The exams are over and I can take stock

Education, I have always believed, is about more than books, classrooms and exams. Well, I have just finished final exams as the winter quarter ended at Chicago Booth – and while I swim out of the depths of economics and finance, the staple MBA fare at Chicago – it is also time to take stock of all that has been going on around me.

The US just enacted the landmark healthcare reform bill. It is a major milestone. It has also, in a way, crystallised the deep furrows that divide Americans.

What has struck me like a sledgehammer is, how deep the divide really is. I see it all around me, even among my business school classmates. Those who support health reform, do so with tremendous passion. Those who are against it, are equally if not more passionate about their position. As someone who was born and raised in a free country (India) and grew up on the ideals of democracy and open debate, I view the vigour of argument and debate as a good thing,

It is the foundation on which civil society is based and from the time of the Greeks, debate and open discussion has fostered greatness in all walks of life—in politics, government, as well as in academia. As a Chicago Booth student and avid supporter of the Chicago School, I am aware that all the great theories and achievements that the Chicago School stands for, all the Nobel prizes, have come out of unfettered, unencumbered open debate and discussion. So, I’m all for open debate and “battling it out” intellectually in the open.

As I put away my MBA books for this quarter and take a peek at the world around, I continue to learn. I look and I watch as America, a deeply divided America, shows why it is still the world’s most vibrant democracy.