There is a first time for everything in life

Exam fever, like common cold, takes its own time getting over. And like any product life cycle, it climbs up steeply, showing an exponential increase in the initial phases.

Term 1 exams are typical of this trend. For the first time in my life, I wrote two exams in one day. To be precise, it was 0930 hours to 1600 hours, in which we wrote our exams on Economics and Marketing. I felt a mix of scary and amusing feelings. Scary because if you have to write an exam after more than six years with a pen rather than computer-based, the fingers not supporting the pen should not come as a surprise. But of course, no one had anticipated that even our fingers will show the law of diminishing marginal utility. The feeling of being amused was when during the exam I lifted my head up only to see an ocean of heads focusing on their desks while the clocked ticked by. 126 managers with an average age of 33 sitting in a classroom reminded me of my childhood days, when one used to move his / her head around looking for group support in case of difficulty. Not here. It is not about passing the MBA. It is about proving a point to your self – that I made the choice to leave a cushy, well paying, senior management job back in my country and come to Cranfield to pursue MBA.

So as the fever went up on the PLC-like curve, we moved from Economics to Marketing in the post lunch session. The fingers got numb…….and soon the clock struck 1600 hours. It was time to get up and move on to prepare for tomorrow.