Sipping my coffee I couldn’t help but notice my BlackBerry beeping with its iconic red notification light. Turning attention away from the conversation I saw the mail from IIM Jammu, and it’s an offer letter for the PGP program. It was a very different feeling, as I was looking forward to pursue my MBA after 8 years of long IT career and was present with IIM Jammu as one of the options. And I decided to take up this as an opportunity which will be out of my comfort zone.

The journey to Jammu began starting with resignation at the current workplace to getting the mandatory documents ready for college and finally preparing myself to be a student again. Luckily for my I had my wife by side to make this transition pretty smooth and helping me throughout the next 4 weeks. The interaction with seniors before reaching the campus helped in preparing myself in a better manner.

The weather here is like any other city, it's warm and humid at times. I was surprised why our seniors wanted us to carry proper winter clothing. The answer to this only came in the month of October when the winter started and it does get very cold with temperatures reaching unto 1° C. The location of the campus is pretty accessible to get most the things. There are plenty of food joints, movie theatres and some malls around which made my transition from Hyderabad to Jammu a bit simpler. But it still took about a month to get used to the place and the people around.

The main challenge that lay ahead of me was to get used to the student life again after 8 long years, and it took me 2 quizzes and a subject on statistics to pull up my socks. Then slowly things started to fall in place. The batch has a pretty good diversity in terms of gender, work-ex, educational background and location. Things got pretty busy with late-night group discussions, Maggi and chai at the mid-night mess , playing football in rain to studying intensely before the term exams.

And when we are done with the exams, there are plenty of places to see in and around Jammu. We were able to cover, McLoedgunj – Dharamshala, Patnitop – Nathatop – Sanasar, Shri Mata Vaisho Devi Temple, Dalhousie and the trip to Kashmir covering Pahalgam, Gulmarg, stay at Dal Lake and the Shikara ride during the winters to experience the valley and snow like never before.

Jammu is rich in local food and heritage. We take time out from the busy schedule to take walk down the heritage of the city which consists of several palaces and forts. The street food in Jammu is exceptional with rich variety and taste. The staple food in winters was the steamed momos with spicy chutney.

Apart from our learning on campus, our batch has participated in International Immersion program, which took us to the ESCP Europe, Berlin campus where we have studied internationalization strategies through cross-cultural learnings and management concepts. Not limiting to the classroom learning, I got to travel to a few neighbouring countries like Poland, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary and a trek through swiss alps. My solo trip to the second world war memorials like the Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory and the underground bunkers was eye-opening and overwhelmingly nostalgic. My final trip was to the Auschwitz concentration camp, which was like a dream come true and a truly unique experience.

When I look back now after the 20 months at IIM Jammu, I feel like a more changed person with much-enriched learning, inside as well as outside the classroom.

P.S. Most learning happens in the hostel rooms.

harshakpr

MBA After 8 Years Of Work Experience - The IIM Jammu Journey