For the past few days, social media has been abuzz with the 'Endgame phenomena'. Feelings of excitement prior to the release gave way to anger at the revelation of spoilers and ultimately the downpour of emotions after watching the movie – it was all up there. For a person with absolutely zero interest (and consequently zero knowledge) in the 'Avengers franchise', it was quite amusing, and after a point of time, annoying, to see a certain Mr. 'Thanos' creeping up in almost every second post on the internet. And here I am, battling an altogether different 'end-game' – ASSIGNMENTS AND EXAMS (the certain Thanos in my case)!.
The Easter break was indeed a refreshing one as it provided an opportunity to relax and prepare ourselves for the 'testing times' ahead. Family visits, holiday trips across Europe or just relaxing in Manchester – this pretty much constituted the main itinerary for most of us here. Now that the Easter break is done with, we are all fully focused on getting our assignments done with. Its that time of the year when it is common to catch students scanning through books in the libraries, scrolling through academic journals and indulging in late-night assignment writing sessions. I need to submit 2 assignments by the first week of May. The assignment for the 'International Labour Law and Regulation' module was particularly challenging as this was an unknown territory for me and I did not have any related background in writing 'law' essays. However, eventually, I have managed to complete the assignment and the process has helped me understand the international labour regulations to a greater extent. The knowledge of the different format of writing a 'law-report' is another thing I have gained from this assignment apart from the theoretical learning. The experience of visiting the Employment Tribunal for witnessing an actual case was hugely beneficial as it helped us understand the way in which employment related cases are conducted at a tribunal. I am almost on the verge of the completion of my assignments for this semester – doing the 'mandatory last-minute review'. After having submitted all the assignments, most of us will be gearing up for the 2nd Semester examinations (some 'apparently lucky' students have no exams this semester).
My course has 2 exams – one on International Human Resource Management and the other on Management of Organisational Change. As my exams will be in end of May, I am comparatively very much relieved and relaxed than some of my friends who have their exams commencing from May 15th. I intend to use some of this time to prepare an interview schedule for my Masters' Research which will be focused on examining the gender discrimination in the IT workplace in India and the US. I am planning on interviewing 10 IT women professionals in US and India as part of my research to understand their experiences of gender discrimination, if any.
As we are nearing the climax of this 'academic endgame', hope is that I can snap out my personal Thanos without obliterating myself in the process.
