Here’s presenting a bittersweet account of a b-school relationship must-knows that only b-school junta can relate to.
Disclaimer: Harsh realities #not-for-the-faint-hearted.
- The availability of greener pastures nearby ensure that you walk in with one girlfriend and walk out of MBA with another. And here’s where the phrase “out of sight is out of mind” starts making more sense to you.
- A lot of people step into MBA expecting to find the “love of their life” only to agree to the common view that “all the good ones are already taken”. Then the feeling of “something is better than nothing” overpowers and you witness a lot of casual relationships. Every such relationship starts with its complication and ends with its complication, yet everything is all clear.
- The common girl problem of what to wear for a party takes a back foot here. When it comes to section parties and batch parties - deciding which guy to go with is a much much more important decision which is to be taken strategically owing to all the prospects it will bring about.
- You can't maintain secret relationships. Everyone knows everyone's business and you are constantly under a microscope. If someone misses then it appears on the daily Tadka (campus rumour mills) in fact most casual relationships flair before they begin owing to the rumours and gossips.
- You have to be suffering with an engagement ring or a wedding ring to ensure that your pre-MBA commitments sustain. Else while you struggle to live the hard single life here, carrying on with the long distance partner is an uphill task. Your partner outside b-school will be frustrated hearing your sagas of how you do all those cool things with you new b-school friends and eventually give up on the relationship.
- You will be constantly cribbing about your roommate’s boyfriend/girlfriend as being another roomie thrust upon you. And you can’t help but notice how couples and just-friends free-ride all group projects, and that it's always a bad idea to form groups with such “lovebirds”.
- There are 2 types of love - one to get into a committee and one that starts after you get into a committee #things-people-do-to-get-POR’s. For MBAs, love, like everything else, is a goal-oriented pursuit.
- You’ll meet a lot of couples who will be more than friends but less than couples. These are the one’s who think that they have fooled the batch but are the ones who are constantly featured on the campus gossips page.
- B-Schools with their personal belief that people work well in small groups will force you for group projects which involve lots of late night stays, lots of #teamwork and lots of bonding with the same group of people. If you like someone on your group, then there are high chances that you will fall for them. But, If you risk dating your batch-mate and end breaking up, you have to survive seeing them every single day and you won’t feel happy unless you are the one who ditched them for another
- The fast paced MBA love is like - Like him/her - send him/her FB request or PM him/her using your whatsapp group contacts. A chit-chat followed by “enough of messaging, let’s talk over coffee”, then a social media upload of the heart shaped cream in your cappuccino. A month of “dressing and spending” to impress and then you go fishing for the next big fish in the sea.