International week at Cranfield MBA
As the holidays come to an end soon, I have hit the panic button. Every morning I remind myself – I have spoilt myself rotten and I need to set my calendar. There is a pile of activities to be completed. And included in this is the preparation for the International week at Cranfield MBA.
The international week is an annual affair and is celebrated in term 2. This time it is in the second week of the course and is celebrated with much fervour and fanfare. After all, not many schools can boast of diversity of MBA students as that of Cranfield. With over 60% international students, a week of celebrating diversity is an essential aspect.
Before the school closed for vacations after term 1, I was appointed to work on the presentation on India. Each country gets a 15 minute time slot in which the students have to show-case their country to the entire batch, partners and the faculty. During these vacations, I had been toying with a few ideas and collecting inputs from all Indians on campus. Sometimes, you do enjoy the benefit of having a sister in the market research field and I even sent off a few SOS messages to my sister back in India. I needed some items that I wanted to use in the presentation and had to get these items before the term 2 began. I was lucky enough to get her into action (much to her chagrin) and made her run around the streets of Delhi to find out the specific stuff which I wanted. I was double-lucky because Sameer (Indian) was visiting India during the vacations and kindly consented to carry the items back to school.
As I was working on the presentation, I realized that I am becoming my own critic and continued trashing my own ideas. I was also realizing how difficult it can be to describe your motherland in just 15 minutes. There is so much you can share about your country. But your perspective changes when you remind yourself of whom your audience is. So while India may still be occasionally referred to as a land of “snake charmers”, I wanted to share the fact with my audience that “yes, my country can charm anyone”. An equal if not stronger desire was to learn more about other countries. The international week will tell me much about many other countries – Switzerland, Russia, Italy, Lebanon, Indonesia, Japan, Peru, Greece, China, Denmark, France, Africa – just to name a few.
As the term begins, the challenge for me will be to strike a balance of studying PMI, that is covered in week 1 and preparing for the Indian presentation as well.
The international week is an annual affair and is celebrated in term 2. This time it is in the second week of the course and is celebrated with much fervour and fanfare. After all, not many schools can boast of diversity of MBA students as that of Cranfield. With over 60% international students, a week of celebrating diversity is an essential aspect.
Before the school closed for vacations after term 1, I was appointed to work on the presentation on India. Each country gets a 15 minute time slot in which the students have to show-case their country to the entire batch, partners and the faculty. During these vacations, I had been toying with a few ideas and collecting inputs from all Indians on campus. Sometimes, you do enjoy the benefit of having a sister in the market research field and I even sent off a few SOS messages to my sister back in India. I needed some items that I wanted to use in the presentation and had to get these items before the term 2 began. I was lucky enough to get her into action (much to her chagrin) and made her run around the streets of Delhi to find out the specific stuff which I wanted. I was double-lucky because Sameer (Indian) was visiting India during the vacations and kindly consented to carry the items back to school.
As I was working on the presentation, I realized that I am becoming my own critic and continued trashing my own ideas. I was also realizing how difficult it can be to describe your motherland in just 15 minutes. There is so much you can share about your country. But your perspective changes when you remind yourself of whom your audience is. So while India may still be occasionally referred to as a land of “snake charmers”, I wanted to share the fact with my audience that “yes, my country can charm anyone”. An equal if not stronger desire was to learn more about other countries. The international week will tell me much about many other countries – Switzerland, Russia, Italy, Lebanon, Indonesia, Japan, Peru, Greece, China, Denmark, France, Africa – just to name a few.
As the term begins, the challenge for me will be to strike a balance of studying PMI, that is covered in week 1 and preparing for the Indian presentation as well.
posted by Sandeep Gupta at
8:16 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home