I was preparing for UPSC with some hope that it might become my career. But as time passed, I started realizing that it was not really my genre and not the life I wanted for myself. I was always much more interested in aviation. At different points, I had thought about becoming a pilot, working in the industry, or maybe building something of my own in aviation one day. I did not know exactly what role I wanted, but I knew I wanted aviation to become a serious part of my life. That was when I discovered that MBA in Aviation Management was actually a thing.
I started researching universities offering the course. There were not many, and some reputed institutions were charging very high fees for an MBA in Aviation. That affected my thinking. I assumed that if a university was charging such a premium amount for a specialised MBA, then the education, exposure, faculty, flexibility, and overall environment must also be significantly different. I imagined something closer to what I had seen or read about good international universities: less unnecessary pressure, more independent learning, cooperative teachers, practical discussions, aviation-focused case studies, flexibility, research, and a mature academic environment where students were treated like adults. I was not looking for another version of school. I wanted to spend two years learning something I genuinely loved.
Looking back, one of my biggest mistakes was that I never properly spoke to seniors or alumni before joining. I watched YouTube videos, promotional videos, campus content, and other material online, and I treated much of it like genuine student information. Later, I understood that a lot of what I had watched was essentially promotional content. I should have found real students and asked them directly what they actually learned, how many subjects were genuinely related to aviation, how the assessment worked, what the faculty was like, what kind of practical exposure they received, and whether the course was actually worth the money and time. I did not do that. I trusted what I saw and enrolled.
The first day itself did not give me a very positive feeling, but I still had expectations. For the first few weeks, all MBA specialisations were combined for orientation, ice-breaking sessions, and common classes. That was understandable. I assumed aviation-specific learning would begin once we were divided into our specialisations. After roughly a month, that happened. Our Aviation Management batch was relatively small, around two dozen students at that time, although admissions continued for quite a while after classes had already started. Students kept joining, some left, others came, and the class composition kept changing even as the semester moved forward.
The bigger shock came when I looked at what we were actually studying. I had chosen an MBA in Aviation Management because I wanted aviation to dominate my academic life. Instead, most of the programme felt like a generic MBA with a small amount of aviation added to it. There were subjects like accounting, economics, organisational behaviour, aptitude, finance, HR, and other general management subjects. I understand that these subjects have a place in an MBA, and I am not saying that aviation managers should not know them. My problem was that I had expected those subjects to be connected deeply with aviation. If I am studying finance, I want to understand airline balance sheets, airport investments, route economics, aircraft financing, and airport revenue models. If I am studying HR, I want to understand airport manpower planning, airline staffing, shift systems, fatigue, operational teams, and aviation-specific workforce issues. If I am studying economics, I want to understand aviation demand, airport charges, fuel prices, route viability, and airline markets. Instead, too often it felt like the MBA part and the aviation part were separate from each other.
Only a small number of subjects felt directly aviation-focused, such as Airport Operations and Airline Management. Those were also the subjects I naturally cared about the most. I never joined because I desperately wanted a corporate job. I was not looking for someone to prepare me only for placements, interviews, presentations, and résumé building. I wanted knowledge. My thinking was simple: teach me aviation properly, and I will figure out how to earn from that knowledge myself. I want to understand the industry so deeply that I can create my own opportunities, maybe even build businesses in aviation in the future. I did not want the entire purpose of my MBA to become getting placed somewhere and entering corporate culture.
But gradually, everything seemed to become about marks, attendance, presentations, deadlines, internal assessments, placement readiness, communication skills, and completing requirements. Again, I understand that presentation skills and professional communication matter in real life. They will help me too. But I never liked the idea that every learning attempt had to be tied to marks. If I am bad at presenting, teach me how to become better. Give me feedback. Let me improve. Do not make every weak performance permanently damage my CGPA. Education should give students space to fail while learning. Instead, I increasingly felt that the system rewarded compliance more than curiosity.
The first semester ended with poor marks for me overall. Interestingly, the subjects in which I performed better were the aviation subjects because those were the ones I actually enjoyed studying. But CGPA does not care which part of the programme you care about. You have to perform everywhere. So even someone who entered the course mainly to study aviation ends up being judged through one overall number that combines everything together. Slowly, you are forced to care about marks even if marks were never the reason you joined.
The second semester made my frustration worse. We had subjects such as Corporate Finance and Human Resource Management, which I understand are important, but again, I did not feel that they were being used to take me deeper into aviation. What disappointed me even more was that simply having an aviation-labelled subject did not necessarily mean serious aviation learning was happening. In some classes, from my perspective, teaching sometimes felt like opening a laptop, putting up a PowerPoint, reading through it, and moving on. In one airline-related subject in particular, I struggled to see a clear course structure. I could not identify a proper academic roadmap, a consistent progression from one topic to the next, or enough structured material that helped me build knowledge systematically. Sometimes one random question from a student would become the topic of the class. Discussion-based teaching can be excellent, but discussion is not a substitute for structure.
That was when I started asking myself a very uncomfortable question: if I can sit at home, open Google, YouTube, industry reports, and ChatGPT, and research the same topics in more depth on my own, then what exactly is a postgraduate institution supposed to add to that process? I was not paying for someone to simply tell me that a concept exists. I expected the university to organise knowledge, challenge me, expose me to industry thinking, give context, and take my understanding beyond what I could easily find myself.
