the moment
and in retrospection.
~ Anais Nin
“This is your one last chance to redeem yourself”. Even as I sit here, thousands of miles away with so many months having gone by, I remember the words so clearly that my father said as I did some last minute packing the night I was leaving for the UK. A whole year of excitement lay ahead of me and I was raring to take it on.
My family had always been inclined on academics. My father completed his Ph.D in Genetics by the age of twenty nine while my mum completed her Masters in Botany after I was born. As their eldest child, they had many aspirations for me and I never was made to forget that one bit. Of course I felt pressurised, but I also felt proud. Unfortunately, I wasn’t much of a smart kid. Still, high school went on without a glitch. The setback happened in engineering college which I had joined after my A levels. I failed five of my eight papers. Never had I performed so abysmally in the past. And that had only been the beginning. I failed the next year too.
Dropping out of Engineering was one of the toughest decisions I took in my life. But for every challenge, be it academic or professional I took later, my determination and resolve to do better turned my past defeat into victory. As Confucius said, “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fall.”
For my family however, the road to redemption lay in doing something still more better- scaling the MBA mountain.
The MBA program saw its beginnings in the late nineteenth century America when there was a need felt for a higher level education for managers. The first MBAs were developed in Wharton and Harvard and in the 1960s adopted in Europe. However, interestingly the MBAs those days were targeted towards younger participants rather than older experienced managers as it is perceived to be today. Today the MBA is aimed towards developing managers for obtaining organisational goals with a trend towards shortened modified programs (Crotty and Soule 1997).
The motivations of most for pursuing an MBA are varied but most would agree that the qualification is a value-add to their career. Indeed this would stand true for most of the students in the 2008 Swansea MBA batch. Along with the added experience of studying with so many international students in a foreign nation, the cohort has gained so much more than the investment of time, effort and money it had made.
Atleast I would firmly believe so.
In effect, I would say that the prime reason for my doing this MBA was to improve my prospects in my field of work, by attaining the competencies to become a better manager and take my career to the next level faster than it would normally have taken. For the reader’s benefit, let me give a brief understanding of my career path until now. After my undergraduate degree in media studies, I took to the creative field of Advertising. As a copy writer and client servicing executive, the most important skill requirement of my job was great communication skills, the ability to create precise and lucid message. Some years later, an MA in English Literature added to my competencies and has always helped in my career. In terms of employment, I have ended up working with smaller design houses that do a lot of interesting work but provide fewer chances for career development. I then realised that an MBA could fast-track my progress. I could see that some of the difficulties I faced at work in decision making were handled better by some of my colleagues who had pursued an MBA. I had also been influenced by some friends who had done an MBA and had found it fulfilling for their career.
The decision to pursue an MBA from the UK was propelled by my desire to attain some recognition at an international level. I was also seeking a new cultural experience, besides, travel is truly educative. An MBA program is not only about being taught by teachers, but also about collaborative learning from one’s batchmates. What better way is there to enhance one’s learning curve than from the experiences of a motley bunch of international students?
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