Great Laker Suhas Krishnamoorthy from PGPM Class of 2018 writes about the Great Lakes Advantage by sharing some of the key non-academic takeaways while pursuing MBA program at Great Lakes, Chennai.
Life at B-school is never a cake walk. You need to strive hard to excel in every task you do. You’ll be bombarded with multiple assignments, group projects, quizzes and exams at the same time. But, that is the beauty of the doing a Management course. We get exposed to multiple time converging and interesting tasks. However, it’s not as difficult as it sounds. After all, you enter a B-school to learn how to tackle the difficulties you could face in the corporate world.
Be it the flagship PGPM – One Year management program or Two Year, the course at Great Lakes justifies itself by offering a comprehensive package that hones your managerial skills. Each day you study here guarantees a life lesson. From interaction with the amazing faculty to working on a small group project, you will definitely have something new to learn.
Here are few learnings you can expect during your MBA at Great Lakes:
Achieving career success is next to impossible without developing an empathy towards our society. Here at Great Lakes, we are taught to ‘Achieve with Humility’ and hence ‘Grow with humility.’ This learning is not just through theoretical courses but through a real life social service known as ‘Karmayoga.’
As we progress in life, we need to give back to the society for the overall betterment. This practice is done at Great Lakes to make everyone realize that there is life beyond ‘I’. There is a society out there which needs our help in terms of education, fulfilling their basic needs, mentorship for budding children and so on.
Industries are in search of Go-green initiatives to protect Mother Earth from deadly disasters. Great Lakes is encouraging the development of environmental conscious leaders who strive to develop the nation without compromising with the environment. Few steps taken towards this drive are – no motorized vehicles inside the campus, solar powered water heaters and street lights, smoke-free campus and so on. Hence the pollution around the campus is minimal and has helped in developing a self-sustained environment.
These initiatives have enabled Great Lakes to get LEED platinum certification for the campus. Living in such a surrounding while pursuing post graduation inculcates the values necessary to protect our Mother Earth.
A person who cannot manage his time and his resources would tend to procrastinate his work. This, in turn, would lead to his/her low productivity. Here at Great Lakes, we get flooded with multiple brainer tasks at the same time. Hence we end up mastering the art of ‘Multi-tasking’ and ‘Divide and Conquer’ to achieve our targets efficiently. In fact, the concepts we learn during lectures are directly applied in our day to day lives. Be it arranging and managing a badminton tournament or a formal guest lecture from an Industry trailblazer, we’ll knowingly or unknowingly use the concepts taught during academic class. This actually leads to what is called ‘Experiential learning’
A business leader should know how to carry himself throughout the day. It is one of the primary factors responsible for effective decision making. What Great Lakes beautifully does is, the Institute has a dedicated ‘Corporate & Career Services’ division which focuses on grooming each student to become a professional leader. CCS basically focuses on enhancing the thought process of the students by arranging a series of guest lectures by Industry stalwarts, enabling multiple students-faculty interaction to understand their career interests and accordingly prepare them for the placement season. These activities help the students gain the skills necessary apart from academic knowledge to become successful.
A true testimony to what experiential learning is, Great Lakes is an enabler to all those who aspire to become industry expert and lead a successful corporate management life.
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