A day before the main day, full of mixed emotions, right from happiness, pride, sense of satisfaction to nervousness and a tad bit of stress, the day would be finally arriving. You are finally a part of the b-school you always wished to be a part of. The ecstatic feeling of starting an MBA, making you feel extremely professional and responsible, you stand there waiting to go through the orientation. There you are, surrounded by so many people, right from your batch mates to teachers to seniors, all ready to bombard you with all sorts of rules, regulations, course curriculum, time tables, allotment of classes etc., you stand there wishing you will have a good batch, nice people, helpful seniors, amazing mentors and the ability to move in the right direction.
The first week, high on networking where you meet tons of different people and participate in a variety of group activities to let you interact with beautiful people with whom you end up building long-term bonds, and this marks the beginning of the beautiful journey at your b-school. The orientation week gets over, now comes the final class allotment where you are super tense to see whether you would be getting the same people you met and bonded with, during orientation, or a completely new set of people. There it goes, the second week begins, lectures start, each one ends up introducing oneself to the class and the lecturer, day on day you start noticing people and their niceness and there the longest bonds tend to form with these division people.
Then begins the phase of millions of case studies and corporate competitions, not knowing what needs to be done in the first month, you start off enrolling into every new competition that comes your way not realising the first 3 months are indeed going to be extremely tedious but amazingly enriching. Then comes the committee week, whereby there are so many different committees to choose from and you have to go through rounds of interviews only to be a part of the committee you wish to be in. Some get what they want, some don’t. At that point of time you have some people cribbing, crying, celebrating and then the next journey of the bond building begins. Committee work begins and there you are balancing your studies, competitions, case studies, attendance and of course the mandatory MBA parties.
I believe one must be mentored rightly to be able to take the right decisions in the first 3 months of MBA schooling as this actually shapes the next few months which would be spent in the respective b-schools. The right balance of studies, participation, other mandatory work is all that is needed to ace it. When these preliminary months get over, you have already built the right mentorship bonds, you have crossed some of the toughest milestones and there you are at the beginning of your next trimester, extremely mature and accustomed to the various deadlines and yes, at the end of it become a great multitasker. To conclude, irrespective, the first few months may be extremely gruelling but they end up being few of the best months full of learning and development.