My love for photography has led me to take countless photos since my teenage years. When I was 13, my father very kindly gifted me a point and shoot camera. This point and shoot became a primary source of escape and helped me explore the creative side of my personality. One of the biggest milestones I aspired to achieve was to pursue my MBA at an internationally based academic institution. So it was a no-brainer, when my dream finally became a reality, that I would be visually documenting my MBA journey. Here’s a glimpse into my 18 month journey as an MBA candidate at Alliance Manchester Business School in 5 photos.
Khushamdeed
I was really looking forward to starting my MBA journey after having worked very hard on my GMAT, on several university applications and interviews. So in August 2018, I arrived in Manchester. Since it was early autumn, the weather was pleasant. And the streets weren’t completely strewn with autumn leaves. However, I had to hit the ground running and had to wait for a few days before I could indulge in city exploration. I had several things on my to-do list like getting my Biometric Residence Permit (BRP), doing the mandatory paperwork required for registering as a new university student, opening a bank account, registering with the National Health Services (NHS) and looking for an affordable student accommodation. Which meant that the initial 3 to 4 days in the city were spent running around to tick things of my to-do list.
While I was sprinting from one university building to another, and unintentionally acquainting myself with the university landscape, I came across a neon sign (picture below) which was displayed on the window of The Manchester Museum. The sign read “Khushamdeed” or “Welcome” in Urdu. I was both happy and intrigued by the display of Urdu script on the university campus. I decided to take a short break from sprinting and grabbed a cup of coffee from the Alan Gilbert Commons Library.
As I was waiting for the Barista to call out my name I whipped out my phone to Google the artist behind this neon display and came across the name, Waqas Khan. The Manchester Museum website stated that “Its (Khushamdeed) literal meaning is to salute a newcomer with kindness, to receive and entertain hospitably and cheerfully and to welcome a visitor or a new idea” and that, “Khan wanted to extend the notion of hospitality and welcome to all Manchester’s residents and visitors“. This instantly brought a smile to my face as I felt like I was being welcomed by the city!
Brathay
After the initial week of orientation, we were off to Brathay. Brathay is located near Windermere in the picturesque Lake District National Park. As part of the MBA, we had the opportunity to participate in team-building exercises aimed at pushing us out of our comfort zones and preparing us to work in groups for all our upcoming group projects. We were allotted rooms with the groups of our first consultancy project, Not for Profit (NfP). This meant that I was rooming with the girls from my NfP team. It was fun to share the room with my classmates from Peru, Taiwan and France. We shared several stories from back home and how we were slowly acclimatising to the unpredictable English weather.
There were several activities at Brathay which were nerve-wracking for me. And, this is precisely the point of these exercises. The intention is to put you into situations where you’re completely out of your comfort zone and rely on the collective strengths and experiences of your team to manoeuvre the hurdles and eventually complete the tasks allotted. We were asked to do several physical activities like scaling a 40 ft pole with a harness and then jumping off (picture below), do several obstacle courses, scale a 200m mountain and run back to the starting point within 2 hours and looking for hidden clues using a physical map to navigate the enormous Brathay property. All of these activities were taxing for me in different ways.
Scaling a 200m mountain was severely exhausting. Since I didn’t have any experience trekking this quickly before, I had a tough time reaching the summit. At several points I just felt like my feet were jelly and that I won’t be able to make it. My kind classmates kept encouraging me to keep going and it was truly a momentous occasion when I did end up at the summit! One of the most terrifying experiences for me was when we (our team of 5 NfP team members) were asked to row a boat from point A to point B. We were given a walkie talkie for emergencies. We were given instructions about how we could row from one point to the other. Since I had never rowed before I was terrified as I don’t know how to swim. My teammates sensed my discomfort and jumped in immediately to create a sense of security despite the fact that we were out in the middle of the river and none of really knew what had to be done. It was a tremendous moment of unity and yes we did end up getting back to base without any mishaps.
Manchester Matters
One would think that the boat ride at Brathay was terrifying for me. Hold my non-alcoholic beer. Presenting to large audience has always terrified me. Ever since I can remember. But a key lesson that I learned from my experience at Brathay was that pushing myself out of comfort zone was key to keep growing. So when the opportunity to present for Manchester Matters came up, I said Yes! I’ll do a 10 minute long presentation in front of my entire class! Manchester Matters is a TED-talk style presentation organised by the MBA Student Council, wherein MBA students are invited to submit topics they would like to share with their classmates. Post submission, the selection of either 5 or 6 speakers is done by the Program Head and the Student Council.
