For most of my scholastic occupation, I was completely clueless about the essence of a structured education system. Much like my teachers and seniors had so often iterated, I learned the significance of endeavours such as internships only when I was inducted to, what they called, the professional or the adult world.
I had the privilege to attend the evaluation of the internships accomplished by the students of various MBA courses at IILM, Gurgaon. The accord discussed ideas such as wedding disposition to the career. The purpose of the internship, as I could deduce by the type of questions asked and consequent advice offered, was to grasp the operations of the b-world instead of scoring well, which would certainly get you a job but won’t help you in keeping it or growing in the respective field. The preparation for a 2-3 weeks long glimpse of the real world is extensive at the institute. Apart from the curriculum, the pupils are broadly briefed on how to go about the internship.
A counsel of Reality
As far as my experience goes, interns are welcome to organisations to fill in gaps and basically do whatever they are asked. I was curious as to whether the performance of each child depended on the procedures of the organisation. I received a satisfying answer:
Each student is allotted a mentor on both ends (the institute and the organization) who are in constant touch with the former as well as each other. The institute mentor made sure, by urging their counterpart, to assign them defined projects to ensure that the internship wasn’t pursued for the sake of it. Needless to mention, the student could contact the mentor for anything and everything apart from submitting the two-weekly report throughout the course of the internship.
Learning from the Experts
A mixture of the faculty, alumni and industry experts gave constructive criticism on their presentations. The marking was segregated into 5 sections:
- Industry Knowledge
- Challenge
- Communication Skills
- Ability to Answer Questions
- General Behaviour
The students’ achievements were scored from 1-4; 1 being unsatisfactory and 4 being excellent. They asked penetrating questions that surpassed the common value and urged them to reach beyond their duties to unravel market functions and present solutions to assigned problems.
“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” ~ Buddha
Imagine getting to work for corporations like GlaxoSmithKline, RJ Corp Limited, Nivea, Deloitte and Umrao Hotel. The varying projects and pertaining objectives were a challenge where they dealt with rude prospective employees, uncooperative distributors, unprofessional management, outdated technology, and a general ignorance towards sales execs.
They managed to overcome these challenges with some poise. I don’t believe this could have been possible without the systematically engineered programme and persevering teachers.
However, the deficiencies of the undertaking lie in the lack of initiative by a student. The intent of the accord was clear – to promote critical thinking and effort amongst the students with an elaborate Internship programme. To tell you the truth, I found myself drawn back to my MBA college days every few minutes, only that the set up was the IILM campus where freedom of thought and achievement were encouraged at every step!
