In October 2022, I finally took my decision to kick start and uplift my career to another level. Throughout the same year, I did many research to find a suitable and accredited MBA to apply for, in parallel to my workload. Many choices were put on table and started the filtering. I would like to say that I am humble and blessed to be guided by my line manager who became my mentor (Mr. Hady Bakkar) and advised me to work hard on that and highly recommended LBS (Lagos Business School) as best suitable for me.
Finally, I was convinced that LBS will best fit my needs due to the flexible and organized program. I started all the needed preparations to pass the tests and interview which finally came a success after 2 months of hard studies. I decided to spend Christmas and New Year in Lagos at home alone to complete 3 courses with Coursera as recommended by LBS, which were really helpful.
My journey at LBS started when I was on leave in Lebanon (January 2023). It was planned to rest a bit from my work duties which involve operational challenges throughout the year. But I found myself stuck with the brush-up and had to spend my evenings and weekends behind the screen and trying to catch my breath throughout the courses. Adding to that, I had to spend additional couple of hours to clear my work backlogs and close any pending approvals. The main challenges were uncontrollable, we are suffering in our country from the bad infrastructures which pained me during the online classes, in specific the power outages and slow internet connection especially in the bad weather. The last 4 days of week 2 were terrible due to the storm, heavy rain and snow.
Usually, I spend few days at my parents’ house in the village during my vacations. This time was special for me. Even though I had to disconnect from the family during the precious time in the evening when all are reunited for dinner. At that time, I was sitting in my room with my jacket on me due to the cold. I waited the break times to warm myself next to the chimney.
The orientation sessions started when I was abroad and I was unable to join online, sadly.
The courses started and the interactions between my colleagues and instructors were really amazing. Honestly, I didn’t expect to feel that much of comfort during the discussions and breakout rooms. The fun started with our first group assignment (CFA). We did couple of group meetings in order to finalize our exercise about Nigerian banks statements of account. Our Professor Akintola Owolabi is so friendly and explain the tiny details of the CFA course and was very happy to repeat the same section more than 5 times (if needed) to ensure that whoever are interacting really understood the chapter. We learned about the accounting equations and principles as well as the regulations of financial statements with real examples. The 2 weeks intensive brush-ups and courses were really tough. I felt overwhelmed… can I take a break? I might think of suspending this #EMBA28.