Signing up for the presentation and getting selected to speak was easier than preparing for it. Until the day of the presentation, I was kicking myself for having signed up for it the first place. All of my fears surrounding public speaking were flaring. The topic I proposed to talk about was Lucknowi Chikankari embroidery. Since the family business surrounds manufacturing and selling Chikankari embroidered garments, it was an easy topic to choose and acquaint my classmates with.
In order to bring some ease and order into this experience, I borrowed some inspiration from an elective I chose to do around public speaking and presentations. The breathing exercises were really helpful and the insistence on practicing the presentation also aided in helping me remain calm during the real deal. Post my presentation, I was told by the Program Head that she really liked my cadence and overall presentation. It was also received well by my classmates who had very kind words to say. It was great to know that my practice and detailed preparation paid-off. That was a real boost and it significantly helped me improve my grades in the rest of the program wherein I had to deliver presentations.
The Salmon Project
One of the perks of doing the 15 and 18 month pathways is to work on a summer internship project. This presents a great opportunity to work on a short-term project within the UK and get a glimpse into the British work culture. I was happy to join the seafood manufacturing site of Morrisons (one of the top 4 grocery retailers in the UK) in Grimsby. The 10 weeks spent at the Morrisons Manufacturing site at Lakeside, Grimsby, were extremely valuable in terms of both my professional and personal experience.
I was in charge of ‘The Salmon Project’ wherein I had to validate two machines on site and undertake microbiological and organoleptic assessments of defrosted salmon (picture below). This meant that I had to monitor the freezing and defrosting mechanisms of salmon on a daily basis and sit in on weekly defrosted salmon tasting sessions with experts. The summer project aided in the development of important project management skills like, effective leadership, time and resource management, stakeholder management, understanding team roles and effectively managing them. These skills, over the course of the 10 weeks, helped my guide the project in the right direction and most importantly, helped me, in delivering the project on time.
In addition to developing project management skills, I was exposed to the very approachable senior management team based at the Lakeside office. It was humbling to see a senior team, which comprised of individuals who had, at one point, started their careers in the factory, working on the line. This enabled the senior management team to look at a problem from the very bottom to the very top and this wide range of perspective enabled them to make very quick and effective decisions on a daily basis.
This project was not only a platform to learn and apply management skills, but also to learn about an industry I had absolutely no background in. I learned about food safety standards in the UK, microbiological assessment of food, specifically, fish, also learned about the mechanics of the equipments within the factory and that salmon is traded on the stock exchange as a commodity! All in all, it was like a 10 week crash course in economics, food science, engineering and manufacturing!
The cherry on the cake was definitely the people that I worked with. This internship project gave me an incredible opportunity to connect with seafood industry experts, who’ve been in their field for over 15 years! And it was a great working with a team of colleagues who were very nice people on a personal level as well.
The Queen’s Gambit
MBAT, a sports tournament hosted by HEC Paris wherein a significant number of European Business Schools are invited to participate, is also a highlight of the MBA at Alliance Manchester Business School. Since the MBAT is hosted by HEC Paris, we were excited to travel to Paris for 4 days. And, I had volunteered to represent the school for the Chess tournament.
A little bit of a flashback to learn about how I taught myself to play chess. My father was working in Saudi Arabia in the Saudi Electric Company as a Project Manager in charge of setting up power plants in different parts of the country. Since there weren’t many primarily English speaking schools in Abha, Saudi Arabia, my parents decided to send me to Mumbai for my education. And Indian schools offered two breaks for students, one was a Diwali break for about a month in either October or November and the other was a longer break during the Summer months. Dad would then book flights for those breaks and I would spend my vacations in Abha. One of my favourite activities was to play video games on the first generation PlayStation. And one of the games that I absolutely loved to play against on the console was chess. I learned how to play chess using the tutorial within the game. And on several occasions I would win against the computer, which was great dose of dopamine.
Fast-forward to MBAT, our team of 4 chess teammates was playing against the students from Cambridge. Fun-fact, one of the participants had just walked-in after winning at rowing. I had a great start to the game however, one wrong move and it was checkmate for me. I was disappointed to have made an erroneous move in such a crucial match, but I guess it’s also a reflection of life. Man proposes, God disposes.
Since the chess tournament had taken place on day 3, I had a lot of fun cheering my classmates who participated in table-tennis, basketball, swimming, cricket, football, paintball, sprints and many many more games in the first few days. It was also nice to meet students from other European business schools like IESE, HEC, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge to name a few.
