The onset of virtual MBA - An era of Zoom calls and GMeet

"Shortlisted" - read the site that I had been refreshing for weeks. IIM Bodh Gaya was the first-ever B-School I had converted.  I was on cloud nine with the thought that I was going for an MBA, along with numerous diverse students, and will be living the campus life. Even after hearing non-stop news about COVID-19, I thought it will all be a thing of the past in the next two months. 

But as fate would have it, it was not just the first time I was supposed to leave my home for studies, but also the first-time mankind witnessed a worldwide lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The norms changed, and habits revamped. And yet, with so much going around in the world, my happiness knew no bounds as I was going to be a part of the much-revered IIM family. 

Students found a ‘home’ on screen, one that was blamed for distancing them. People stuck in Bangalore with their families based out of Delhi were communicating, gossiping, sharing, and playing games like seventh graders. Dalgona Coffee, Plank Challenge, 9 PM 9 Minutes, revisiting old albums, making new dishes - these were some of the highlights of lockdown and that of our virtual MBA.

For me, as July approached, I got both nervous and excited. Excited, for obvious reasons and nervous, due to the uncertainty we had concerning everything. Then came 21st July 2020, the day our Induction ceremony was conducted. Though online, the shenanigans were still the same. Wake up at 5 AM, dress up in formal attire, and be in front of your screens before 7:30 AM.

If you are asking me to be honest, I’d say - yes, all of this was very tough in the beginning. ‘Early to bed and early to rise’ had been my motto for years. Even during the lockdown, I was one of those people, who used to wake up at 6 AM, when for the majority it was their bedtime. Now I was sleeping at 1 AM, getting up at 5 AM. “Not my cup of tea”, I said to myself. 

The same week, we got the timetable for our classes. Our classrooms for virtual MBA weren’t equipped with whiteboard, benches, and marker. Instead, we had our classes on laptop screens. We couldn’t knock on the doors of our friends’ room at our new college; we could only call them. GMeets, Zoom, register, pen, and our little corner – that was all.

In retrospect of the past month, it seems that the onset of a virtual MBA has given us this eerie habit of taking up the workload on our own. One day it’s the assignments, case study discussions, and projects, the next day its committee/club meetings, deadlines, and strategic planning session. 

As the day passed, norms changed and habits got revamped, again. There came days when the workload was relatively less and assignments could be postponed a bit more, but I and my new habit of binging TV Series had some other plans.  

“Still not my cup of tea?”, I asked myself.

If this is what it takes to be an MBA student, I guess I had finally become one, after all!