and finally the school...

And yeah, finally when I reached the school, the famed NUS Business School, it swept me over with awe. NUS is certainly one of the best universities in the world and it definitely shows. Business School is one of its jewels and is regularly upgrading itself to be in the top-ranks of business world. The dynamism, the pace and the attitude to do anything were the most important things that I liked about my school.

NUS has state of the art infrastructure, brilliant faculty and excellent policies, which motivate to nothing but learn, practice and implement and I made this my 3 point agenda for business education. After a long time, I was really enjoying what I was doing and that added up to my enthusiasm to excel. Although some part of it bored me, but the case studies, project presentations and swarming reports that we prepared with zeal, perked me up and kept me running.

During the first sem, we also enjoyed a lot with different events like Fresher's Welcome Party, International Day, Diwali Night and other networking nights. Apart from those we also attended a lot of corporate presentations where we tried to find out the best employer for ourselves. Overall, the learning was tremendous and it was all going well when we were struck with the D-word, the exams.

The Anticipation

Within the waiting time, I got lucky and got a chance to go to the fabulous city of New York which I have described in my blog NYC Travelogue. Actually it was quite a respite since I had something better to think about that meditating over and over my decision about MBA and my financial planning for that. I took almost a month’s leave before my course was supposed to begin and visited many friends and family members in that time. I attended marriage of friends in that time and basically enjoyed a lot before it got too late to remember what enjoyment means.

For a large chunk of that time I was at my home just relaxing, eating and surfing the net as I didn’t have anything better to do. Everybody around me was excited with the notion that I am going for study in a foreign country and will be onto something real big after that. I too had big dreams and was planning for the same in that idle time. I was happy to quit coding which I hated before and now think was not a bad option if it earns you decent salary and makes you visit wonderful places like Bahamas, Barbados and New York. Now I was jobless and the thought of not getting salary in my bank account at the end of month anymore was scaring me. I was soon going to become a poor student but the problem was I was not able to cut down on spending no matter how hard I tried. I just let it go with the thought that it will also go with time.

Actually as the time was approaching for me to approach my destination, all my confidence of getting something better from a management degree was evaporating. I was forgetting the teachings of “Thinking Big” and was many times awaken with the dreams from “Snapshots from the Hell”.

Before leaving India I was trying to enjoy every moment and do all my favorite things because I didn’t know when I am going to get opportunity to that again in my life. With all these thoughts, plans and premonitions, I set-off for Singapore to discover myself and to discover new ways to discover myself. When the flight took of from the Delhi airport, a distinct fear crept in and it was nothing new. The fear was “Whether I have made the right decision”. I knew I have taken a big risk and prayed to God to guide me through the tough times if there are any coming my way. In the end before dozing off in the dimmed lights of the plane I thought…” If you can’t take risk, you can’t make it big”. But was that another consolation….or….

The Preparations

After struggling through my decision of studying practical sciences and comparing all pros and cons of doing an MBA, the toughest part was to select the right school for it. Believe me it is tougher than finding the right girl/boy for you. Anyways, considering all the ifs and buts, I applied to a couple of schools and got into NUS-Business School. It is one of the nicest schools in Asia and one of the cheapest in the world and is very well reputed.

The main problem(if I call it one) with my admission was that I got an offer at least 6 months before the start of the session and after that there was such a huge gap that time was hard to pass. And when you have so much time to kill, your mind becomes so hyper-active that you get tense over petty things which would never have come to your occupied mind. There was a huge anticipation in the mind which happens with every new venture in your life but when you are just about to kick your almost settled working life to spend all savings, get a loan, spend that too, loose 2 years of your salary and all of that for a chance to get entry into the so called MBA club, it hits you like you have just come out of a nice boozing party and the hangover is pounding hammers in your head. In that situation you are bound to think that why in the hell did I have to drink that much. The same feeling was in my heart but the only (or the biggest) difference here was that my hangover was not going to get over soon and was going to haunt me for life.

But then I consoled myself that this was my choice and I will do what I always wanted to do. At that point of time I didn’t know that this consolation is also not going to last long and all my dreams about doing the right thing, getting into right field, finding the right job are going to hit me back to back like continuous Tequila shots hits your mind and you get floored. I cudn’t quite understood at that time that I too was going to get floored pretty soon.

The Prologue

"Why do I want to do MBA"

I have asked myself this question many times and no matter how much I think about it, how much I introspect myself, I could not find a definitive answer. But then I think that so was the case with many of my old decisions and is the case with many other MBA aspirants who are lured to MBA world with high salaries, niche job profiles, big companies, fabulous perks and a pride to your family and people connected to you. My case was also almost same and a few or more of the above things got me enticed to the MBA world.

But was I always interested in management, and my heart shouts....NO. In my childhood I always wanted to become a Cricketer but that was no suitable career option or rather no option for my family :(. Nobody listened to me when I cried many times to join a cricket academy. After realizing that I surely can't run away from home to pursue my interest, I decided to do more sensible things (at least according to my family) and decided to study social sciences (especially economics) and wanted to study the same after intermediate. But again my family's interests made me major in Mathematics during school. Though initially I hated it just because it was forced on me but later I realized the beauty of the subject and went on to become an engineering graduate from a renowned institute of India. The four years which I spent in IT-BHU were some of the most fun and enjoyable days of my life and friends I made there are the best buddies in this world.

But even after 4 years of engineering and 3 years of job in IT, one small fire deep in my heart refused to die down (though my mind could never find a suitable fuel for that and always tried to ration it out). This fire was of doing something different, something unique, something I can be proud of. Nothing that I was doing till then was that outstanding (no matter how outstandingly I did my job) to make that fire feel quenched. My old penchant for practical sciences (as I call management) made me go out to search for a better avenue and try out doing what I wanted to do. I still have a long way to go before I find out whether it was the right decision or not, but still one needs to try and that's what I did :)