(continued)
Summers
Summers provided the perfect platform for me to try and do new things. My guide was well aware of my IT work-ex background but I managed to meet his expectations in my project. He gave me a short-term live project for 2 weeks after my main project and this 2.5 month summers experience helped me establish the perfect platform for a marketing career.
Second year - July 2011 to April 2013
Second year was the time to achieve greater focus towards post-MBA career in the form of selecting the right electives. It was also a transformation from a junior to senior with some added responsibilities like guiding those juniors who look up to you. Everything went well for me. I did not bother too much about academic marks. Placement was a bit of a rocky ride for me with me missing out on all day 1 companies. With the help of some close friends, I worked on my weaknesses over the next one month and finally managed to get through Godrej & Boyce where I am working currently, marketing industrial products.
Free advice (lessons and tips)
* Having a firm career goal in mind would help to a great extent. Entering with a clueless mind and deciding to decide on the goal after joining would only put you in a fix since you would hardly get enough time to do deep thinking about your goals.
* It pays to be fully aware and prepared for the real rigour of an MBA course. Joining and then grumbling about 100-page case studies, tight deadlines etc in confessions pages just takes the sheen out of the MBA. Get rid of the engineering college mindset, in case you harbour one.
* Rather than worry about placement right from Day 1, it pays to spend the first trimester focusing only on learning and skill building.
* If you have not done anything new before and want to do so, go ahead and do it. Do not worry about the result.
* Strengthen your own abilities first before looking at your competitors. Then benchmark and aim for improvement.
* You would end up either loving your B-school or completely hating, detesting, despising it. If you belong to the former category, make sure to do give back to your alma mater after you pass out.
* The two months of anxiety before my admissions taught me the meaning of 'putting in one's best'. There is no use in putting in half-hearted, half-baked efforts and saying to yourself "I gave my best".
* Being the last person to convert the waiting list and join, I understood the need for involvement. The real action is inside the circle. Standing on the circumference and calling it as 'involvement' is like being optimistic despite needing 36 runs to win off just 1 ball. Be a part of the real action, go inside the circle, do not be a borderline case.
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P.S : I was waiting to write AIWTSAC the moment after joining BIM but got soaked in the MBA pressure (or rather, rigour). Now thanks to abhimukh, got to pen down a long awaited story.
Cheers,
Sekhar. S
Batch of 2012,
Bharathidasan Institute of Management, Trichy