Survival

The first week of MBA is behind me. It was without doubt interesting. Learning through cases is really good. One has to come prepared, not only read the cases but also discuss it with your CAN group and have a solution in hand before entering the class. This makes the classes every bit interesting and gives you a feeling that you are really learning something. Here are some of my observations and realizations from week one.

I am very bad with names. I just cant remember the names. I have close to 130 batch mates and I still don’t know the names of more than half of them. I forget the names a second after they introduce themselves. The same happens with cases too. I can see how the professors remember the names of every character in each case and always mention them by names while I tend to mention them as “that store owner” and “the chief doctor”. Remembering names is very important in business and I suck at it.

Class Participation (CP)– When you have got your admission you always have the feeling that you outsmarted the interviewer with your verbal skills and you will have no problems with class participation. You even feel happy that 40% of the grades are from CP. When you land up here though, you are stuck. You don’t have anything to say in class half of the time and in the other half you have something but everyone else also has that and mostly the chance goes to someone else. The really good fellows can be easily spotted. Those are the ones who put their hands up for the difficult questions and really come up with a good answer. I am certainly not one of them, at least as of now. And never underestimate the professors. Some here are of the view that they really can't track class participation. They are so very wrong. I actually admire the way how the professors remember every point that each one of us has made and how they get back to the right person when some point comes up later , sometimes even after an hour. And till now no professor had pointed at the wrong person. I fell pathetic thinking I cant even remember the names:)))

The professors - When I first researched about the institute I found that there are very few non-filipinos in the faculty. Infact I even thought of asking the interviewers about the faculty diversity at AIM but was advised not to do so if I was serious about getting into AIM. Having spent three weeks here my apprehensions have vanished. Their educational background and experience are on par with the best. There are accountants who have worked with big organizations and headed associations, consultants who have worked on big construction projects here, economists who still have big responsibilities with the government and advisors who have worked with past presidents. Their nationality is of the least concern.I seemed to have forgotten that AIM is called the “Harvard of the east”

WAC – Written Analysis of Case is the thing that the students here fear most about. We had our first WAC on Friday and everyone was a bit scared about getting one on the very first week. It was a sit down WAC meaning a straight four hour session where we need to read a case and write the analysis at one go. The seniors mostly had overnight WACs where they were given a case on Friday evening that had to be submitted Saturday early morning which meant they had to do it overnight. I enjoyed the WAC though I bungled it big time by dealing too generally with the case and giving long term solutions rather than suggesting a precise to-the-point solution. This is exactly what the instructions told us not to do.

Learnings from the first week : I need to improve a lot .....in everything.