People, interested or otherwise, generally tend to ask me questions such as, “How is a day in the life of a Beedie student?” or “What is the atmosphere at Beedie like?” I think questions like these are pretty “over-rated”. I have always wondered how to answer them. Depending on which day and which week, the task at hand can be anything like attending (and sometimes missing) a CKNW news series half-awake at 7 am in the morning (with free breakfast); fanatically finishing up mid-term assignments at 11:30 pm for a 12:00 am submission deadline; grabbing each other’s throats during group assignments; or socializing over drinks at Malones or Steamworks at 2 am in the morning! Now that I think about it, I find it really hard to believe that it has been just a month.
It all started with a big bang! (Quite a lot of you said that, I know) .The big bang theory here wasn’t about Howard and Sheldon though, it was more about a bunch of fifty fresh graduate business students wondering what exactly they were doing playing with balloons (and bursting them for fun). That surprise of course didn’t last long because what followed thereafter were sessions which can be compared to what my friend, a newbie hiker at the foot of the Grouse Grind looking up towards the peak had said, “Oh my God. What did I get myself into?” The initial sessions scared (and excited) quite a few people. So much so that the next class attendance at a Steamworks get-together was the highest to date. But of course after a couple of drinks, we all had managed to convince each other that we were the best hikers in the world.
The next week we started a schedule of what can only be described as an assignment-quiz-assignment-quiz setup. Being the first few days of the class, everyone was eager to show their “worth in the program” (for lack of better words) and doing well in the quiz was quite crucial for that. By the last quiz everyone was like, “Meh! Another quiz. ” The fun part of course were the assignments after class, the duration of which depended totally on your group members and could easily vary from 1 hour to 4 hours. Then there were class discussions on business morals where there was this ethical scale of 1-10 with most people swinging between 3 to 7 depending on the situation (also there was someone who was quoted to have “joined the Dark Side” by the professor). The surprise (or shock, whichever way you take it) was when we realized that we had to appear for two of our mid-terms even before the month was over. Panic struck in again and everyone started skimming through their notes lest they miss something of importance and end up screwing up in the examination. Our prayers were answered when the professor declared that it was a take-home examination not an in- class one due to his other commitments. It was an atmosphere of celebration, almost as if we had no midterm altogether. I don’t know why, but there is always this sense of serenity during any examination sitting at home as compared to listening to all the scribbling pens (or clicking keyboards) in a classroom and constantly wondering, “What the hell are they writing so much about, I don’t know a thing!”. By the end of the third week, we had already finished 2 out of the 6 courses for the trimester and were quite proud of the progress we had made. But then managerial accounting suddenly stepped in and gave us the instant ice bucket challenge.
Now one week into it and with an accounting quiz right around the corner, we are probably heading for the panic button again. But I’m quite sure we will manage that too. After all, part of the learning is about managing your deadlines too, right? One thing that I realized here is that even though people may seem different at first glance with different experiences from different geographical locations, eventually everyone is a human being (of course there are outliers). And the basic instinct of a human being is socializing. We socialize not only to overcome our doubts, our worries, our anxieties, but also to share our joys, our fun-filled moments and our laughter. That’s what defines us as humans I believe. And along the way while we do all this, we make new long lasting friends, who stick with us through thick and thin in any circumstance. But far away from home, with the cutthroat competition in this rat-race world, how do you know whom to trust? And that is the million dollar question.
Rahul Banerjee (RB) is a full-time SFU Beedie MBA Student with a four year work experience in the Energy and Utilities sector and has an undergraduate degree in Instrumentation Engineering.