The Student Diary

After attending class yesterday I found out that I have two exams coming up next week. The usual feelings of dread swamped me. I wish I didn’t have to take mathematics. I still remember my friend John warning me before I left for Bangalore. He had said

“ Marufa, whatever you do, don’t study Maths again”

Well, it’s ringing in my ears now, even after all these years. It’s something that I can not really get rid of. I have done badly in Maths ever since school but I still kept taking it; I was a bit stuck with it, depending on the type of course that I had to decided to graduate in. Would I have done better in History or arts? I guess not. Marketing is my field of expertise and for that, business maths is definitely a prerequisite. After all, sometimes in life, when we really want something, we have to make do with all the other things that come attached with it.

Yesterday while I was attending the Business Mathematics class and the faculty, in the advent of explaining about the logarithmic and exponential growth curve asked a random student.

“If I give you one Lac Taka today, what would you do with it?”

The student promptly answered “I will throw a party for my friends, sir”

The faculty, aghast, knowing that there is no way he can twist that answer into an example of a growth curve tried again by asking

“But won’t you want to save it for the future, maybe just a part of it, like let’s say; you could throw a party for 10 thousand taka and save the rest?”

The guy who seemed to have no idea where the question was leading to, clarified unduly “No sir, if you give me that much money, I would just spend it on my friends”

The faculty, not to be fazed with his answer said “Are you working”

“Yes Sir”, replied the student

“Where”, Sir continued

“Lafarge Cement”, he answered

“So are you going to buy a stock of your company soon” asked Sir, still trying to get the student back to track of the growth potential being taught in class

“No sir”, he said. “I am not into that kind of thing”

The faculty was really flabbergasted and he said “Than why are you learning for a degree in MBA if you don’t even have any business minded intentions of making profit, that’s after all, what business and investments are all about. It’s about making profit?”

“I am taking this degree course to get a better opportunity in life” the student frankly admitted. A lot of other students in the class were seen nodding their heads in agreement.

The faculty had to drive his point home. “You will require an MBA degree for better opportunity without doubt, but to maintain it, you need to be profit minded, with which you can assist the company with the profit they are trying to make and that’s when your true value at the company will be recognized”

The student was unfazed. Undoubtedly, there are thousands of such people in the country who simply intend to get a degree just because it boosts their position in the company without really thinking about how they require the knowledge in it to further their skills in profit making schemes. Or perhaps it could be a different reason. I remember embarking on the degree to learn something to use later. But, whether that was profit making or having future investment use for it later was something I hadn’t decided upon. Like the student, and perhaps a thousand other students, I wanted a backup degree with the knowledge that comes with it. And than I got a job, but that didn’t make me think of profit making either or investments.

I was just an employee. Given a task which required doing and which had a deadline. But, as experience grew, I came to realize how each of these tiny tasks formulates a bigger picture which can be termed as “Profit for the company”. I doubt how many people other than the corporate heads, people with definite task deadlines and outcome targets, people in the sales department think like that. Some really just want to go to work, complete a day’s daily mundane tasks and come home to relax, get a paycheck at the end of the month and just enjoy the weekends.

The thought that counts here is, however, from my point of view, is that everyone wants to do well. But “well” has many projections and varieties, most just want to be happy with whatever they have and are willing to put up with, and isn’t that what ultimately counts in the end?