Life at a B-school is far from what you expect of college. Your days are consumed by college-related activities. Every day is a race against time as there are always deadlines to meet. My journey at Fortune Institute of International Business started in the summer of 2017.
The experience started with a bang, packed with zillions of classes, club activities, guest lectures, and endless assignments. Lectures start at 9 in the morning and stretch till 6 in the evening.
The difference between an under-graduation and a post-graduation curriculum is the real-world examples and case studies that we are told about in the latter. The guest lectures and industry visits help us understand the corporate culture in close quarters. The assignments are not run-of-the-mill copy-paste deals, like they were in UG; they require us to brainstorm and dig deeper to get answers.
Extra-curricular activities
There are several clubs that one can enrol in to unleash her/his creative potential. Some of the clubs at my college are: Cue Club (public speaking), Udaan Club (entrepreneurship), Jaagriti (social service club), and Brand Rovers Club (marketing). Student-led annual events such as Samavesh (cultural fest), National Marketing Conclave, and Ranbhoomi (sports fest) are also organised.
Live projects, social internship programmes, and corporate internship programmes take us out of the comforts of our classrooms and give us an opportunity to get first-hand exposure to the industry. Regular sessions with faculty mentors are something that we look forward to as well.
It is said that B-schools can teach you only 30 per cent of the knowledge you gain on campus; the remaining 70 per cent has to be gathered and experienced by us. Amidst college activities, we have to make time to read newspapers, magazines, and periodicals to keep our grey cells running.
Time to ‘chill’
We don’t, of course, forget to ‘chill’. A tête-à-tête over a cup of hot tea and bread pakora at Ram bhaiyya ’s tea stall or brunch at the cafes of Satya Niketan market give us respite from our hectic schedule. I won’t say the curriculum is difficult to comprehend, but the multiplicity of work puts one under pressure.
One needs to constantly be on her/his toes to remain in the race. Maybe that is the aim of a PGDM course — to make us strong enough for the upcoming trials and tribulations of the corporate world.
(The writer is a PGDM student at Fortune Institute of International Business.)