The creative ice-breaker activities helped the students to get acquainted with their peers, says Pallavi

The journey started with the Orientation week (O-Week) to give the students a glimpse of the two years at BITSoM. Chairman, Governing Council, BITSoM, Kumar Mangalam Birla addressed the students and inspired us to set the bar high. BITS School of Management (BITSoM) had created an ideal environment for peer learning which plays a vital role in an MBA programme. All the students arriving in Mumbai were accommodated in a luxurious hotel. The activities were organised within the purview of social distancing guidelines and Covid norms. The creative ice-breaker activities helped the students to get acquainted with the peers. The O-Week ended on a lighter note where an Online Talent Night planned. Teamwork is the building block of any project. The talent night was a mix of offline and online participation, the latter being an initiative to accommodate those who couldn’t make it to Mumbai. There are people with expertise in different fields. The amalgamation of all the values which each one brings to table makes a class rather than representation of 140 different individuals. This is the kind of culture which the BITSoM family aims to have, the one where everyone feels included. I feel that I have got an opportunity to express myself without any apprehensions. This culture will enable a student to make the most out of the programme. I admire the symbiotic relation the institute and the students are building on. It’s like a start-up environment at BITSoM where everyone is collaborating and working towards one goal, establishing an institute of eminence.

The mode of learning is online and still, there has been enough scope for the students to interact and learn from each other’s insights. Dr. Ranjan Banerjee and Dr. Leena Chatterjee guided the students to develop a personal development plan to work on. Just one month down and we have completed four courses. The block teaching method has enabled to focus on a specific domain and grasp the most to make the learning process effective. Each block has one core subject of Management and one course from Winning at the Workplace (WAW) modules. This creates a perfect balance to accommodate the knowledge which the industry requires, and skills required to work in an organisation. The faculty at BITSoM are from renowned institutes from all over the world. They have created an interactive and pedagogic milieu which has motivated to me to enjoy rather than survive the rigorous MBA programme. The beginning itself is so fascinating that I’m confident about my next two years at BITSoM. I now view my goals as quoted by Marcel Proust, "My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing”.

About the author

Pallavi Savant is a founding class student of BITS School of Management (BITSoM's) MBA Programme with a Bachelor’s degree in Pharmacy in 2020 and an Internship at Bayer Zydus Pharma Pvt Ltd.

Note: The views expressed in this article are solely the author’s own and do not reflect/represent those of Shiksha