Back to school....

Come tomorrow and what will be the toughest two years of my life start off. Tough not insomuch that the stress and the pressure is something I am not used to, but because how I perform in these two years might very well determine the course of my entire life. But that’s for tomorrow.

The Ropes course was AWESOME!!!!! For someone who’s never done anything remotely adventurous so far, I found it to be absolutely enjoyable and a greatly intoxicating experience. Zipping across Lake Matoaka suspended from a harness and trusting a steel wire to bear one’s weight as the waters came closer to one’s derriere and then being jerked upwards towards the shore was perhaps the most exhilarating and invigorating thing I have ever done so far. And then there were the High and Low elements in the Course; the Low ones were informative vis-à-vis how we work in teams. But the High elements, especially the swing over the pits, the bell-ringer jump, and the two-wire walkway were simply mind-blowing (although I did not do the bell-ringer myself, but it seemed so damn fine).

If there was one thing that made the experience even more enjoyable, it has been the presence of a stellar team. Isaiah, Katie and Snowy have been the most supportive and encouraging lot I have had the pleasure of working with so far and I have been fortunate to have worked with generally supportive people so far, so this is a big thing. At every element, I was eager to go ahead, but my inbuilt reticence held me back, but their prodding and motivation ensured I had a wonderful time.

The debriefing after the Course was equally informative; we were asked when we felt particularly effective and ineffective in a personal and team capacity during the duration of the Course, as also what we noticed about each other’s capabilities and qualities. What came out of the discussion was a frank understanding of each other, of strengths and weaknesses, of places where we need to improve and places where we need to build on our laurels. But essentially so far, and I hope this luck lasts for the entire 2 years and even beyond, the team seems to have gelled well together.

Thereafter at the Logos design for the individual teams at the Amphitheatre it was enjoyable to see individual teams come up with interesting and somewhat meaningful logos and connotations for the same, and trying to explain the connection with the team. Somehow we, as a team, decided we wanted something that represented unity and strength in numbers, and after much deliberation, struck on five joined links; individually we may have some weaknesses, but together we build on each other’s strengths. To my mind, this is a good omen, that such a thought is so prominent in our team’s ethos, and augurs a very pleasant working environment.

The end-of-orientation party on Saturday would have ended up as another quiet and ‘well-mannered’ affair, had it not been for the ‘raucous’ Indians and our tendency to just let ourselves go loose when it comes to dance and ‘bhangra’. And considering we have 34 Indians in this year’s batch, and had 20 in last year’s, that’s a huge number on the floor, and that’s not even counting the locals and other International students who just couldn’t resist joining in. That really shows how rhythm and enjoyment has nothing to do with cultural boundaries; if you can dance, you can dance on any music.

The orientation is now over, the preliminaries complete and now it's time to go in for the final kill. It will be a long, arduous and stressful affair; there will be moments of happiness, success, and sometimes grief, despair and disappointment. But then the pleasure of the journey lies not in the destination but in the journey itself. So here's to books, studies, case studies, lectures, presentations, team meetings and discussions, internships, projects and other activities (time, energy and life permitting)!

MBA musings

The last one week has been a most fruitful and engrossing one, despite it being so hectic and fast-paced. Finally I get to sit in class or at least in ‘my’ college; it feels so lovely to be able to say that after three years of work.

We have been having orientation sessions from the Center for International Students here at the College of William & Mary, and it was outstanding to meet and interact with people from so many different nationalities and cultures, and, to my great embarrassment, to understand how limited my outlook towards life has been so far. I guess how and what one thinks about a career is all dependent on many factors: one’s upbringing, one’s family background, the careers being pursued in the near and distant family, and in general the basic temperament and awareness level of the individual concerned.

Meeting the faculty and my coach has been a wonderful experience; I don’t believe they will always be so nice and laughing, but the overall atmosphere is of a subdued informality infused with a sense of friendliness and reassurance that people understand what you are going through and are here to help you out, provided you are ready to help yourself first.

Meeting my classmates in the MBA program has again been a huge eye-opener, perhaps more than the eye-opener at the International Student orientation, because there are some people here, of the few who I have managed to meet in this time and I really need to pick up my pace in that matter, who are really outstanding; I mean, their profiles are absolutely mind-boggling and superb. It makes me feel so very sheepish with my basic Computer Engineering degree and a 3 year stint in an Indian IT company (sure Capgemini is a French concern, but frankly let’s stick to the facts here). It is going to be a challenge working with them, competing with them, and if luck favors the brave, to even better them; but perhaps more than the challenge, it’s going to be a hugely pleasurable exercise just getting to know them and to maybe rub off some of their skills and hopefully pass on some of one’s ‘own’, howsoever small they may be. The statistics are also pretty impressive; we have total class strength of 121, of which 40% are international students from 12 different countries and 40% are female students. That’s a pretty high number, but it would make life much more interesting, don’t you think?

