What do you learn during your MBA course? Learnings in MBA broadly can be categorized into two areas-
Academic Learnings-
This includes mainly theoretical learnings and its application in projects. This gives data and frameworks to analyze and think structurally. The part of learning comes from case studies; it put you in the shoe of the CXO of companies and ask you to act for a particular situation. You read the case, then try to understand the reasons for success or failures. This is a great method of learning, but here learning is retrospective. As the saying goes, case learning is done backward, but life must be live forward! Moreover in real life, you don’t get a chance to redo things as you can reread cases while learning from it. In life, whatever choice you make, you got to stick with it, and you also don’t get all the information to chose things, here guts work. Hence when it comes to performing in real life, academic learning doesn't give a good correlation.
But learning from textbook and cases is also very important, it sharpens your understanding and help in many ways when it comes to performing in real-life situations. The most important learning from projects/ case studies and submissions is performing under pressure and time constraints. In the first term projects or submissions that might bother you 10 days in due submission, for similar projects and submissions, time will become 2 hours work in later terms! This kind of efficiency gets developed while working under back to back deadlines. That’s altogether a different case that no matter how efficient you become; you do things at the last moment only! Perhaps that’s human nature.
You also learn the team performing from group projects and group submissions. You get exposed to different thinking processes of your group members. Some members might be difficult to work with but you got to work with them anyway, that's also the part of the learning.
Learnings from extra-curricular activities-
This is a true MBA! Literally, it doesn’t matter how much you know; the only thing that matters is how much you can sell and believe me MBAs are a salesperson in one way or another. In MBA you learn to become comfortable in doing anything; you become Jack of all trades.
But being able to do at least average in every field just can’t come from being good in academic learning. It is being achieved through cultural and sports activities. It might not sound that important, but cultural and sports activities are as important as academic learning when it comes to MBA! Actual learning from these activities proves more important than academic learning when you go to the corporate world. The most important skills you learn from these activities are networking and becoming a team player.
Networking- If you don't do networking during MBAs, then believe me your degree is as good as giving you only your first job. You get the first job through your college second through your networking. Not only in giving you a job, but in many ways, networking helps. Making networking is the most important during the MBA. It doesn't matter whether you are an introvert or extrovert, you have to talk to people, and not only know them but you also have to let them know you!
Bonds and understandings become strong among people when they share a common interest in some activities. Sports and cultural activities are the best means to meet people who share a common interest. These are great means for networking.
Team Player- One you enter the corporate world, you would take responsibility for not only yours performance but also your team members. Your performance would majorly depend on your team's performance. Hence it becomes very important to learn people's skills and become a team performer if you want to do better in your job.
Sports teaches to be a team player. It also gives you the opportunity to make bonding with your teammates, along with keeping you fit. Although going to the gym might be more effective to keep yourself fit, but sport makes you bodily as well as mentally fit. Importantly, you would not get time to do both the gym and playing some sports. Time is the most valuable resource in MBA, yes, even more valuable than money.