Covering New Ground

"It's been a wonderful journey so far. Looking back, I see so many milestones that I passed. Along the way I also had to shed a lot of baggage"

by Vivek Bhatnagar

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Vivek Bhatnagar
Babson
MBA Class of 2008

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We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
—T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

If I were to summarize my first-year experience, I do not think I can do better justice to it than what T.S. Eliot—in less than 30 words—most beautifully articulated. Notwithstanding, from a situation of not knowing what I didn't know, now at least I know what I don't know. And this has only fueled my desire to explore even further.

It's been a wonderful journey so far. Looking back, I see so many milestones that I passed. Along the way I also had to shed a lot of baggage. It allowed me to learn new things, a few of which challenged some of my previously held beliefs. But since I was ready for them, it didn't come as a shock. On the contrary, I embraced it as an opportunity to reinvent myself.

Back in India, when I was researching for my MBA program, I generally saw one consistent emphasis that spanned most of the school brochures. They all mentioned how rigorous the first year was. But having been exposed to the Indian education system, I felt it couldn't get any worse. I thought, "After all, it's a master's program and it's supposed to be a professional course. They surely do not mean what they say. Or maybe they just like to make it sound tough. Things should be relatively easy." Little did I know how wrong I was!

Uncertainty: Get Used to It

Having finished my first year, I realize a lot has happened since I attended my first class last fall. Some of it seems crystal clear, some of it is a blur. Our day typically had three hour-and-a-half case discussions, some of which required three to four times more preparation time. And this was a five-day-a-week affair, unlike some schools that give at least a day's break within the work. It didn't end there. After classes we would have either some guest lecture, or a company information session, or some networking event, or a combination of these. Then we also had to sit in our study groups to prepare for some group assignment or Babson Consulting Alliance Program (BCAP) meetings.

BCAP is a unique Babson feature where teams of five to six first-year MBAs provide real-world consultancy to companies across different industries. Our team, with one American, one Indian American, one Nigerian, one Chinese, and one Indian (yours truly), were consulting to Symantec (SYMC). But then I'm digressing from what I want to say.

Going back to "rigors" of the first year, initially sleep was a commodity in really short supply. Later, although our workload did not get any lighter, sleep did go a few notches up on our priority list. All that changed, perhaps, was that our comfort level with uncertainty rose. (Incidentally, this is a quality that is much desired in the corporate world.) This essentially meant we were, at times, not fully prepared for the classes. Some of this (the excess academic load) is by design. In my many interactions with different professors, it came out that the academic load has been designed in some ways to be overwhelming, to reflect the real business world—and unless one quickly learns to adapt oneself by prioritizing things, it can soon inundate anyone. The underlying idea is to get the students to learn to deal with uncertainty and become more comfortable with it as early as possible.

Value of Teamwork

I had read a lot about some of the challenges facing the U.S. in the field of education. Of the population that graduates from high school, only 50% reach college. Out of these, only 50% actually end up getting their college degrees. And eventually, only 2% (of the entire original school-going population) finally have their degrees that are master's and above. It sure gets lonely up there. Going by these statistics, it is somewhat understandable why an MBA is designed the way it is.