Motherhood and EMBA @ISB .. Resemblance is uncanny

1. The News! The tears of joy, the butterflies in your stomach, the sheer feeling of being on cloud 9 and then you look around just to be sure .. I hope I am not dreaming. Sounds familiar...
2. The constant introspection before Arrival: The never-ending timorousness, will I be able to handle it ? What if something goes wrong ?The infamous rhetorical question "Will I be a good mom?" to "Will I be a good student or to be precise will I get good grades."
3. The unforeseen after Arrival: Every stage has it new set of challenges, the feeding troubles, the teething troubles, what if this tiny thing crawls out of the the 3 feet high crib. Similarly every term has innumerable quandaries waiting to be explored.The Regression and Correlation troubles, Decision making is indeed shrouded in uncertainty. "Debit what comes in -How? Credit what goes out- Why?" What if everyone else in class understood this? Am I the only falling asleep?....Just when you think you have finally figured it all both (the Tiny Baby and the Mighty Prof) throw a challenge which leaves you perplexed and you murmur, yeh to syllabus mein nahi tha.
4. Decoding the Tiny Baby and Might Prof: By the way both these species are absolute delight, Never a dull moment. The amount of energy they exude has no parallels in the real world. They make you laugh, Naaah.., Not just laugh!, laugh your heart out. They open the door to the whole new world of FIRST TIME...
5. The FIRSTs: first smile, the first sound, the first step. First night out, decoding the first financial statement, the first group assignment where none of the conclusions matched, the first presentation where the screeching bell ensured you didn't digress, and taught you Time Management ; your first Nash Equilibrium "Drink Black Coffee , Drink More Black Coffee"
6. Return of Sleepless nights: Another striking resemblance is the sleepless nights, There is no such thing as 8 hours sleep, you better learn the art of Power nap, else you are doomed for sure. The question on which sound is more dreadful, The baby howling or the clock ticking in the examination hall or your heart pounding when your results are uploaded. I await the scientific determination or statistical response after sampling the unbiased population and within a reasonable Confidence Interval. Make sure your response lies within 2 standard errors of the mean :-)
7. Best Practices and Lessons Learnt: Your Life's not the same anymore..Best Practices of handling baby and the Lessons Learnt from Executive MBA is lifetime project to be handled the Agile way, Waterfall might be injurious to health. Sprint Reviews, Sprint Retrospectives, and piling Product Backlog is the new way of life , All user stories eventually lead to one EPIC. All your subjects are intertwined, Go back to your BASICS else the DERIVATIVES, the PROBABILITIES, the CASH FLOW, the INCOME STATEMENT will come back to haunt you. Learnt to SEGMENT Never lose sight of your TARGET else you will be swept off your POSITION.

Among all the similarities, this ones my favorite.A Mom is a mom for a lifetime, An ISBian is an ISBian for a lifetime. You dont wanna let go! You are latched on to this new identity of yours :-) Always and Forever!