This article was first published on XLmerijaan.com on 5th November, 2015
Day -2
Zero shortlists. Watch your friends be disgusted at getting only FOUR shortlists. Cut off all contact with them.
Call up your best friend from engineering for 55 minutes and discuss your entire life so far.
Listen to songs of extreme rage. Do not start studying.
You have one shortlist! Along with a hundred other people. Tough GD ahead.
Day -1
Most motivational shave ever, as seniors blare the Lakshya title track at full blast. Stay in the zone even as the playlist moves on to Karan Arjun songs.
Go to your only GD. Get dominated by idiots. Rarely speak. Make lifelong enemies.
Watch 8 mile/Warrior to get ready for tomorrow. Tomorrow you win.
Day 0
Wake up to the Shaktimaan theme. This is it. Everyone starts equal. Seize the day.
Finally an interview! The world recognises your talent!
Get blasted by the panelists. You didn’t prepare. The world comes crashing down.
Nausea. Dozens of classmates get placed, even as you wait for your next shot.
Might as well go home now. All the good companies are gone.
Complain about how unfair and random the process is to people with similarly rubbish profiles.
Ogle at HR girls who look hot in formals.
Resolve to study hard Monday onwards. Half-heartedly rehearse your behavioural lies.
Screw up 2 more interviews.
Sleep a defeated man, life is slowly losing its meaning.
Day 1
Please just let this be over soon.
The worse the companies get, the better your interviews go. Goddamnit.
See like a hundred placed, happy people chilling in the well area. Bastards.
Each successive well call means you got rejected in the last interview. Get used to the taste of bitter defeat.
All the ego you had about cracking XAT and getting into XLRI has now left your body. So that’s a plus.
Screw up a chilled out company. Your next five years flash before your eyes, each scenario worse than the last.
On the 25th anniversary reunion of your batch, everyone else would be a CXO, and you would still be losing at life.
Cute services senior offers you a sandwich. All is well with the world again.
You know who your real friends are. The ones who are still by your side and more worried than you are.
As night falls, lose all material desires. Screw each and everything. Who gives a damn.
Give another interview. Mentally prepare yourself for day 2 and everything that it….
Oh, wait you have a spot offer! It’s over! It’s done!
Resolve to work hard and make the most of your academic opportunities at XLRI.
Party hard and chill harder for three days and nights. Promptly go back to your lazy ways as the term begins again.
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About the Author:
Abhishek Tahlan is a second year Business Management student at XLRI Jamshedpur and is part of InsideIIM’s student team for 2016-17.