Welcome to the UWA MBA Full Time Intensive – “the place where you will all read until your eyes bleed and think until your head hurts. The contained energy inside the Tony Howarth Lecture Theatre stirred as our lecturers delivered these sentiments as anecdotes for the next 12 months. This energy resonated from the 20 MBA students who tried desperately to sit and make sense of everything that was thrust upon them during the first weeks of Session 1. As daunting as this statement sounds – I think I speak for most of us, when I say that we were quite ready to start what looked like a very exciting year ahead.
I arrived 3 days late for the MBA orientation, as a curious traveller not entirely sure what to expect – but ready to star in another chapter of my life’s adventure. I chose to come to the University of Western Australia (UWA) because I wanted to meet individuals who share the same fundamental values as myself – but who, at the same time challenge me with new meaning. I chose to come to UWA because I wanted to test my limits and learn more about my own ambition. So it goes without saying that I was pleasantly comforted when the Dean, Phil Dolan, emphasised the fact that ‘becoming an effective leader is a life long process and progression’ and with that I believe that we must all put ourselves in position of discomfort (in order to succeed)”.
The last few months have been incredible to say the least: I’ve introduced and explained my trade breathlessly and indefinitely, yet I find it oddly refreshing to repeatedly find myself locked in conversations with people who have led very interesting and exciting lives. We’ve been told on numerous occasions that our classmates are our biggest assets and that it’s the people that make it all worthwhile. True confidence is infectious and when you’re surrounded by people who inspire you, you in turn aspire to become a better version of yourself. I find myself sitting across engineers, geologists and entrepreneurs and I will say with much confidence that I have already constructed lifelong connections with most of them.
When you’re in a place like UWA, you start believing that the law of averages don’t apply to you and that the limitations set by society don’t matter anymore. Having said that, I have realized that it’s not enough to merely concoct some lofty outline of what you want out of life and wait for the details to sort themselves out. Contrary to what I believed yesterday, I know that today’s world favours the bold, the creative and the slightly crazy. When you believe all that, taking chances to find your own innovative path becomes easy.
Most of us have made tremendous sacrifices to pursue a year-long programme and as we stare into the abyss of squandered sleeps and lapsed pay checks, it might be easy to occasionally fall off the wayside. But being business students, we ought to be experts at trade off and utility maximization. The way I see it, we need to string in all the benefits of studying in a this fine institution, leverage the gargantuan resources that are at our disposal, sit down for coffee with the people we meet during our time here, and really make the best out of our experience.
And although my positive outlook scores in the UWA qualtrics personality questionnaire were relatively low, I believe my fragile idealism about what’s expected of the world has been rejuvenated. I am a firm believer in the associative property of awesomeness and how we can work towards being a positive reinforcement for one another and become the smartest, happiest and best versions of ourselves during the course of the next 12 months. And although my friends and I are yet to test the theory that we are two phone calls away from anyone in the world, I can say with much confidence that it’s going to be an exciting experience trying to figure that out.
Tashi Delek (which means best wishes in Bhutan)
Best,
Heshin
