The Michaelmas Term so far in Cambridge has been nothing short of fulfilling and I am extremely grateful for this opportunity to study in this beautiful city. I wanted to broaden my perspectives and learn not just from the business curriculum and network at Cambridge Judge, but also from the wider Cambridge community made of many bright minds. Where else would you get all the world’s leading minds easily gathered in one place for you to gain new perspectives, and where the only likely hurdle here is the distance from your home to the lecture theatre!
Since coming here, I’ve had the opportunity to attend at least one talk each month that involved acclaimed authors and thinkers in their field. Hearing from the President of Queens’ College, Cambridge, Mohammed El-Erian and Nobel-Prize winning economist, Michael Spence, about their thoughts on current world affairs, Harvard Law professor and author, Cass Sunstein’s insights on behavioural economics, John Lennox from the University of Oxford on faith and science, former UK diplomats Melinda Simmons and Laurie Bristow, about their ambassador experiences in Ukraine and Russia respectively (Sir Laurie is the President of my college at Hughes Hall), and sitting among the audience members at Cambridge Union watching OpenAI (Sam Altman) receive the Stephen Hawking Fellowship all in one Michaelmas Term, has really been altogether a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
That same night I managed to take a photo with Jane Hawking Jones, the woman who played a crucial role in the late renowned physicist, Stephen Hawking’s, life in their marriage. Seeing the real Jane in person after watching ‘The Theory of Everything’ biographical film felt quite magical. These are just a few out of the many other prominent speakers and discussions taking place across the wider University of Cambridge.
I also joined the Cambridge Effective Altruism Fellowship group, where I had weekly intellectually stimulating discussions with students studying different fields in neuroscience to philosophy at the university on the best ways to do good in our society. It has been something out of the usual, learning from different perspectives and challenging myself to think deeper at solutions.
I take away more than just knowledge from these experiences, but also friendships made with my MBA classmates from countries across the world. The diversity and exchange of cultures and conversations both in and outside of the Cambridge MBA cohort has encapsulated the brilliance I was looking forward to immersing myself in before the start of the MBA programme. I am still looking forward to engaging with all the brilliance in the new year and new Lent Term, albeit now with a mixture of “Time is going too fast, slow down please!” because I have had such fun and do not want it to end so fast!
