One term down, many, many more to go. Doing a part-time masters can sometimes feel never-ending but still, I am grateful for the experience. It has been a tough few months of balancing two online subjects and maintaining some semblance of sanity during lock-down. However, after finishing my exams for the term, I am definitely glad that I pushed through.
It is a tremendous opportunity to be able to learn, connect with such a variety of people across industries and share stories, even in isolation. I was, at first, hesitant at how Melbourne Business School would handle moving its course delivery to a digital platform, but I must say, the MBS program services and lecturers did a great job of converting the materials online and offering a healthy set of subjects to facilitate the continuation of our studies. The quality of classes have been rather refreshing considering the circumstances!
In my relatively short career, I have already witnessed the disruption of many a change of vision, multiple alterations to role requirements and numerous employee cut-backs in an attempt to streamline the workforce. Through this, I have seen the value, importance and benefit of keeping your skills relevant and your mind sharp, not just for the workplace, but for yourself. Gone are the days when you could graduate from university with an undergraduate degree, land a job and comfortably retain that job for the next 20 years, linearly progressing up the hierarchy purely due to seniority and experience.
This constant change is perhaps why the term ‘growth mind-set’ has recently been circulated repeatedly throughout many industries and after attending multiple information sessions and development days, my main take-away is, that you must prioritise investing in yourself. This means, making time for learning, keeping your mind open to new opportunities and allowing yourself to feel uncomfortable, since growth rarely occurs in a place of comfort.
While in principal a growth mind-set is great, it can be difficult to put into practice. In reality there are so many obstacles in each of our lives that limit the capacity to invest in ourselves. Workload, personal commitments, family and friends being just a few of the broad categories that take up our time. But I figure learning comes in all shapes and sizes (just like we do) and it’s about finding the medium that best suits us.
Thinking back to when I was assessing whether or not to pursue a masters, I was met with a wide range of opinions from ‘only experience really matters’, to ‘take a year off work and pump it out’. It was a mind-numbing process to figure out what really mattered to me, what I could afford and what path steered me in the direction I wanted to take my career. Understanding that going back to university to do further studies isn’t everyone’s cup of tea (not to mention quite expensive), there are still a multitude of avenues to explore. Tafe, Cert 4s, work secondments, travel, online schools, even YouTube being a few great alternatives.
We live in a rapidly evolving world of digital and data where all the majors of every industry are investing heavily to get ahead of the curve in order to remain relevant and competitive in years to come. And much like these large conglomerates, it is also vital for each of us to invest heavily in ourselves. The occupations of the past decade are slowly being modified as more and more activities are automated and machine-driven. So much so, that surely in time, we will all have different jobs, in commerce, in medicine, in logistics… in every industry.
Today, success is driven by resilience and a strong commitment to growth. It is about making sure you continue to work towards being able to get up out of bed everyday in pursuit of a rewarding career and being the best version of yourself that you can be.
movingforwardpriya 
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