The journey at MDI has just started but it feels like I was a part of it since forever. It has taught me a lot of things already nonetheless many more stones will be turned soon. The day I had put my foot in this premium institute, it instilled a feeling of pride and excitement in me. That was the moment when I realised that pursuing MBA will be tough yet satisfying at the end of the day.
Journey to the campus of dreams started the day I received my offer letter, it was a mixed feeling of anxiety and euphoria. Packed with dreams, I travelled throughout the length of the country, reaching the place, where I am going to embark on a journey to my future. I still remember my first sight of entering the campus, a lush green abode of learning in the midst of a concrete jungle, away from all the hustle and bustle of the city of Gurgaon. The yellow city (due to the thick sheet of pollution in the sky) turns green inside the campus, and so do the people. I can now proudly say that I am a part of a mini ecosystem that evolves continuously and that ecosystem is none other than my MDI.
My best experience at the campus so far has been participating in the King of Kings (KOK) inter-section sports event as a part of the creatives and publicity team – and let me tell you, it was nothing short of a high-profile family drama! Emotions ran high, we cheered our batchmates till our throats were raw and cracked really bad jokes, laughing uncontrollably on them because that’s what happens when one is on two hours of sleep. But the most memorable experience for me was to design our batch t-shirt. The designing process started with a group of people sitting up till 4AM and coming up with a design which was, let’s just say, not very creative for a creatives team. Even though I appreciated the work of my selfless batchmates, as a team, we decided on not going ahead with their idea. Quite obviously, this was not appreciated and I before I knew it, I was sitting in front of Adobe PhotoShop and designing the first thing to go on the t-shirt – the logo – myself. What I didn’t notice was that I forgot to correct the resolution of the previous logo. After putting in 3 hours of coming up with something presentable, I had to trash the logo and work on something else. The t-shirt vendor was tired of hearing our CR’s ‘excuses’ about the delay (of around a day!) in sending the design. But with the help and support of my amazing batch-mates, I was able to push myself and we as a team were able to complete the design and roll it out within a couple of hours! And the appreciation we got for it later from seniors and batchmates from other sections, was the most fulfilling thing I have faced on campus so far. I would completely attribute all this to the environment I’ve been a part of at MDI – rarely do we find an environment to be as encouraging, as constructive and as boosting as the one I have seen here!
12th of June was the day when I first stepped into the campus of Management Development Institute, Gurgaon. My undergraduate college was merely a tall, glass building, so the sheer size of the campus left me in awe. But the first two days weren’t that pleasant as I struggled in the heat, running around to get myself a cooler- an essential component for a good night’s sleep. Then finally starts our induction week – mere trailer of what a b-school has in store for you. We cursed the heat, the mandatory closed-neck formal dress code, student council members for the late night sessions, we could just not understand what was happening and why our seniors were so indifferent towards us. We were yelled at for every little thing we would do out of curiosity to explore the campus. In my case, it was because we were sitting in the football field with some friends. But then after a long treacherous week the mystery unfolded and we were welcomed or as they say inducted with an awesome fresher’s party.
If my memory serves me right since a very young age I loved solving puzzles. As I grew up this love transcended into solving math problems and taking up challenges to analyse and solve problems. Considering my interests were quant heavy I decided upon pursuing MBA with a degree in Economics bridging the gap. As I landed up at MDI I was overwhelmed by the culture of serious focus on Finance and Investing. Monetrix, the Finance and Economics club of MDI had conducted a session and it took my interest in the subject to another level. Even Delta, the quant-derivative trading club of MDI conducted a session and introduced me to a whole new world of derivatives. But the experience that was really eye-opening and will stay with me for the rest of the life was a session by Unnati. Unnati is the first and largest student-driven mutual fund in the country with an AUM north of 40 million. Unnati’s members made me aware that Unnati follows the ‘value investing’ strategy for investing. Before this, I had a faint idea about the term ‘value investing’ and had heard it mostly in relation to Warren Buffet. This particular session drove up my interest in learning the basics of investing. Since that session, I have been reading a lot of material as suggested by Unnati’s members and I hope to have a comfortable grip someday on the subjects that are a pre-requisite for investing. What was indeed a very striking discovery in that session by Unnati for me was that Unnati or even investing, in general, is not exactly finance rather it is basically the art of understanding business. What made me fall in love with it, even more, is that irrespective of whether one’s domain is marketing or finance or strategy or some other, investing is a skill which anyone can master if one is eager to put in those hours of reading and thoroughly understand the methodology of analysis. Investing is a life-skill that I would like to hone and keep practicing throughout my life.
It has been just over a month that I have been a Mandevian, and I have already gathered some memorable moments. My unique experience in Management Development Institute was participating in the first distance race in my life, which was the 6k race organised by the Samaritans club, which had organised it to raise money for charity. I had been keeping myself at reasonably good fitness level and had tried to exercise whenever I got some free time in the hectic first few weeks of the first trimester of the PGPM program. Thus, even though I suffered from a lack of practice or experience in the field, my healthy eating and exercise habits in contrast to the majority of my batchmates who had not tried to follow a regime the same as me, I was confident.
Hard work, connections and holistic development were the three things I had in my mind when I came to the MDI campus. I made a goal that I will focus on these three things while I am in MDI. In just one month, the B-School gave me an extremely new experience which I had not experienced before. There were days when I did not get more than three hours of sleep and had to work the coming day. But at the same time I feel like these things were really important for getting us used to this life for the next two years.
