A residential MBA program from a top ranked school is many things, but boring is not one of them! “Never a dull moment” is an often used cliché, but it is probably the truest in the context of the one (or two) year you would spend in an MBA program. You will make friends, enemies, suffer heartbreak, revel in shared glories, boast about individual achievements, worry about exams, take a philosophical approach when the marks come out, bunk classes, curse fate, and… Well, I could go on and on, but I’m certain that you have gotten the picture by now.
To illustrate my point, I’m going to recount a real life experience. For reasons of confidentiality and reputations to protect, the character names are fictitious, but every word of this tale is completely true!
We had a one year program at our institute. This meant insane amount of studies crammed into our already hectic schedule of Pool, Poker, Frisbee and general lassitude. And in one of our terms, we had this course called… Let’s call it Random Management Jargon (RMJ). So RMJ was taught by Professor Y who freely admitted that he wanted to call the course Bull’s Hit (which it actually was) but was persuaded by the Dean to call it RMJ as no one would apply otherwise. Full marks for the effort!
So Prof. X had a weird way of punishing people who came late to his class. He would ask them to do things which were normally embarrassing for them. And since all his classes were in the morning there were quite a few latecomers. In one instance (where I managed to somehow get to class in time, having not slept the night before) he pulled up this guy and asked him to sing the national anthem. The person in question stood in silence for a whole minute before starting on the Duck Song (Watch Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtN1YnoL46Q). When the Prof stopped him and asked him what he was doing, he, very calmly said, “But you never specified which nation! I’m pretty certain that they sing this in Duckburg!”
To give some context, the very song was used by the Professor in a previous class to illustrate some obscure concept which I have forgotten about. While he felt passionately about the said concept, we all thought that it was useless, and that the song was extremely irritating to boot. So when this guy started singing the song and then very seriously came up with that absolute gem of an answer, there was not a single soul in class (the ones in the very first bench do not count) who were not laughing their heads off and banging the table. Needless to say, the Prof got extremely flustered, but to his credit regained his composure shortly.
This was but one memory that crowds to the surface whenever I think on my MBA days. The serious mood in the morning giving away to peals of laughter – I’m pretty certain I’ll carry the scene forever with me!
We go prepared to a B school – Prepared to transform, prepared to toil for our goals and prepared to excel. However, no amount of preparation is going to be enough for the sheer volume of experiences and AHA moments the school has to offer. So also be prepared to be surprised!
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