Learning and challenging

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I am presently undergoing my post-graduate studies in one of the universities, something that had been long delayed due to commitments, work and otherwise.
To a certain extent one reason for me doing this to get a piece of paper that would allow me to speak with authority, a paper...
I had been working for more than 20 years and garnered experiences from the length and breadth of corporate organisation.
In the first semester while I was introducing myself to everyone in the class, the professor asked why am I doing the program, my rely was "I want to validate what I had done in the corporate world with the concepts and theories that you are teaching." Hence even though I want the piece of paper what I want to do is to learn (old and new things), find congruence, challenge ideas and maybe come out with new thinking... just like any good post-grad student is supposed to do.

Today the last tutorial class, the subject Strategic Management, I challenged an idea in class, telling everyone and the professor about what I thought regarding compliance to norm, when I said is it wrong to be different? Breaking away from norms... then the professor started to rant about something else and instead of understanding he started to something else...

Maybe it's just me when I disagree I would challenge, maybe it'sjust me who has a temper as short as my hair (I am shave my head bald by the way) so you know what kind of temper threshold I have... I blurted to the professor "that's bullshit! Why do I need to comply to norms?" The professor then ranted more... I was shivering not for being cold, I was trying to control my temper! I was about to blow in the class when someone asked for a tea break.

What I cannot stand is when he said that you cannot speak of a subject when you don't have a qualification i.e. MBA etc.... well I may not have that, yet, but I do have the experience to go with that. What have you?

I am not disagreeing to fact that I am here to learn, but post-grad students are not like under-grads where you accept, remember, comply. Post-grads are people who generally have experience, a certain point of view, we want to challenge ideas and find new ideas, dialogue, engage, learn, unlearn, expressive etc.

But I did not know well enough to understand that this Professor is not one to be challenged by a mere student.

Thanks to my classmates who read my temper and asked for the tea break LOL.



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