Vicious Cycle of Learning

It’s the new term and we have got all new stuff to learn; very different from what we had in term 1. The title of the blog must have captivated your attention. Well, its meant to do so.

As we have entered the second term, we have new teams and new people around. Remember, I wrote in my first few blogs that we have 3 different streams- red, blue and green, and within each stream we have learning teams of 5-6 people. In term 1 I was in green stream and in term 2 I am in blue. Most of students have got new streams and new teams as well. What does this mean- it implies you have different people form different countries, who tell you new facts about their countries and you got to know new experiences. As I have mentioned it earlier, I believe passive learning (learning from the experiences from others) is the best and very interesting. As you come to know about some new country, any new fact you want to learn more about it as it inculcates curiosity to dig deeper. This is what I call the vicious cycle of learning. You learn some, you want to learn more. As you learn more, you want to learn new, and the cycle continues.

We have a ‘French’ language teacher (from Russia) at Cranfield, whom I find attending our Personal Development and People Management lectures. He must be about 55, but actively plays football, chats with students and attends lectures: just to explore more, to learn more. I have seen the passion in his eyes- the passion to learn. And I am really impressed by him, so are many others.

Next week we have International Diversity Week, where people from 4 different continents- Asia, Africa, America and Europe shall present their cultures. It’s a week long event and we have to arrange stalls, food and entertainment. I am coordinating on behalf of Asia, and feel so good to organise everything. Again, you have a chance to learn more about different cultures. I believe and that’s what we are taught at Cranfield that for a successful business its vital to understand people and to know their culture, language and life. If you are targeting to work in a MNC, you should first understand the way of life of people where that MNC is operating.

In last 2 weeks we had very interesting lectures on how to communicate and present effectively by Stephen Carver. This person is genius. He gave nice tips on making and delivering excellent presentations. Some of the interesting points that he made:

All presentations are 60% body language, 35% communication and just 5% content.
Your audience will only remember just 5% of your presentation; so know and plan, what to bind in that 5%.
On average, a person speaks 150 words per minute.
On average, we can process 750 words per minute.

On these interesting notes, I bid adieu and shall be back soon with more interesting stuff from my new found love- Cranfield.

Holidays in UK

The 2 week break was the first opportunity for me to spend time at my own will in UK. The first few days of the break were spent idling around, playing cards with friends and watching some of the new hindi movies that I missed in the last few months. I watched all the new releases and also saw the three parts of Godfather, which I have been thinking of doing for long.

During the break I went to London with my family: my wife Sherry, my sis in law Shelley and my long time friend cum bro in law Anil. Anil n I joined MBA at Cranfield together and we were together during engineering too. He is married to my wife’s Sis – Shelley, and we four enjoy a lot together. Its pertinent to mention here that some of my blogs are edited by Shelley, before they appear here.

We were joined by Kunal and Ajay, our MBA mates. We all went to Madam Tussad’s wax museum and London Eye. It was an amazing day. We all got so many photographs clicked with the wax figures of some of the most famous personalities of the world.

I also explored a new game during the holidays: Lawn Tennis. A new learning and a new dimension. I love exploring and learning new things.

I spent a lot of time with friends, listening to their experiences and trying to learn from them. I believe that’s a wonderful learning as one tends to learn more from other’s stories and experiences rather than text books.

First term is over

Its about a month when I last updated this blog. That time I was busy preparing for my exams of the first term. Well the exams finished, holidays came and have even finished. I cannot believe the pace of the time in MBA; even when I don’t have classes, even when there are no strict schedules and there are holidays- just holidays, the time flies like anything. We had a good break of about 2 weeks which were spent in lazing around, resting and doing all what I missed doing in the last 3 months of MBA.

Though time was spent in renewing the lost contacts and increasing networking, maintaining profiles on LinkedIn and preparing CVs, yet majority of the break was just devoted to rejuvenate self and prepare the body and the mind for the next term. As it appears, the second term seems to be more dreadful than the first one: more subjects than the first term, more assignments and reports and to top them- job panic. I have seen job panic among my colleagues and friends, who have started panicking on getting rejections from the finance companies or on hearing the news of selections of some of the friends and peers in Cranfield or other B-schools.

Well I believe its just second term and there are full 8 months left for the MBA to get complete and I don’t see any reason to get panic. Of course one should strive and make efforts for internships and jobs but panic is not what is rationale at least at this stage. There is still a hell lot of time.

Tomorrow its going to be the first day of the new term and all the subjects are totally different from what we have learnt in the first term. However, this time the anxiety levels are less than during the first term as we are now accustomed to Cranfield culture. What’s more interesting is the fact that this term has more case studies than the first term, and case studies always make learning better and entertaining.