The results just came out today. We got a summary sheet containing our own grades compared with the cohort’s, as well as our marked exam papers.
Most people should be happy or relieved. I was expecting the worst, but fortunately I do not have to retake any papers. I’d like to think I’ve put the worst behind me in P1, because of the heavy load of quant subjects that I’ve never done before.
Could I have performed better? Quite probably. The food poisoning I had just before exams didn’t help at all. I felt terrible not being prepared enough for my exams because I didn’t get to do my revision over the weekend. Still, it should not be the main (or only) scapegoat. For the quant subjects, I let gaps in my understanding accumulate, when I should have asked questions upfront to make sure that I totally understood what was going on for each lesson. I did ask my groupmates for help, but only towards the end, so this time I am going to start earlier! Like, right now!!!
I felt the professors’ class participation grades were quite fair. I had lower marks in classes where I spoke less, and nearly full marks for Leading People and Groups (LPG - the first segment of Organisational Behaviour) where I spoke almost all the time and on a few occasions punned my professor and had after-class conversations with him. However I also expect most people to have received about the same grade since everyone gets a chance to speak.
And generally, if the professor picks on you (because you look sleepy, bored, distracted or simply haven’t spoken at all before), you don’t necessarily get higher marks. I think you still need to volunteer a valuable insight or ask a deeper question - and on a fairly regular basis - to get higher participation grades. My UDJ (Statistics) participation grade was average despite being Lobo’s blue M&M girl for a few periods.
On the bright side, my group scored 90% for the LPG exam and I’m very proud of our teamwork. Who’d imagine scoring this high for a soft skills exam! We spent a long time planning the process, and during the group exam I was nearly brain dead (having subsisted on plain porridge for the past 2 days) but managed to contribute 2+ pages of the essay. I am really glad to be a part of a winning team.
Moving forward, I know I have to do much better in P2 onwards to pull up my average. I am not too pessimistic about it, but also have to be realistic. When competing on a bell-shaped curve with a large proportion of classmates having much stronger quantitative backgrounds, I know I will probably not get on the better side of the 2.50 average ZScore, as much as I try. However, as our LPG result has shown, it is possible to do very well for other subjects requiring soft skills and beat others at it.
Ultimately, I know in my future jobs I will not be in a sector or role that requires heavy number crunching. That has never been my objective in doing my MBA. I just wanted to understand how the numbers fit into the big picture and interpret what they mean and what action should be taken. Our marketing professor has also warned us not to miss the woods for the trees. As we become more senior, soft skills become more important, not number-crunching. Alums have told my classmates that Organisational Behaviour is the one subject that will stay with us as we move up the ladder.
Also I need to remember that my strengths are in creativity, innovation, communication and the use of technology. These didn’t get used much in P1 but from P2 onwards I hope to stand out more and contribute more to the group.
In our very first Finance lesson, our beloved professor Hillion warned those of us who had no Finance (or similar) backgrounds and weren’t engineers, that we would struggle. The most important thing was that we learnt something.
In his famous words, “Who cares?!”
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