Someone rightly said it, life is full of struggles. As you peruse through this story of my life sprinkled with experiences of love and TISS, you may realize how comforting the end is when you shape your path through stories of faith and belief.
So, in 2021 I decided it would be my last UPSC attempt. I put in all my effort and did everything I could, but this time I couldn't even crack the Prelims. People who have given this exam know that if they can't clear it in one or two attempts, they tend to fall in love with its syllabus. Being from that league, I would have never moved on had a very close friend of mine not pushed me out of the UPSC fairyland. I trusted her conviction.
As I consulted friends and faculty for an alternative career option, I narrowed it down to a master's in HRM since I had Public Administration as my optional for UPSC. I appeared for TISSNET and cracked the coveted HRM & LR course on my first attempt.
Looking back, when I analyze how I could clear the entrance for HRM & LR at TISS. A spirit and sentiment of a single-minded focus did the trick for me. For those few months, I had, my heart and soul were constantly imagining getting a chance to study in the famous Wadia lecture hall. Finally, that day when the results were published, I had tears seeing the much-awaited light at the end of the tunnel.
But as all beautiful stories have peaks and troughs, COVID came and spread like wildfire forcing colleges to go online. We were left confined to our homes, aided by technology to socialise and learn. While tools like Zoom, Meet, and others enabled this, it was evident that technology could never replace traditional classroom learning.
The only way left for professors to bring the lectures and presentations to life was through breakout rooms. While I enjoyed the choice to go out of sight and do anything at my leisure, I longed for the campus to reopen.
Seeing little hope for the campus to open after the first semester, I buckled up to expose myself to the corporate world through online internships. One of the many fantastic things that TISS offers is the fieldwork concept, something you don't get to experience in any other B-school, nowhere else but at TISS. My dedication helped me get my first fieldwork extended by six months.
I used my spare time and energy doing internships alongside online classes. These internships helped me extensively explore my areas of interest within HR. Although TISS gives you exposure to four internships apart from the regular summer internship, the online mode of classes helped me gain more such opportunities even during my coursework. While I thoroughly focussed on live projects, academic rigour made the time fly and came to mid-2022.
Life was back in full swing on the lush green TISS campus. The offline setup was exciting and unparalleled with the online mode. I remember the first time we met our faculties in the legendary Wadia lecture hall- it felt like coming home to a long-awaited dream.
I have always believed in building deep, lifelong connections with people, and the small batch size at TISS helped me with many close friendships. When I started college, I made it a point to talk to one or two batchmates every day over a phone call, and by the end of the month, I came to know a lot of them personally-at least, I felt so.
When I met them in person almost ten months later, I found our online personas differed from what I understood earlier. Meeting people in person and sharing moments in the canteen over a cup of coffee and vada-pav consumes energy, but it liberates even more.
Suppose you have just deboarded your train and want to travel the city using your smartphone's GPS- online batchmates were like this GPS. In all probability, you will reach your destination, but you will struggle to understand the place without socializing with its people.
When you go offline, you expose yourself in full. Assuming you have a learning mindset, there is a high chance you will stumble. The support system of friends that comes to your rescue at this point is what builds those bonds. Simply put, you witness your virtual intellectual bubbles bursting when you go offline as you learn to fail, fail fast, unlearn and relearn in the process.
A crucial part of any B-school journey is interacting with alums and leaders. I was lucky to strike gold as the campus leader for the Mumbai Chapter of the apex body of HR professionals, known as the National HRD Network or NHRDN. As I hosted and managed NHRDN's 24th Annual National Conference online in my first year at TISS, I came across alternative avenues the internet offers to organize cultural festivals and corporate events.
Now, when I am organizing events in the physical mode, the challenges are a lot more exciting. The experience of getting sponsorships, negotiating with college authorities for space, arranging for food and logistics, and planning for contingencies needs individual involvement and teamwork at an entirely new level.
The chances that something goes missing or an event does not turn out as planned and the spillover on other scheduled events of the day are risk management lessons imparted hands-on when I foresee organizing an event physically.
When you are at TISS, you become not just a corporate manager but one with a heavy social inclination and entrepreneurial spirit. As I conclude my experience of TISS life through the prism of belief and bonding, I find myself lucky this place gave me the best people I could have ever met. I wish we could spend some more time together, maybe some more sandwiches, chocolates, and tea. Life is full of struggles; it is, and it is not- it depends on who you are surrounded by and how you expose yourself. That is how we do great at whatever comes our way.
About the Author
Ipshit Tarun is currently pursuing the course HRM & LR at TISS, Mumbai. He is a footloose traveller, an avid reader of philosophy, and enjoys rapid chess. He has received a Pre-Placement Offer from JSW Group.