Overcoming challenges? Achieving Ambitions? #NextPlay - Shabnam Manji, NMIMS Mumbai

How did you overcome challenges to achieve your ambitions?

An age old question. Something, almost every moderator would like to measure you upon. Here is my story -

“Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom”

These words by George Washington Carver is my answer to the question “how I overcame challenges to achieve my ambitions”. There was a day not too far away when managing to put together two square meals on the table  was a challenge for my mother. A victim of an abusive marriage, she had little hope from life except faith that educating her two children to the best of her ability would be her key to unlock the door of freedom. And it was! When you have little hope, education not only gives you a canvas to dream and but also enables the means to make them real. Want coupled with hard-work and blessings from a few benefactors brought me to NMIMS where a degree in B.B.A. gave me my first pay-check. This was the beginning of my 2.0. ‘Education & learning’ - a formula proven by time became my companions for life. They took me across the world, to places that were once even beyond dreams. It connected me to people who made me crave learning even more. This time, not just for the pay-check, but to become the best version of myself that could do her bit in the world. So here I am, back again at NMIMS, leaving the cushion of that once craved pay-check to educate myself and unlock another door of freedom – this time may be that of self-actualization.