One reaches very curious cross-roads in life where decisions regarding the future need to be made, and on one of those cross roads I decided that I will go for an MBA. Sounds cool huh ?

Well, life’s not so cool – so the above is just a phrase and nothing else. The real reason why I chose to do an MBA were much more practical.

When I was in college, most of my friends had joined the CA Foundation classes, simply because it was the thing to do for your career. Whether or not the subjects interested them, everyone religiously attended the classes. Needless to say, a lot of my friends who were maybe not really interested in the profession dropped out (either fialed or just gave up after passing Foundation) after the Foundation Exams. Those very same people then pursued a career in management, preparing for mock tests and exams and discussing all complicated formulae, logic related diagrams (preparation for the CAT). While i was happy pursuing the CA course, i was always fascinated by this approach – i always thought – wow they get to do so much cool stuff and get to learn about so many different things as compared to us in CA who have a skew towards Accounting in particular and Finance in general.

After completing my CA, i still had the management stars in my eyes and appeared for a few entrance exams and started preparing for applying to international schools. As one says, everything happens for the best, and due to some family circumstances I had to stop the applications and drop the thought of pursuing a career in management at that point in time.

The dreamer that I am, even after I continued to work, I had the dreams of pursuing a career in management (till not now really understanding the implications and utility of such a career). As I continued to work, i began to realise gaps in the things I had learnt. While I was very comfortable with numbers and Finance related matters, other matters such as evaluating marketing campaigns, dealing with people in a structured manner or even formulating long term plans – were all areas in which although I learnt by experience, I felt quite uncomfortable.

While I worked in the consulting industry, i came even more to realise these gaps and felt that I needed to urgently upgrade my skills. It was not enough to just lug along work and learn these skills on the way – this would take up too much time – I wanted to fast track this learning. Also, after dealing with international companies I came to realise the disadvantage I had in looking at International Perspective, especially for large organisations, because of the fact that I had always worked in India. The fact that most of my friends were from either Finance or Management backgrounds also added fuel to the fire – I was always being surrounded by people who thought on more or less similar lines and I usually never got to see drastically new perspectives.

With this hunger, I decided again to give management education a shot – my family situation was such that now i could think of this. I decided to come to Europe because of the length of the programs in europe, the diversity that one can get in european schools is un-matched, the small size of the classes and last but definately not the least important, the opportunity to learn and get the skill of working in a foreign language – Spanish.

Things have been great for me, I’ve learnt a lot, met so many people from different backgrounds and become aware of so many new things. Time has really flow by and my first year is already over ! Next week I go to London to work with Citigroup in their Investment Banking Divsion. I can’t wait to start working and use practically the things I have learnt!

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