MBA Band

First practice session was somewhere in October or November. It was a horrible session, where everyone was trying to remember what they have been playing 3-4-5-7 years back. It was fun as well, we started to jam a bit and relaxed when we realized that no-one is an expert. Then also we were determined to go ahead with it. Second time people did improve a bit. and then Third time it was fun. From then on, there was no looking back, we improved on each session and practiced few songs for the Christmas Party. I played drums with Sean Rickard, MBA course director, as well in the party without any practice. He is an excellent guitarist! It was a good experience and moreover.. it was fun!

We did not have drum-sticks for most of the time. I was beating the skin with spatula (wooden spoons). Once it happened that, I was not able to play with spatula and had to call it off for that session :(. Instruments do play an important role. Next session, drum-sticks were deilvered and we played for 3 and hours hours that day and the next session lasted for 4 hours.

We never played in public and our first perfromance was in front of the CRanfield University crowd in CSA CLub. Being nervous, was natural however we managed to pull out a couple of numbers with crowd's appreciation. Did a lot with our confidence levels!

Seems monotonic but facing the crowd, when they expect to be entertained is difficult and live upto their expectations is winning a challenge!

Murphy's Law

WACing the WAC is not a tough job. Few of us might say that but it is not so for others.

Let me take you through with WAC - Written Assessment of a Case-study. You are given a Case-Study on a lovely afternoon and have to submit a 1,500 page report on the Case-study or the issues related to the Case-study by another lovely afternoon which is exactly 26 hours after the hand-over of case-study.

It comes to the team-work, stream-work and then personal work! So it all goes well and you sit in a comfortable place, writing your report and at midnight, your laptop shuts down automatically! - Murphy's Law - it never happened in last 2 months and now when I have written most of my report this is what happens! Best part is that you cannot get any technical support at this hour and the next day as well, being a Saturday!

Another wonderful scenario - you are ready with your report and about to shoot a print out. Imagine your screen goes off and you cannot see anything on the screen!!!

Imagine these 2 situations. How do u deal with it? How can you keep your cool when your 50% of marks depends on the report on which somehow you cannot do anything? Dont worry! you have friends out here. They are ready to help others in any circumstances. It is just you have to shout and you get help from unknown corners. It was just because of this trust and the atmosphere of team-work rather than Competition inculcated in most of us, I was able to afford a cool head and avoid a panic situation! In the end, I was able to retrieve my document and take a print-out of the report and submit it before the dead-line. Believe you me, these two incidents happened for two different reports.

Welcome to Cranfield!

Some of the interesting quotes which I learnt from Cranfield:

- It's Your MBA... Make most out of it
- It is a Risk-Free Environment
- Get out of your comfort Zone

It all sums up to Aglie Philosophy where everyone is encouraged to take decisions. In Cranfield, everyone has some kind of professional experience or other. At some stage or other each one of us might have considered to not to take a particular step, wondering how will it be pursued by others. With the quotations above they eliminate the feeling of being off-track. You can try whatever you want, should be legitimate.

In past few months, I did few things which I wanted to do and learn or improve. One of them being Presentation skills. We formed a group who share similar feelings about improving Presentations Skills and practice at least once every week. It gave me a confidence and few tips, how to move around and body language. These are things which I know but did not practice because I was not able to find an opportunity to do so in professional career. As well, I ignored a few things which I considered as minor corrections. But when I actually did it on-stage, these small things needs a lot of tuning. Anyways, on a particular day I gave 3 presentations in class and tried a lot of things during those small ones!

Another Comfort Zone was regular studies! during my graduation years, I never used to study regularly, it was a matter of last few days which got me scores in the exams. However, if you are a team-member then you have to teach your team a topic everyday and each day it will be a different subject and topic! I did not want to annoy my team, so not because of self-development but for the sake of the team I did so... studied regularly.

Third one is my favorite, I used to play drums with my friends in my under-graduation and it was just in a small music room! In Cranfield, we formed a music band - MBA Band - and most of us were perfroming live for the first time on 20th Dec during Christmas Party. Wow!!! It was fun and I think audience did enjoy it. But it was again getting out of Comfort Zone and that too in front of the entire batch!

Interesting status messages 2

- Every relationship has an expiry date (Ashwini)
- Gone with the reports... (Anonymous)
- I believe in copying - 'NOT TO INNOVATE' (Barun Moitra)
- some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night! (Anonymous)
- issi duty ke naam pe pichle 48 ghante se hum log maut se jhoojh rahe hai, aur humara department humari hi thokne mei laga hua hai (Shreyes)