Eventually, I started speaking up about some things I disagreed with. From my perspective, that changed the atmosphere around me. I cannot prove what any individual faculty member was thinking, and I do not want to claim that I can. But I felt that some relationships became more uncomfortable once I became vocal. That also made me uncomfortable with the internal assessment system because faculty members did not only teach us; they also controlled a significant portion of our marks. When that happens, students may start thinking twice before questioning something. Should I challenge this? Should I complain? Should I stay silent because this person also controls my internal marks? I never imagined that kind of calculation being part of postgraduate education.
The assessment system itself became another major source of frustration. A large part of the result depended on internal assessments, assignments, quizzes, presentations, submissions, deadlines, and other components. In some open-book examinations, I personally saw situations where students found ways to collaborate improperly or copy while others tried to work independently. Then the marks from the same system were used to compare everyone. That made me question what the CGPA was actually measuring. Was it knowledge? Discipline? Submission skills? Ability to understand faculty expectations? Ability to play the system? Or some combination of all of these?
I also saw students around me become extremely stressed by the academic environment. There were times when people cried under pressure. To me, too much of that pressure seemed connected not to meaningful learning but to attendance, submissions, deadlines, instructions, internal marks, and administrative requirements. The MBA I had imagined was supposed to feel independent, mature, flexible, and discussion-driven. Instead, there were moments when it felt like I had gone back to school, except now it was called postgraduate management education.
Then came the internship period, and that became another important chapter. I wanted airport operations because I genuinely wanted practical exposure. I accept that I changed my internship plan relatively late, and that part was my responsibility. But after I used my own connections and found an opportunity, I expected basic institutional help with communication and formalities. From my perspective, even that became unnecessarily difficult. There were moments when I felt that I was being told that nothing could be done and that I had to manage everything myself. The process became stressful enough that my parents eventually had to become involved before the necessary communication was finally sent to the airport.
Even during the internship, interactions with the assigned academic mentor sometimes felt more pressuring than supportive to me. There were warnings about reports, signatures, approvals, and whether work would be accepted. I wanted guidance. If I was doing something wrong, I wanted someone to explain how to improve it. I did not want every requirement to feel like another threat hanging over my head.
And then came the irony: the internship itself became one of the most valuable learning experiences of my entire MBA journey.
I completed my internship in airport operations at Jabalpur Airport. Because it was a smaller airport, I got the opportunity to observe things closely. I was exposed to real airport operations, runway-inspection activities, airport rescue and firefighting equipment, airport passes and access procedures, and the way different departments interact. Things I had previously heard only as terms suddenly became real. Safety was no longer just a heading in a PowerPoint. Operations were no longer bullet points. Departments were not boxes in a chart. Everything connected.
For the first time in a long time, I felt exactly what I had expected to feel when I joined the MBA: I was genuinely learning aviation. I started asking questions because I actually wanted to know the answers. Why is this process done in this way? Who is responsible for this? What happens if something goes wrong? Why does one department need another? How does this affect the airline, the airport, the passenger, safety, and costs? That curiosity was natural. Nobody needed to force it through marks.
That experience proved something important to me. I was never tired of learning. I was tired of the way I felt I was being taught.
For some time, I said that MBA in Aviation itself was the worst decision of my life. I do not believe that anymore. Aviation was not the mistake. Even the idea of studying Aviation Management was not the mistake.
Choosing this university was the mistake.
That is the distinction I am clear about now.
I still want aviation. I still want to understand airports, airlines, aviation economics, regulation, safety, operations, finance, strategy, infrastructure, and every other part of this industry. I still want to build something of my own in aviation one day. Maybe several businesses. Maybe something I have not even thought of yet. My ambition has not reduced because of this experience.
My expectation from my college has.
At this stage, I have virtually zero expectation that the university will give me the aviation education I once imagined it would. I will complete the formal requirements of my MBA, attend what I have to attend, submit what I have to submit, and finish the degree. But I am no longer waiting for the institution to build my career or teach me everything I came here to learn.
My third semester is starting, and this time I am changing my approach completely.
If a topic appears in class, I will treat it only as a starting point. If somebody mentions aeronautical and non-aeronautical revenue, I will go and read ICAO documents, Indian regulatory material, airport annual reports, and actual financial statements. If the topic is airline strategy, I will study real airlines. If it is airport operations, I will connect it with what I observed during my internship. If it is aviation regulation, I will go to the original regulation. If I do not understand something, I will research it until I can explain it properly.
That is also why I am starting this website.
This blog is not an assignment. It is not for internal marks. It is not for attendance. It is not something I am doing because somebody told me it would look good on my résumé.
I am doing it because I want to learn aviation properly.
Whatever topic I encounter, I will research it, validate it through reliable sources, understand it in my own way, and then write about it here. Over time, I want this website to become much more than a blog. I want it to become a record of what I learned, what I built, and eventually the foundation for the aviation businesses I want to create.
I cannot change the university I chose.
I cannot recover the time I have already spent expecting something different from it.
But I can stop depending on it.
The degree will continue. The classes will continue. The assignments, marks, CGPA, attendance, and formalities will continue too.
But from here onward, my actual aviation education is going to happen on my terms.
And maybe that is the biggest thing this experience has taught me:
Choosing aviation was not my mistake. Expecting the wrong institution to build my future was.