It seems like the MBA has just started and it’s the middle of term 3 already! Time just flies in this course. Readings, assignments, research and group meetings take away all your time. Sometimes when I look back at the week gone by, I wonder how is it possible to cover what we covered in that week. But nonetheless, we did! What makes this possible is not the classes, but the preparation for the classes that we are expected to do. Before we enter the class, we already have an opinion on what will be discussed in class. The class is more of a 2 hour debate and learning, rather than just sitting and attending it. That makes all the background reading so essential or else one will just sit in the class, completely lost!
The case based courses are my personal favourites. The class brings out so many angles and aspects of a case which I am sure a single person wouldn’t be able to think off. There is that definite 180º divide in opinions but the interesting part is all the middle degrees. When something countering your opinion seems so right, you can’t help but get boggled. The very next moment, a counter argument will take you back to your original position. The energy and enthusiasm in the class is contagious. Thanks to these case based modules (or maybe a percentage of grade for class participation!) every person in the class throws in a different point which leads to a very extensive discussion. And at the end of it, you have absorbed so much analysis that makes all the hours of pre-readings worthwhile.
With the minds of 40 odd people running at their best, it seems less likely that we miss any point. We also thought so, but then comes our professors analysis. There are angles to the case that don’t naturally strike our minds, but we are steered towards thinking on those lines and then another picture starts to emerge. All the above learning and enlightenment, if I can call it, is just one side of the story. The fun in reading about BMW, Ducati, Honda, Apple and all the other cool brands is the other! As you go through the case, you can feel the thrill that the employees of these companies would feel, in working for them.
As I want to take up roles in Strategy and Marketing in the future, I feel lucky to have been taught these subjects by the best professors; Prof. Patrick T. Gibbons, Jefferson Smurfit Professor of Strategic Management and Prof. Damien McLoughlin. I always look forward to their classes as there is so much that I take away from them in terms of what will help me in my future. Their experience and expertise in the field is a treasure given to us, to explore and leverage upon. Under the guidance of such people, I am very content and more than happy about what I am learning in the course. I feel more able and confident to take up roles in Strategy and Marketing, solely because of what these modules have done to my thought process! I have developed a better rationale to analyze cases, majorly because of how our professors pushed us to think rather than spoon feed us.
With the electives I have chosen, I have more of Strategy and Marketing to learn from my professors. I am so looking forward to more sessions of brain wracking case analysis, under the guidance of such amazing professors. Just can’t wait to grab more learning and I couldn’t have asked for anything better!
– Amneet Kaur