Duke's Essay

EssayA significant part of the MMS experience is honing your ability to work effectively with a diverse team while learning how to hold leadership roles both in and out of the classroom. In a professional, volunteer, or academic setting, describe how you overcame a challenging situation within a team. What role did you play? What was the result? What did you learn about yourself? “There are a hundred people crowding around my booth and the projector just malfunctioned!” – Rajshri Iyer cried over the cellphone clutched in my sweaty hand. The panic in her voice travelled the distance that separated us much faster than the message she wanted to convey. Rajshri was competent and reliable and if she was losing her nerve, I knew I had trouble on my hands. My mind flashed back to a time three months back, when I had been meticulously planning a proposal to conduct a drive across Mumbai to stop people from crossing railway tracks and to make travel in the city safe. An early childhood memory of a woman’s sari dyed in red as she lay dead across the railway tracks after having been run over by a train had constantly kept me motivated to squeeze every spare moment of my time beyond my work commitments into drafting an action plan for the campaign I had wished to conduct on Impact Day, Deloitte’s annual community service day. Little had I known then that being passionate about a cause is not the only thing required to make a difference. Over the next few months, as I prepared for the activity, I had to learn to be a better team player, an adept negotiator, a patient peacemaker and an ardent motivator, while my team had to learn to resolve mutual differences, fight against apathy and work with synergy. As I reviewed the incidents that had shaped our experience of organizing this activity I was convinced that having come so far, we would not fail. “I believe this is amazing, but do they?” – This was a question which I had thought to be irrelevant while drafting a decisive action