My advice to my younger self on spending two years of Master's degree

 

I finished my graduation (Diploma and Degree in
pharmacy over six years) in 1999.  Thereafter,
I took a mid-career break to do my post-graduation in 2002, after working for two years. The two years of 2001-2003, when I did my master's at IIHMR Jaipur,
changed my life altogether.  I now teach
similar post-graduate students two decades later.  As I observe these youngsters full of enthusiasm
and anxieties, aspirations and insecurities, I look back to my 20 years younger
self.  How I wish I can sit with that young
man in his 20s and share a few words of advice, which I think he was in no mood
to take because he was restless and overconfident.

Here are those pieces of advice anyways.

1.       Stay Joyous and stay focused:  As a mid-career student, you have a lot of pressure
to be more equal to others and find a path and a destination soon as you can’t
mess out with your career anymore. So, you would like not to waste any time on
mundane stuff and remain focused on your studies and career-related
extracurricular activities. But, I suggest you learn to enjoy the new place,
new space, new people, new pedagogies, and a new way of life.  I would urge you to enjoy the process of
learning and living the moment. I want you to stay joyous while you continue to
stay focused. This two can go together, I want you to believe.

2.       Expand your focus: While I want you to stay focused, I
advise you to expand the narrow vision of staying focused on coursework and
curriculum. The post-graduation is not a mere extension of under graduation. If
the latter teaches you to walk, the former makes you fly and these two require
different approaches, insights, and skill sets. I want you to explore beyond
studies, submissions, and examinations. Going beyond marks, I also want you to
rise over job-oriented engagements. Your focus should be to explore larger
realities of self and life, others, and the world.

3.       Be secure and help others grow: You are in a position in which you
strive hard to get a better job sooner. This may make you insecure as you see a
lot of competition around you. The insecurity makes you inward-looking and self-centered,
about study materials, exam preparation, and internship and job placement
opportunities. Let me assure you, as your future self who has done reasonably well,
that there is (and there always be) enough for everybody and more. Invest in
people while you invest in yourself. Take people along as you stride. Collaborate
and compliment; don’t compete. Teach them and learn from them. Learn and teach
by doing things with others. This will go a long way.

4.       Learn to ask: I understand you are shy and
hesitant of asking questions in the classroom and outside it. I advise you to
unlearn the passive approach to learning that you inculcated through your
school and graduation. PG is the time to become an active learner and explore
wider and deeper issues. I urge you to not only ask more, but as deeper and more
meaningful questions – to the content, to the teachers, and yourself.

5.       Read and write: I know you are following this
suggestion, and am glad you are reading a lot, in addition to and beyond the curriculum,
examination, assignment, and job-related materials. Your writing about thoughts
and emotions are helping me since then. Thank you.

6.       Invest in becoming a better version
of yourself: Avoid
the trap of investing a larger chunk of your efforts in your strengths. That
will make you only a bigger version of yourself and not a better version. I
suggest you focus more on a) your ignorance and less on your knowledge, b)
insights that you build and not merely on information that you gather, and c)
people and community as a whole and not on providers and systems.  

7.       Take care of yourself: That is focus on, nourish, and enjoy
your current self. Your future self is amazing and self-sufficient. He has found
his way through the realities of your future. You don’t need to worry about him
then and there. You take care of yourself – here and now.