Perspective can be a tricky thing. It can be the difference between an honest appreciation of a situation, or a quick sprint down the path of delusions.
The realities of the program’s intensity as advertised during orientation have probably set in for the MEMBA 12 cohort. However, the question is how well, or otherwise, do you think you are performing? For this collection of ambitious high achievers, this is a question that I am confident has crossed the minds of almost every one of us.
Why?
I think it’s nearly impossible to progress in any professional or educational endeavor without obsessing over objective measurement. While it is becoming the norm to have a narrative for almost any phenomena; seeing as we are fully in the era of advanced sophistry or “spin”, it is my firm belief that the metric that matters most should be one that goes beyond the individual.
Do not get me wrong, there is a place for one’s internal compass when it comes to assessing elements of life, but it should not be applicable to constructs that have been standardized. For example, an individual view may be acceptable in determining the quality of a personal relationship, however, it will be difficult, and dare I say impractical, to apply the same internal scorecard to the objective assessment of academic performance.
Which returns me to the initial concept of perspective. Which perspective should be held for the progress made so far in this MBA – informal feedback from the faculty, individual assessments of efforts, or the graded outcome of all the work submitted?
We are nearing the end of the first semester of the program, and a lot of us have experienced changes we probably did not anticipate when we started. If we took an open survey today to find out how each member of the class feels they are doing, I would wager a tidy sum that the results will vary greatly from individual to individual.
When I started this program, a few of my professional blind spots became clear rather quickly. For example, I understood the concepts of assets, liabilities, and equities, but I did not fully appreciate the method of interpreting them in financial statements.
Hopefully, there will be some consideration from the faculties as the levels of exposure to the concepts and courses we have been introduced to vary per individual. However, I suspect that these differences will not matter much to the facilitators when the grading commences.
Which brings me to the concluding part of this piece. So far, I will say that this program gives a mental semblance of jumping from the top of a mountain with every class, task, question, and assignment presenting an opportunity to build wings while in the air.
When the grades come in, each individual will know if they have been falling or flying.
#MEMBA12
