I have been away from the blogging arena for a while.. I haven’t been up to much though, besides settling back in India after a long vacation in Chile and thereafter plunging into my studies for my final academic year for the BSc Banking and Finance. Which makes me look back and wonder why everything looks so different today than it looked a few months ago, while each day didn’t seem all that revolutionary (in spite of my day-centric methodology which I speak of below)… Perhaps it’s because, until a few months ago I still had the flexibility to choose modules – a yearly process I’m always going to miss! I had the option to ‘do what I like’. Now that I have registered for my final examinations, I have the obligation to ‘like what I do’ – creating a liking, if it doesn’t come naturally. Paradoxically, it is only in the fulfillment of certain obligations that we achieve freedom – freedom from the fear about results, freedom from schedules that bind us rather than unwind us…
How then, do we create a liking for our study which can be sustained amidst an internal pressure to perform and qualms about its practicality which often arise during times of economic distress that the world is currently going through? It is at these times, that we must remind ourselves that our takeaway is not the content of a module necessarily, but the underlying skills each of them endows us with. For instance, my takeaways from the modules I’m pursuing this year are the psychological insights in ‘Principles of Marketing’ which enables you to think from another person’s perspective, the ability to bring about the optimal, given constrained conditions from ‘Management science methods’, the knack of connecting the dots with ‘Macroeconomics’ and derivational faculties through ‘Investment management’. It is this set of skills that keeps us going after the completion of our study, and the hope of their acquirement that does the job during its course.
I’ve never had a plan to get thus far, I don’t have any post-grad-life ideas, nor do I have a pre-examination agenda – bringing out the best in each day is what brings out the best in me! And my day-to-day approach is fostered by a challenge I signed up for recently, which you can read about here: 100happydays.com Not having a plan doesn’t imply I’m not forward looking.. It’s analogous to the thin line between being resolute and being obstinate. What I am looking forward to at the moment is the online study month organized by the University of London for EMFSS students, which brings me to my final point, about the importance of interactive learning. Once, a mentor was asked by a disciple, “All that you teach is there in the books. What do I need you for?”, to which he replied, “Why don’t you ask this question to the books?!”
Hema is studying the BSc Banking and Finance with the University of London International Programmes in India.
