Monday, February 18, 2008

THE MATH CLASS

February 18, 2008

I have a dream. I see myself in the corporate world. Making smart decisions, organizing, negotiating, stretching the boundaries of my experience. Acquiring authority and clout to make things happen. The realization that I love being in charge (and how much do I love it) dawned on me sometime last year when it was left on me run the office for months with my boss posted out and his reliever delayed. The joy of daily decision making, the lessons from the daily pitfalls, the responsibility of creating substance out of shambles - I hadn't known how much I had in me ! 
From that experience to realizing that my life's career lay beyond medicine was but a small step. I rather enjoy the mysteries and the excitement of medicine - there nothing is quite like hearing 'Thank you for making me fell well again'- but the world of Hippocrates uses no more than a tenth of my energy. And provides no more than a hundredth of the stimulation I need.

I have a very interesting set of friends and family. There turned out to be quite a few who "always knew I was going to move beyond medicine". Take the GMAT.Go for an MBA."

I spent the next few weeks surfing the net so exhaustively - going through page after page of university after university, writing to complete strangers for advice ("Sir, you were a doctor in the army, how come you decided to get an MBA?"), reading career profiles by the dozens. And then I saw the light.This IS what I'm meant to do! This is the reason for every tough experience that I've had. How else would I have known that this is what I WANT to do?
Result of research: MBA, here I come.

Next step - GMAT.I hesitate to admit this, fearful of being labeled the most uncool geek ever, but I happen to love examinations. An entirely new bunch of books to read, to take a hitherto unheard of examination - it was just one more source of the adrenaline I need. I bought, borrowed, downloaded study material and got down to it. A couple of months later , I'm ready and prepared but my dad suggests that I should take one of these test prep courses. One doesn't want to be overconfident about these things so I take a month's leave, come home and join one of these GMAT test prep courses.

Which brings us to purpose of this particular post.What an evening I have had today.

Day one of Math class at the institute -
The instructor walks in, says Hi to everyone and writes on the board-"Number Theory". Oh good. I do have some issues with this part. I sit up, all ready to soak it in, and all ready with so many of doubts and questions. But this guy spends the next five minutes FILLING the board up with formula after formula - not one of which I have seen in Princeton or Kaplan or the Official Guide to GMAT- Heyy!! I seem to have entered the wrong class. But no. It is the GMAT class and over the next hour I'm reminded, painfully, of the day in school some 13 years ago when I had actually
stumbled into an engineering section Math lecture and was too shy to walk out until it was over. I had sat in glassy eyed silence then and I sat in glassy eyed silence now. And there was this group of nearly a dozen other people (all engineers I presume) who seemed to know what was going on. Should I tell them that these formulas aren't tested on the exam?

But maybe they are, which means I'm lost.

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