College Gate - Turning Point

There was a soft skill internal assessment for mid term exams to give internal marks. One of the core subject lecturer and one soft skill lecturer was part of the panel of this viva. The same quantitative lecture was in the panel. Soft skill lecture did ask me the questions. He asked me who is your inspiration. I said my mother. He asked me to describe her with five adjectives. I did give all the five. Also asked some hypothetical question. I have done fairly well. I have done my schooling in Kannada medium. But high school did it in English medium, but it was in rural Bangalore district town called Magadi. The exposure to English language was limited. But I worked for medical transcription, which really helped me to pick my English. But in spite of me doing well in viva they both gave me 5.5/10. I was surprised because people who did not speak proper English sentence while answering question in classroom did get minimum around 8. The marks were allocated on communication skills and English grammar. I have fulfilled both but still got less marks.

The mid term exam went on well. Probably, first time in my life felt so happy after giving exam. I was really in kind of depression mode after these internal assessments. Because, the exam paper had concept oriented multiple-choice questions. I was always under some traditional approach lecturers. They need pages of writing to give marks rather than concept. Also my explanations were usually bit different from traditional thoughts. So this has made me score less marks because of traditional judgments. Here this will be corrected through computers as these are OMR sheets and the only human involvement is feeding the right code, which is minimal. After first paper, my confidence and mood has lifted and did well in mid-term exam. I was waiting for result.

The post mid-term classes started. The sector analysis was back but with surprisingly announced to give presentation. The team was not ready. The team was like out of currency ATM machine. They were yet to fill it up with knowledge post mid-term exams. Team was in panic and asked me to do the entire presentation on aviation industry so that they can escape from the embracement. Without any second thought I agreed to do it. Some craziness drove me to accept it. I was in the firing line now. We were waiting for our team presentation chance. Principal Suryanarayan, IIM graduate, was also present. Our turn came. I did give good presentation. Never saw the slides to explain, which other team presenters did. Also handled question and answer session well.  I always do things with passion and not just because I have to do it. This always helps you understand thing better and remains for long. It was time for feedback. Ms. Jyothi Narayan, soft skill faculty, did scold our team, as there was no teamwork, since I was sole presenter. But she did praise on my confidence and approach for the presentation. She was the one who really gave me confidence even during classes.

Mid-term result came and I have scored relatively well and did not know the impact. Grading is done on cumulative basis (CGPA) once the final term exam is over. This established me in the class as a studious person. In a way I was happy with this tag. But it made me bit relieved and lacked intensity for few days.

One day, I was absent for the class since been out of station. Marketing lecturer Mr.Giri has announced that next day he will take up case study and asked to come prepared. Next day in class, he asked ‘is class ready for the case study?’ But none of them responded positively. He was disappointed. He turned to me and asked ‘even you are not ready with the case study?” I said ‘yesterday, I was absent’. I was taken aback by the word “even you are not”. It is a small thing, but this motivated me to the core. I have set some standard in class even for lectures. This question was turning point for my MBA study. So decided always to meet the dead lines and target for assignments. You need to gather confidence with these small-small things. We always try to draw inspiration from outside. Yes, of course, that is also one way. But never forget you can draw it from yourself too.