Today marks the last day of a 3-week long graduate training program at an investment bank which for obvious reasons I am going to refer to as IB. After 2 weeks of mandatory training, I went into work energised and relieved to be back at my desk. Not that I did not enjoy the training, but I was not particularly enjoying the strict 9-5 schedule. Unfortunately my relief was very short lived when my manager announced I should go on further training on a subject which I thought was entirely irrelevant to my work. To be perfectly honest, in the past 3 years of my professional career I have never been sure of what I wanted to do or what I enjoyed doing. I find it very hard to cook up an answer to the wretched question "where do you see yourself in 5 years". At least my boss knew what I should be doing. Hence without any hesitation I agreed to go on the three day course on Project planning, analysis and control.
Just three days of droning lectures and pointless case studies forced me into making a very important decision in life, that I would never pursue an MBA degree. So far, all the management lectures I have attended have been extremely vague and theoretical. I do not think I can go into work thinking "I am so excited about performing risk analysis on this project. I am going to do an amazing job at it by following the 7 steps outlined in the ****** guide". To me it all seems a bit of b***s***. Risk analysis is vital, but the idea of doing it by drawing decision trees seems silly from my perspective. Nevertheless I passed the assessment with flying colours!
There was one aspect of the training that I thoroughly enjoyed. Being the only girl, not to mention the only Indian girl amongst 10 Irish guys with the thickest accents I have come across was fun! There were times when my mind went blank seeing one of them talk so fast. It made me wonder if they were still speaking English or some unknown Irish language! They were so amused that I found it difficult understanding their accent. But after a day of hearing them crack jokes, I can now proudly state that I am actually able to laugh with them and not just stare blankly at them. I also loved their interesting names some of which are Dermot, Rory, Fergal, Damien and Cormac. After seeing only Johns and Toms everywhere, it was fun to hear such innovative names! At least I took something out of the course, not to mention that now I know a thing or two about Ireland. Apparently Ireland has only one climatic season through the year (Discovered from one of our discussions on weather which the Britons love to crib about!).