As part of the Business School orientation, we had a session today wherein they took us down to the York River State Park to do some Community Service Activity. The Park is a beautiful site spread over nearly 2500 acres of forest, marshland and river acreage. What we were expected to do was help the Park authorities with certain tasks like cutting down wild vegetation in the riverside areas, cutting down some trees that have overgrown or are a hazard to general safety, clearing the biking trails of huge stones and large pieces of gravel, cleaning the kayaks and canoes that the Park rents out, and just keeping the Park furniture in the right places. It may not seem like much, but in the hot Virginia summer when temperatures are ranging around 32-33 C, nothing can be more tortuous, and especially more so if one has to trudge through bristles, thorny bushes, shrubs filled with bugs that bite and scratch, and maybe even slush and muck. But it was a fun affair irrespective of all that, because we did it all as a team, and I guess that was what was the intention, because eventually we are all going to engrossed in our programs, but if we can gel together as a group now, it would help us do a lot better job at coping with the stress and tension.
Typically for me, I got the somewhat easier job of helping to return the Park furniture to the original positions, a job that required a group of 4 to pick up picnic benches, put it into a I-don’t-know-what’s-it-called vehicle, sit in the vehicle and ride for say 2-3 minutes and then lift it back from the aforementioned vehicle and just place it in the designated place. So I got lucky, I guess :) .
All in all, it’s been a whole lot of fun this whole week; I don’t think it will always be like this, but it’s nice while it lasts. I am really looking forward to the Ropes course on Friday, which is supposed to be something like an Athletic Adventure Course, and everyone who knows me on an intimate level can attest to the fact that if there was an chap not attuned to athletics or sports of any kind, it is me.
Will post on Friday after the Ropes to let you know how it was.

Here I am

Come tomorrow, and I will have completed one week here at Williamsburg. It seems so surreal, to have finally embarked on a journey one was awaiting for so long, and to find that while the journey, in a travel sense, ended with one landing on the shores of one’s destination, it has but begin in the real sense. Each day brings forth new surprises, new challenges and new realizations such as we aren’t as incompetent (or competent) as we once believed ourselves to be, or that while we may have prided ourselves on our ‘terrific’ sense of humor, in truth it really stinks, not quite the “l’air de l’humour” as much as “l’air de folie”.

Williamsburg is the most beautiful little city I have ever been to. Cities like London, Paris or Berlin exhibit their magnificence through their sheer sizes and the weight of history, but Williamsburg has history and yet a most comforting warmth. Life here isn’t quite as hurried or tense as in the big cities, maybe because it’s essentially supposed to be a relic of an age when relaxation wasn’t something people did away from home. The word ‘relic’ is most misleading, because it isn’t as if Williamsburg isn’t endowed with present-day comforts; it’s just that it prides itself on the relaxed and calm life that it offers its denizens. I don’t know whether this is the norm everywhere, but the people here seem very kind and generous insomuch that despite there not being a stop sign, they will stop their vehicles to allow pedestrians to cross the roads, or in that once in a while they will just give you a nice smile when seated opposite you in the bus.

The College of William & Mary, my home for the next two years, pervades in everything at Williamsburg. No matter where you go in Williamsburg, your status as a student just won’t leave you and that’s very much to your benefit. Just roaming around the campus would take you a good two-three hours, and that would be time well-spent, because I don’t reckon I have seen a greener campus, with the possible exception of the IIT-Mumbai campus, or a more architecturally pleasing one, again with the exception of Oxford and Cambridge. While Oxford and Cambridge have an aura, a magnificence that comes from being hoary half-millennial giants, Williamsburg’s relative ‘youth’ (the college is currently in its 316^th year since incorporation) means that its structures aren’t quite as forbidding and yet have a solidity of age and time.

The new Miller Hall, where my MBA program is now housed, is simply breath-taking. Standing in the Courtyard and looking around at the structure, one feels a strange thrill rush through one’s body. The building isn’t just pleasing to the eye; it’s sophisticated within. As the Dean would say, it’s a building built to match William & Mary’s age and style but with an eye on the needs of the future. I, for one, was really impressed with the level of detail and care that has been taken to ensure that the building is geared to meet every conceivable requirement of the students and the faculty that it will house. It will be great fun to work there; 2 years may just fly past, but memories such as these would always last a lifetime.

I started out this journey with a question “Quo vadis?”, or “Where are you going?”; now I can say “I am here”.

• Williamsburg