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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Studying for my MBA finals through a pandemic

by

1781 days ago
20200828

I had reg­is­tered to sit June 2020 ex­ams fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the British Coun­cil—my fi­nal two MBA pa­pers. Then, in March, every­thing changed. Our class­es had now shift­ed to on­line and my class­mates and I were wait­ing on a new date. We were in the same boat as the SEA stu­dents. Even­tu­al­ly, we got no­ti­fi­ca­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty that ex­ams would now be shift­ed to a lat­er date with new in­struc­tions and ex­am pro­ce­dures.

Dur­ing this ex­tra pe­ri­od, I took it up­on my­self to utilise the time to fo­cus on my read­ing and work­ing on prac­tice ques­tions as our beloved coun­try moved in­to phase one of the stay at home mea­sures.

The first two months were very tough, ad­just­ing to this new nor­mal. How­ev­er, I oc­cu­pied my­self with study­ing and keep­ing on top of read­ing. As I kept in con­tact with my close class­mates, they were do­ing the same; they were work­ing ac­cord­ing to their com­pa­ny’s sched­ule. As for me, be­ing an en­tre­pre­neur, I had to close my busi­ness which was lo­cat­ed in a mall.

At some points my frus­tra­tion grew. I kept pray­ing and keep­ing faith (we can­not move for­ward if we do not have faith and be­lieve in prayer). It was in­deed men­tal­ly chal­leng­ing. In due course, new ex­am dates were emailed to us and we were now shar­ing Au­gust ex­ams with the SEA stu­dents.

I was re­lieved to work to­wards a giv­en date. By now, we were al­lowed to open back busi­ness and work with pre­cau­tion and pro­to­cols. How­ev­er, soon af­ter, the cas­es start­ed to rise and I made the de­ci­sion to be very care­ful as my ex­ams were of para­mount im­por­tance. I closed my busi­ness again as ex­ams were soon ap­proach­ing and I did not want to risk be­ing at work.

As I pre­pared for my fi­nal two cours­es, the cas­es kept ris­ing and we moved in­to the sec­ond phase of the var­i­ous mea­sures ad­vised by our au­thor­i­ties. At this stage, study­ing for an MBA fi­nals through a pan­dem­ic can be de­scribed as emo­tion­al­ly drain­ing, as the en­vi­ron­ment was some­what scary and frus­trat­ing si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

My class­mates shared the same sen­ti­ments as I did, as they too were de­pressed at times. Yet, we were study­ing as much as pos­si­ble while be­ing very aware of what was tak­ing place in our coun­try and the rest of the world.

Our var­i­ous ex­ams took place dur­ing the week of SEA and I could have on­ly imag­ined how those eleven and twelve-year-olds felt af­ter sit­ting their very im­por­tant ex­am. Af­ter sit­ting my ex­ams, my feel­ings were a mix­ture of hap­pi­ness, pride and sad­ness.

I will al­ways re­mem­ber these few months as the ex­pe­ri­ence was a very chal­leng­ing but re­ward­ing one. It test­ed us and our ca­pa­bil­i­ties to study and work through these very try­ing times. Nev­er­the­less, with prayer and faith, we did it - both SEA and MBA stu­dents—Au­gust 2020.

Go­ing for­ward, as we all work to­geth­er to fight this pan­dem­ic, we must take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for our ac­tions and be mind­ful that we do have the pow­er to over­come every ob­sta­cle that cross­es our paths in life.

We sim­ply have to fol­low the guide­lines, be strong, and be re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zens and hu­mans.

Ch­agua­nas


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