February - The Most Exciting Month Of My MBA Career At NMIMS

Coming back home is always a good feeling, but never did I think that my February visit to Mangalore would be one of the best ever. At NMIMS Mumbai, as first-year students, we visit our respective hometowns in the month of February for a social internship. When this was told to us, we were all really excited about it. I mean, why not? Who wouldn’t want to go home after getting the full experience of all the hustles and bustles of the big city?

We were done with our midterms of the third trimester on the 30th of Jan and the very next day, I flew to Mangalore. As expected, it was a great feeling to be back home after so long. The beautiful beaches, temples only added to the beauty of the city. My internship was to begin on the 1st of February. The NGO I am interning under is called DEEDS (Development Educational Services). They believe in the empowerment of women, and what I love the most about them is that they strongly follow what they believe in. In today’s world, it is very hard to find people who really follow what they preach, but at my NGO every single person did, and I realised this over the course of time.

It’s been two weeks since I joined DEEDS and there’s so much that I’ve learnt during this time. I’ve worked on the website content, designed brochures for them, worked on improving their social media reach and I’ve had about 2-3 field visits. The field visits have been great. I’ve always loved travelling alone, and since I was the only student from Mangalore I didn’t really have an option. But I’m glad to have had it this way! It’s so nice to meet new people and get to know about their experiences. There was one thing that was common to each of my field visits. Every person that I had spoken to had a glow on their face while they explained the working of their NGO to me (Especially the achievements). What I love the most about my social internship here is that I’ve been assigned the work that I’m the best at and it feels great that my skills are being put to good use. I worked as a content writer prior to my MBA. Never did I know, that I’d be using my content writing skills at an NGO. But trust me, the feeling is beautiful! It also adds so much to my pre-existing skills. That’s not it. There’s so much to learn when you are working at an NGO and what I’ve learnt the most is patience. You work with people from different backgrounds and their skills may not match with that of yours. So, it’s important for you to understand that. I used to be so impatient when I just joined but now I’ve better understood the meaning on patience. In fact, I exercise it. No, it’s like those fairness creams which claim complete transformation. But yes, I’ve started realising that you need to calm down a bit, and sometimes even slow down if you have to teach the other person. Initially, I expected everyone to match my pace, but gradually I realised that a lot of them expected the same from me.