Many things have changed since my last entry on the Cambridge MBA blog in September 2018. I could write about the incredibly intense learning experience, the varied extra-curricular activities, the May Balls, my Global Consulting Project in Norway or any one of the thousands of cool events that happened during the year. The truth is words cannot truly capture the breadth of the MBA experience. Instead, I am going to distil one moment that encapsulates how I grew personally and professionally.
In one word, it was exposure. Dear readers, I am going to reveal to you how it works and how it makes you a better person. Cambridge is a place with an infinite number of opportunities. Amongst them, some might be familiar and ordinary; some might be challenging; some might be frightening. As we progressively expose ourselves to things that seem challenging or frightening, they will become more and more familiar and ordinary. We are all afraid of something, as we all should be. It makes us human and has allowed us to survive as a species. Cambridge is a tiny place with an immense concentration of extraordinary talents and activities. One can experiment with the boundaries of their comfort zone. It is a safe place to confront our fears and become acclimated to those new things, making the extraordinary our new ordinary.
For me, I have always felt uncomfortable at best with public speaking. I joined a debating club a few years ago to make this activity less frightening. When an opportunity presented itself to join the Cambridge MBA team in a debate against the Oxford MBA at the Oxford Union, I jumped in. I would be lying if I said it was not scary. But the exposure I have built before and during the MBA made me comfortable enough to tackle this challenge.
And yes, we won.
Pushing boundaries also applied to the professional context. I will undertake a summer internship at HealX – an incredibly promising AI/biotech startup backed by Balderton and Amadeus Capital. Using AI to accelerate drug discovery in rare diseases, HealX is the kind of place where I can apply my medical and business knowledge to achieve positive impact.