A memorable classroom experience at IIM Trichy.
Whenever I introspect myself, I find a pinch of dichotomy attached to most of my important decisions where my fearless heart and rational mind fight each other to come to a consensus but in many cases, they won’t. An interesting factor behind that is, my biggest decision drivers in most of the important ones were turned out to be “non-obvious”. One such driver behind pursuing post-graduation in management was to experience the intellectual environment where I wish to sit among India’s super-minds at IIM Trichy and listen to them. I’ve started doing it from day 1 here and was quite happy about the experiences I got. To me, was it a career ladder or money maker?
No.
However, I felt a blank space in my learning phase which needs to be filled. Everyone around me are excelling day by day and I was only listening to them but not able to better at what I was and move further. I’m not sure about how to fill that gap even. Again the polarity aroused and I was questioning whether is it me, who is incompatible for an IIM or it’s the pedagogy.
On a fine drizzling morning, I was attending an 8:30 am marketing session where the professor was explaining about the project rubrics and as soon as he finished explaining, I started questioning myself about the impracticality attached to the data collection part of the project and how to resolve it. Then I started concluding that it’s the pedagogy which makes me a passive learner and it’s not my cup of tea. The effect of not having breakfast irritated me a bit and suddenly I asked the professor that “Are you doing it intentionally that even after knowing the impracticalities in data collection, you still want us to do it, is it really needed.? isn’t fair.?
He asked me to explain the question further. Then I told my personal opinion on entire IIM’s pedagogy and the polarity attached to it. For that, he answered “As an institute, we facilitate experiential learning by various methods and always strive to move towards an aspirational achievement which is feasible in the long run and this leads you there. But it’s up to you where you have to consciously take the right path and apply whatever you learn here in or outside the classroom. And also you have to be curious enough why you learn this and I’m happy to witness that in your question”.
That’s the moment it stuck me that, so far I’ve been a fool who question myself rather throwing it out to the world which I was in. A fool who was curious to learn but dumb enough to share the thoughts which reflects upon my understanding. A fool who believed that being in a knowledgeable environment will also make me an intellect. A fool who never realized the importance of the words “The person who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the one who does not, is a fool for life”.
The moment which made me realize that self-introspection gets completed when self-realization happens and made me a happy soul who found an answer to the dichotomy of my decisions and filled the blank in my learning phase with “Curiosity”. Its memorable because it’s a life learning.!
Which ABG company would you want to work for and why?
I would like to be a part of
Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited as I always have an attachment with Textile Industry. It’s mainly because that I hailed from Coimbatore, Manchester of South India where my livelihood started with a textile mill. My father worked and retired as a labour in spinning department of an NTC mill and I still remember that I always look for my Pooja holidays where the family members of mill employees will be allowed inside for a visit. I unknowingly learnt the good and bad of that industry and I would like to be part of it with mixed feelings and learnings.
This article is written by Manicka Prabu - Class of 2019.