The next few years will be as formative in your life, as the first few years when you were born.
You will meet friends from all over the country. You will learn the subcultures of India that you never experienced before. You will make lifelong friends. Friends that will last longer than your college days. They will become your buddies, your advisors when you run into some challenges or crises. And that friendship will begin now.
You will be away from your parents. Your parents will miss you more than you will miss your parents, so make sure that when they call you or text you, you respond because they’ll be more anxious than you realize. You will be learning to be independent, and that will increase your self-confidence and self-esteem. Your thinking will immediately be at a global level, you will no longer be thinking about Delhi, or Mumbai or Kolkata or Chennai… Suddenly, you will be part of global citizenship. Most importantly, you will have in the next few years a more holistic development in your life...
Learning basically how to empathize with people. And I stress empathy because there are two traits that are very important to human beings: passion and empathy. Passion is an innate characteristic; it is already within you. But empathy can be learned, and you must learn it, because you are from the privileged class, and you need to know what life is like on the other side of the fence.
I truly believe this institution will inculcate the attitude of empathy in you because holistic development is the most important part of JAGSoM’s mission. The future belongs to you. And the future for you by 2023-24, and later, is very bright. The whole economy is shifting from low tech to high tech, and you are a part of that generation. So, your career path will be whatever you decide – whether you decide to be a business graduate with a major in Marketing or Finance or Analytics – it does not matter.
The opportunities for entrepreneurship will be large, and those opportunities will multiply by the time you graduate, perhaps even while you are still studying, mainly because the infrastructure will be in place, and we will be more and more a Digital Age economy. All of this is great, of course. But at the same time, because you are from the privileged class, you have a responsibility to society. You must do your part and give back to the community. You need to do this for your own self-preservation as well as self-enlightenment. Because simply making money is meaningless and will leave you feeling empty inside.
So, you must start giving back to the community right away – you shouldn’t postpone it till you have achieved all your goals and retired. Your time is now!
JAGSoM is amongst the select few Business Schools in India with an International Profile: AACSB Accredited & QS Ranked for Marketing, Finance and Analytics programs.
