An essay on Connecting the Dots - entered for a competition...

1. CONNECTING THE DOTS: A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
When Steve Jobs delivered the Commencement Address at Stanford in 2005, I was in my
final year of engineering at Mumbai University. At the time, I had no idea what he meant
when he said: You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you have to connect them
looking backwards. I figured, like everyone else, that it didn’t apply to my life at all.
How very wrong I turned out to be.
Circa 2011 – I am a first year student of MBA (Operations) at Symbiosis Institute of
Operations Management, Nasik. One semester is all it took to bring Steve’s words home like
a ton of bricks. With a host of new and interesting subjects, it’s taken all my experience as a
former IT professional to “connect the dots”, i.e., link various aspects & situations to
whatever I saw, did and felt in the past. The wisdom that I have gained from the past has
certainly helped a lot here. Without that connection to time gone by, I might have had to
struggle for all four semesters here – and then more.
Let me give you an example.
We had a subject titled “Enterprise Data and Information Management” in our first semester.
It was all about databases and how to manage them, along with various information systems
used in the industry. Having first-hand knowledge of these aspects, first as an ERP
professional and later as a temporary “faculty” at NIIT, every topic fell into place (while my
classmates, most from Manufacturing backgrounds struggled). It felt like stepping back in
time when I saw the familiar methods and diagrams displayed. My mind kept replaying each
and every session I’d attended at NIIT, every aspect of my professional responsibilities
flashed before my eyes- and suddenly everything started slipping into its proper position. At
each step, I had to reach back into the past, refresh my concepts and then explain them to my
peers. It wasn’t easy – many of them did not know what Entities and Relationships were, and
I do not blame them.
The dots were connected, only looking towards the past. I had to travel back into what
once was to get something that would help me in the future – and it did.
The second thing about Steve’s statement is – You’ve got to find something that you love
to do. That’s how the dots will always fall into place.
I found this to be as true as the first one. It was only when I started my MBA studies that I
realised I love databases and everything to do with data. My eyes light up every time
someone mentions anything related to data or ERP. This has also influenced my decision to
minor in IT & Systems in my second year. And somewhere up there, Steve must be happy
knowing that his words have found an echo around the world, for many young guys like me.