The experience that I am going to narrate through this article has by far been one of the most enlightening experiences in my life.
This is an incident that took place during the final semester of my engineering. I was called for an SSB (Service Selection Board) for the armed forces. On one of the days of the selection, there was a group obstacle task to be completed. One of the obstacles was a wall eight feet high. I had an inherent feeling of not being able to do it because of my stature but I decided to give it a shot because saying a ‘No’ was a hard thing for me to do then. I managed to scale up the wall with the support of my teammates and then just before I could jump off the wall, I got pushed by an oversight of the next person climbing. I was thankful for landing on my feet only till I realized I could not get back up on my feet. Diagnosis revealed a communicated fracture in my ankle that needed a surgery to be performed for fixing Titanium orthopaedic implants to cure the fracture.
Cutting the long story short, for the first three months after surgery I was on five legs (walker) and the next one month I was on three legs (crutches) before I could finally get back on my own two feet. I missed out on a lot of things during these four months. I could not attend the finale of a competition that my team had qualified for. Being the Vice-chairperson of the IEEE student group in college, I could not be a part of a large intercollegiate event that was organized by my team. I missed most of my academic curriculum that I had to cover up in the remaining months of my semester. All of this came in exchange for a lifetime of learnings. My parents offered me a choice to take a break and complete my engineering in the next year. I thought that would be too easy a choice and seemed like running away from the challenge I was faced with. I decided to go ahead and complete my engineering that same year. I learnt the art of endurance through the next couple of months. I managed to cover up all the exams and submissions that I had missed in a span of two months and competed my course successfully. Throughout this phase, I received commendable and unceasing support from my parents, grandmother, aunt, relatives, friends and teachers. My best friend would accompany me every single day I went to college. It was this support that kept me going at all times and got me through this tough phase of my life.
When I look back today, I see it as a butterfly effect. Had I made that one simple choice to sit back and victimize myself before the challenge, my life would have been entirely different. I would have finished my course a year later and worked for a company. I may not have felt the motivation to pursue something bigger in life courtesy the fear of challenges. I probably would not have even thought of pursuing an MBA. It is that one choice that made all the difference and here I am today pursuing my MBA from one of the most reputed B-schools of the country. It has been rightly said that it takes 20 seconds of insane courage to change your life altogether. This is how I changed mine and indeed this is the best life I could have ever lived.
#TAPMI #ABGLP