The journey at MDI has just started but it feels like I was a part of it since forever. It has taught me a lot of things already nonetheless many more stones will be turned soon. The day I had put my foot in this premium institute, it instilled a feeling of pride and excitement in me. That was the moment when I realised that pursuing MBA will be tough yet satisfying at the end of the day.
Journey to the campus of dreams started the day I received my offer letter, it was a mixed feeling of anxiety and euphoria. Packed with dreams, I travelled throughout the length of the country, reaching the place, where I am going to embark on a journey to my future. I still remember my first sight of entering the campus, a lush green abode of learning in the midst of a concrete jungle, away from all the hustle and bustle of the city of Gurgaon. The yellow city (due to the thick sheet of pollution in the sky) turns green inside the campus, and so do the people. I can now proudly say that I am a part of a mini ecosystem that evolves continuously and that ecosystem is none other than my MDI.
My best experience at the campus so far has been participating in the King of Kings (KOK) inter-section sports event as a part of the creatives and publicity team – and let me tell you, it was nothing short of a high-profile family drama! Emotions ran high, we cheered our batchmates till our throats were raw and cracked really bad jokes, laughing uncontrollably on them because that’s what happens when one is on two hours of sleep. But the most memorable experience for me was to design our batch t-shirt. The designing process started with a group of people sitting up till 4AM and coming up with a design which was, let’s just say, not very creative for a creatives team. Even though I appreciated the work of my selfless batchmates, as a team, we decided on not going ahead with their idea. Quite obviously, this was not appreciated and I before I knew it, I was sitting in front of Adobe PhotoShop and designing the first thing to go on the t-shirt – the logo – myself. What I didn’t notice was that I forgot to correct the resolution of the previous logo. After putting in 3 hours of coming up with something presentable, I had to trash the logo and work on something else. The t-shirt vendor was tired of hearing our CR’s ‘excuses’ about the delay (of around a day!) in sending the design. But with the help and support of my amazing batch-mates, I was able to push myself and we as a team were able to complete the design and roll it out within a couple of hours! And the appreciation we got for it later from seniors and batchmates from other sections, was the most fulfilling thing I have faced on campus so far. I would completely attribute all this to the environment I’ve been a part of at MDI – rarely do we find an environment to be as encouraging, as constructive and as boosting as the one I have seen here!
12th of June was the day when I first stepped into the campus of Management Development Institute, Gurgaon. My undergraduate college was merely a tall, glass building, so the sheer size of the campus left me in awe. But the first two days weren’t that pleasant as I struggled in the heat, running around to get myself a cooler- an essential component for a good night’s sleep. Then finally starts our induction week – mere trailer of what a b-school has in store for you. We cursed the heat, the mandatory closed-neck formal dress code, student council members for the late night sessions, we could just not understand what was happening and why our seniors were so indifferent towards us. We were yelled at for every little thing we would do out of curiosity to explore the campus. In my case, it was because we were sitting in the football field with some friends. But then after a long treacherous week the mystery unfolded and we were welcomed or as they say inducted with an awesome fresher’s party.
If my memory serves me right since a very young age I loved solving puzzles. As I grew up this love transcended into solving math problems and taking up challenges to analyse and solve problems. Considering my interests were quant heavy I decided upon pursuing MBA with a degree in Economics bridging the gap. As I landed up at MDI I was overwhelmed by the culture of serious focus on Finance and Investing. Monetrix, the Finance and Economics club of MDI had conducted a session and it took my interest in the subject to another level. Even Delta, the quant-derivative trading club of MDI conducted a session and introduced me to a whole new world of derivatives. But the experience that was really eye-opening and will stay with me for the rest of the life was a session by Unnati. Unnati is the first and largest student-driven mutual fund in the country with an AUM north of 40 million. Unnati’s members made me aware that Unnati follows the ‘value investing’ strategy for investing. Before this, I had a faint idea about the term ‘value investing’ and had heard it mostly in relation to Warren Buffet. This particular session drove up my interest in learning the basics of investing. Since that session, I have been reading a lot of material as suggested by Unnati’s members and I hope to have a comfortable grip someday on the subjects that are a pre-requisite for investing. What was indeed a very striking discovery in that session by Unnati for me was that Unnati or even investing, in general, is not exactly finance rather it is basically the art of understanding business. What made me fall in love with it, even more, is that irrespective of whether one’s domain is marketing or finance or strategy or some other, investing is a skill which anyone can master if one is eager to put in those hours of reading and thoroughly understand the methodology of analysis. Investing is a life-skill that I would like to hone and keep practicing throughout my life.
It has been just over a month that I have been a Mandevian, and I have already gathered some memorable moments. My unique experience in Management Development Institute was participating in the first distance race in my life, which was the 6k race organised by the Samaritans club, which had organised it to raise money for charity. I had been keeping myself at reasonably good fitness level and had tried to exercise whenever I got some free time in the hectic first few weeks of the first trimester of the PGPM program. Thus, even though I suffered from a lack of practice or experience in the field, my healthy eating and exercise habits in contrast to the majority of my batchmates who had not tried to follow a regime the same as me, I was confident.
Hard work, connections and holistic development were the three things I had in my mind when I came to the MDI campus. I made a goal that I will focus on these three things while I am in MDI. In just one month, the B-School gave me an extremely new experience which I had not experienced before. There were days when I did not get more than three hours of sleep and had to work the coming day. But at the same time I feel like these things were really important for getting us used to this life for the next two years.
