In general parlance, the word ‘passion’ has a certain connotation to it. Often people associate it with stories like Romeo and Juliet or, if you are an Indian, like Laila and Majnu. In other words, you associate it with the spontaneous, overpowering emotions of young lovers.
That, of course, is only one side of the story. ‘Passion’ has other connotations too – though, whatever its connotation, the common factor among them all is emotion. Strong emotion. The kind of emotion that invests you with an irrepressible sense of drive and makes you better yourself. Lionel Messi is passionate about football, Sachin Tendulkar about cricket. It is their passion, combined with their talent and dedication, that has made them what they are.
In the MBA context, ‘passion’ means something quite similar. You can be so passionate about something you do, that you sacrifice your pleasures for it, and spend hours and hours trying to perfect it. It could be mountain climbing. It could be running the hundred meters race. It could be playing the piano. It could be any of a hundred things.
It could be a passion for marketing. It could be a passion for finance. You could even have a passion for getting into a top business school – it keeps you up at night, preparing for GMAT, when everybody else has gone to sleep, and it makes you volunteer your services to an old age home in the vicinity of your house. There is emotion involved there. And a sense of purpose and dedication. The combination of the two has made you act in a particular way towards the achievement of a goal that you highly value.
So ‘passion’ is a strong emotion for something that makes you commit yourself to it and, on that basis, take appropriate actions on a consistent basis. You can get very emotional about something for a short while and then lose interest in it. That wouldn’t be passion at all.
B-schools like applicants with passion. You now know what it means!
Being passionate about your career implies having big dreams that are realizable. It is not enough to say that you are passionate about helping people and that, therefore, you want to be a social entrepreneur. If you leave it at that, it sounds hollow and unconvincing. You are merely ‘telling,’ not ‘showing.’ Spell out to the adcom what your dreams are, how they took birth in your mind, how you have nurtured them till now, exactly how you propose to convert them into reality, and what role you expect your MBA to play in this context. If you are really passionate about your career, talking about these things will come naturally to you, and these things will provide you the energy to keep going till your reach your goals. Adcoms know that, and that is precisely why they prefer applicants who go about their career with a sense of mission.
“Passion is energy,” Oprath Winfrey once commented. “Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.” Adcoms want you to be excited about what you are doing, and to have the power that comes from such action. That is why passion is crucial to your MBA.
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