Reflection for the curious souls

Life is a puzzle. A jigsaw puzzle that needs to be put together to get the right frame of picture. If I see myself in the mirror and compare myself how did I appear eight months ago, I find myself changed. The way I gaze at my own reflection now, is not the same as I did time back. More than the external, matters what lies inside. The beauty lies within and the changes that happen inside gets reflected outside. No one can judge you better than yourself. Self-introspection is imperative to understand how transformation takes place and thus self-learning takes into action. Graduating seven years back and living a life of near to isolation, preparing for an exam that gave me the strength to bear the extreme, was my past. Qualifying an interview for MBA and starting with academics from scratch, with a peer group coming from diverse background and ethnicity is now my present.

Sharing a classroom full of people with varying qualifications, hailing from different parts of the nation speaking different languages was the first newness for me. A class full of people from all the states of the country. I had never experienced this before. Is this a dream or an illusion? A na?ve me, taking a seat in a classroom with people from different backgrounds and culture, with no idea about the regional languages that people speak. That itself was a sudden jolt to me. Though I read newspaper for three continuous years preparing for civil services and I thought reading the newspaper could give me an overview about the people of the whole nation. I was wrong. Trying to understand others and making myself understood was the first barrier that I had to face in communicating with my batch mates. Running at midnight from hostel rooms to the library to get the CVs verified was something that I never imagined in my mental precincts before coming here. Attending classes during the day and completing the home works after classes. And in addition to this, preparing for the surprise quizzes be like, getting shocks at any moment in the classroom via mails. Certainly, the schedule and the nature of the course, gave me an impetus to buck up and get agile and be the one to handle any shock beforehand. However, still, all the preparations got into vain. How much ever, I tried to control all the factors of lessening the shock factors, the more I saw myself vulnerable and exposed to failure. Learning to be okay with the failure has become the new normal now. Earlier, it was only about avoiding and expelling failure from my life. Now it is just about compromising with it and trying to get something useful out of that.??

One of the incidents that propelled me to learn was the meeting for the group projects. To be able to come on a consensus for a proposed meeting time and then making it definite to reach the venue was the toughest part of any group project. There were instances when no one showed up for a decided time and venue for the meeting. And there were instances when everybody has reached but no one is prepared to initiate the discussion and carry out the tasks. Also, in some of the instances there were assertions that I was trying to control and not allowing others to play any influential role. It is challenging to be a part of a group where your peers are younger than you and then there are times when you are the only female in the group and you do not share the same voice that the other male members of the group do. To get flexible enough to work with your team mates who are entirely different from yourself in age, gender, beliefs and ideology had been the biggest learning of the whole project courses which is the necessary part of our curriculum. And, the second incident that gave me the rise and shine platform, was the class participation. Sitting on the end rows of the class room and voicing your opinion for case discussions amongst all the students was a near to impossible task in the beginning. However, as time passed by, I tried my best to prepare beforehand. Ensuring to read the case twice before putting forward relevant points in the classroom and also, trying to know how others think about the same case, was the most constructive learnings that I tried gaining from sitting in the class.

To be a part of an institute that offers experiences to excel in every aspect of life is a blessing. Also, getting to learn something different which challenges your mental faculty each day is also an opportunity not found everywhere and anywhere. Managing to solve complex problems with the help of your team members making use of all resources and capabilities and to channelize the core competencies that each one possesses is one of the best experiences that I have tried to gain. Learning happens at the cusp of failure. Each time I was failing to achieve my goals, each time I mustered up the courage to get back to the normal, trying to fight with the problems whether big or small. Working in the group projects had its own challenges. Getting along with people with different temperament is the most arduous task. Initializing the work and then taking the project to its completion without any conflicts is not imaginable. Conflicts are bound to happen and no one can stop from happening it. It is imperative to get yourself heard and not let yourself down in front of opinion and biases of other group members. Also, the most important learning from all these class activities is not to forget that you are unique in nature. Every moment when I felt a knock down on my efforts and initiatives, each time I tried to remind myself that no two person has the same thoughts and ideologies about a particular project or a theme of discussion. If there are rejections about your way of thinking then there will also be moments of acceptance too. Its never about absolute thinking but trying to diverge and converge from a given line of thought is a good way of navigating yourself in a group project discussion. I have tried to learn to be more patient and tolerant of everyone’s behaviors. If someone is losing their temper, then I should not get affected by that and try to align towards the solution than further enhancing the problem, which is the key idea of working in a project. Navigating oneself in a project by collecting as much ideas as possible about doing a particular task that has endless possibilities of doing, is something that lies under the scope of each and everyone’s working capacity. So, before coming into concrete results, there is already a vast pool of solutions lying ahead before even solving the problem. Taking charge of the project and giving a lead to the whole group without showing any kind of nervousness and shakiness from your ground beliefs is the major responsibility that one has to take to prove one’s worth in the whole group. Effective leadership meant to listen to everyone and then try to mould oneself according to the needs of the situation and taking decisions that is in the benefit of every individual in the group. Not able to change one’s behavior and showing only unidirectional attitude is somewhat narrowmindedness.

Learning to learn, relearn and unlearn has been the key takeaways from the group assignments and activities from Term I to Term III in my journey of this program. Also, handling stress with calmness and equanimity was crucial in completing the daily tasks as per the deadlines of the project without losing personal integrity. One of the major realizations after engaging with my own classmates in different kind of group activities was to learn to adapt and change myself according to the nature of the activities we were supposed to carry out. That is, to be able to frankly communicate without any barrier and giving a better clarity about my own understanding about technical and conceptual skills. And always staying motivated enough to take up any kind of a task or activity.

There had been numerous instances of learning in the past eight months of my stay in the campus pursuing the prestigious course offered in the whole nation. It has been my privilege to be a part of this institution that gives respect to the diversity and freedom to express myself. I have definitely evolved into a better person than what I had been before coming here and I shall try my best to improve by each passing day.

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