I chose to pursue an MBA post my Engineering degree because I had realised I had made a mistake. And, to continue with it would have been a blunder.
Everyone can have a different story about this. This post will share with the reader the story which is mine. But before I get started, I just want the reader to go through something. My engineering comprised of a compressed three-year format in which my SGPA in each semester were as follows:
Sem 1: 7.30/10.00
Sem 2: 7.00/10.00
Sem 3: 6.70/10.00
Sem 4: 6.70/10.00
Sem 5: 6.50/10.00
Sem 6: 5.00/10.00
BTP: 10.00/10.00
Cumulative GPA: 6.70/10.00
Then I made a shift in my career to pursue MBA, and just completed my first semester of the same back in December 2017.
And, the result: 8.63/10.00
Now, let’s get started with the story.
During my entire engineering degree, my scores kept touching down a steeper nadir after each semester, if one leaves behind my BTP, which I totally didn’t deserve. Even I have doubts about how I was awarded a 10/10 in that.
And, then I made a shift into management domain which I had already planned in my head by the end of the second year of my engineering degree. Reasons? I had by then realised that neither becoming an engineer was neither my cup of tea nor did my inherent traits complement that domain. It was a mistake.
I had gotten into engineering because of the following reasons:
If you scored well in your 10th boards, then back in my days, in the town in which I lived, you were bound to pursue sciences and not commerce or arts. Parents, peers, teachers and even the schools, in general, made sure that this sick mindset flourished. In fact, my school back then, despite being one of the best ones in the entire town didn’t have an arts stream.
Someone with good scores taking up arts or commerce would be made fun of and be called stupid. Also, living in that sphere, I too had begun to feel the same way. And, thus, pursuing sciences was the only path I had to walk on at that time. And, so I did. It was an easy choice, because it was the only choice. And, why engineering per se?
Because the definition of engineering which I was told, it sounded pretty cool- “An engineer is a person who solves the problems of the world by inventing unprecedented solutions.” I liked that. I mean, I did want to solve the problems of the people and the world. And, doing that by inventing something unprecedented had an attached swag to it which was just enough to lure me in.
Further back then, the stream that most students chose to pursue was rarely decided by taking into account their interests, traits, strengths and other such things. Ergo, no one really cared if I was good at conversing, writing, public speaking. No one cared if I had always been an outspoken, confident person with the tendency to always come up with random ideas and creative solutions to problems.
No one gave a damn that I drew really well. None of that was ever taken into account when deciding my future. Neither by my parents. Nor by me. Given I hailed from a lower-middle class family then and had seen my family struggle through dire situations, engineering seemed to give hope, and I just followed it thinking by the end of it all, I too would get at job at Google with a fancy eight-figure package.
Reality check:
Upon getting into engineering, the reality began to bite me. It was in no way what I thought it would be. It was nothing bad. But, it was not something I had in my mind. For me, what I experienced engineering to be, it was not cool but a torturous experience. I won’t understand an iota of what the syllabus comprised.
Teachers anyway don’t teach shit unless you are in one of the top NITs or IITs or select few colleges like BITS Pilani.
But, the one thing that I was doing right at this time being enrolled in engineering was that I was always open to the idea that I have to keep trying to see if something new and better comes out of me. Engineering doesn’t have to be the end of my discovery.
So, I volunteered in every event and fest that happened in my college during my first and second year. I gave it all more than my 100%. People say that’s a waste of time. Many of the top Quorans have said that too. I say it depends from person to person. In my case, it was those very things that helped me learn more about real me.
That introduced me to sides and dimensions of me that I never knew even existed somewhere in me. Also, I participated in every competition that I could participate in. I didn’t know how to dance for instance. Still don’t. But, I didn’t let that stop me from auditioning.
The result? Got selected because of my Bhangra and effervescent energy, and went on to perform as a part of my college’s team in my annual college festival competing among some of the best dancers in all of India. Imagine that!
Similarly, when the auditions for our official freshers were on, I was a part of a group dance, a skit, and I had also prepared a solo singing endeavour. Did I know how to sing? Nope. I did and still, suck at it. But, I did it anyway. Why? Because I would get to be on stage facing over 250 people, and, I wanted to experience that.
I knew that I would shiver and also that people won’t like it. But, I did anyway. The result? I sucked as expected. But, people didn’t make as much fun of me either as I had envisaged in my head. And, most importantly, I have never feared to be on stage again.
Secondly, I learned that this is something I like to do. Presenting myself and my skills among people, facing them, connecting with them. Not to mention that I participated in every single competition of any kind that was happening in my college be it anything: competitive coding, building a line follower robot, to group discussions, MnM (Roadies of our college) and whatnot. Why?
Participating in all kinds of these things would earn me experiences while teaching me more about myself. Each of them would help me learn, what I am good at, and what interests me more. Something my school never cared about.
And, if I ever found any of those things to be interesting and worth pursuing, I made sure that I went on YouTube to learn more about those skills. That is how I learnt how to debate better. To talk to people. To negotiate. The science of gaining people’s trust. To interact in professional space.
Gradually, learning about all of these things, exploring new sides of me which hitherto then I had never known that they even existed, I had naturally begun to see that I was a person who would have done really good in the management domain.
And, by then I had also realised that getting into engineering was a mistake. Because only I knew how much I was struggling every semester until my last one to make sure that I would not go further down.
Because anyway, anything below 7.50 GPA is not that great in case one wants to go for further studies to get a job at some decent big firm. And, that is the reason why I made the shift. It was a tough choice.
When you have spent years pursuing something believing that it’s your dream, and then you have to leave it, it’s not that easy a choice. But, I made that choice and stuck to it.
The result? Getting into management domain proved to be one of the best career choices I had made in a long time. The person who had been finding it tough to understand even the basic concepts of every single subject in my engineering was now proving to be one of the most active and engaging students in almost every class.
Back in engineering, there would be monologues. The teachers would share the theorems, formulas, theories and whatever. But, nothing was debatable. If you got it, you got it. If you didn’t, you could not question or debate it.
You would have to rote it into your grey matter until the exams came and you shat it all out on the answer sheet. And, that kind of learning sucked. But, in the management domain, I witnessed that I had made a shift from the monologue to the dialogue framework.
Everything, every idea, every theory, it’s all debatable here. I began to enjoy studying after struggling with it for over three years of engineering and even before that when I was preparing for my entrance examinations like a douche.
Getting into MBA was a choice I made because I felt that it would benefit from my strengths and would also help me with my plans.
What plans? To one day be my own boss, be a businessman. What strengths? Writing, reading, leading from the front, public speaking, interest in macroeconomics and public policy and in event management et cetera.
And, it has all proven to be true as of this writing. Also, now getting back to my academic results. Remember how in my last semester of engineering I scored an overall 5.00/10.00 and how I made a big jump from there to 8.63/10.00 in the first semester of my MBA?
If I had been a bad student, my scores would not have seen that big a jump within a semester change. The jump happened because I was now studying a domain, which suited my interests.
The jump happened because I was now studying things which made more sense to me. The jump happened because I was able to add to my studies, relate it to my life and the people around me, and because I could see it’s use in realising my future aspirations.
Sadly, none of that was true about my engineering days.
And, that is the entire story of how I reached the stage when I decided that I am going to pursue MBA after my engineering. That’s my tale. With this post, I have also tried to share how I discovered my unseen sides and abilities, and how they helped me better understand what my future career stream should be like.
I hope this post adds some value to the reader’s perspective and helps them with their lives in some way. Best wishes. Bliss!
Love,
Shilanjan