Graduate Studies Blog

Article contributed by Prerna Sangal, MBA Class of 2019

The excitement of joining a business school you have worked so hard getting into is unparalleled. You enter the gates with a lot of mixed emotions and a whole lot of nerves. For me it meant, leaving the life I had known and been used to for 27 years behind and entering what I had been itching to call ‘a new phase of my life’.

But usually the first few days in a new phase can be unsettling. Entering unfamiliar territory, worrying about how people perceive you, is everyone too competitive, you are stormed by a million questions. I was.

And then the orientation week began. I remember the day of 12 July, 2018 where I entered a room full of strangers belonging to 25 nationalities. We walked to each other a little nervous but with a smile on our faces, greeting and meeting. I was overcome by a feeling of reassurance as I knew this is what I was here for. Exposed to people from varied cultures in one of Asia’s best business schools, hell yeah!

What followed was an adventurous roller coaster of a week, quite literally because we were taken to Sentosa and made to do adventurous activities as part of the team building process. So now we were rowing boats, braving sea waves and walking together 80m above ground on a thin rope with people we met a day before. To say all of us bonded a little more that day, will obviously be an understatement. Rarely have I been excited about coursework but when we were told what lay ahead of us for this year and how I had the flexibility of choosing what I want to study or where I want to go as part of a ‘Business Study Mission’, feeling excited was involuntary. Just the wealth of resources that would be available to me in terms of market insight, global news and industry connections got me excited. No, I am not a nerd. Just an enthusiastic business student!

 

But when there is work you need a little play. My favourite was the informal dinners that followed. We had the opportunity to network with our cohort as well as our professors. We even had an industry session in this week where we were provided multiple options and could choose our industry of choice. Meeting alumni or executives from Apple, Coca Cola, Adidas amongst many others reminded us what we are here for and helped in developing and maintaining our ambition. Let me remind you, this is just the orientation week.

This was an exciting start to my Nanyang Journey and it has just been an uphill from there.

 

For more info about the Nanyang MBA programme, please visit our website