“The best view comes after the hardest climb”
Challenges are an integral part of us growing as a person – every challenge we face leaves us with new skills and experiences. I too am no exception and have faced many challenges all throughout my life, but the biggest and the hardest challenge has been the past 2 years. It was in June of 2017 that my father passed away from kidney failure. He was undergoing dialysis for the previous 3 years and my mother and I both knew we had very little time left with him. We thought we were prepared, but when he passed away it was as if our world came crashing down around us. Suddenly I was the man of the house and all the responsibilities were mine to shoulder. I was working with Infosys at that time and my job was pretty hectic already. In addition, I was posted in Bhubaneswar and my family was in Kolkata – this made things all the more difficult for me to manage.
I had dreams of getting into one of the top B-Schools in the country to pursue my MBA degree but I had the onerous task of juggling my job and my studies to prepare for the entrance exams, all the while taking care of my mother and fulfilling my responsibilities as a son. It was the toughest challenge I had faced in my life. I thought I would be crushed under the pressure and fail to live up to what I expected of myself. It is under such a circumstance that I got to know how resilient and hardworking I can be when I make up my mind to achieve a goal. My office shift began at 2 p.m. and went on till 11 p.m. I would return to my PG to find my flat-mates preparing to go to sleep for the night. I was usually the only person awake by the time I had finished my dinner. I would study alone all through the night – something I had never done before and was not accustomed to. Days would pass before I could have a conversation with my friends since I was in office all day and studying all night. It got very frustrating and infuriating after a point of time and I would think of giving up, but I held on and I persevered. On top of this, I had to travel home on weekends to take care of my mother and make sure she was alright. All this left me with no time to attend coaching classes for my exams and I had to rely on self-study to clear them. One of the biggest challenges was time management – 24 hours in a day seemed way too little for me to successfully achieve my dream. But, my hard work paid off and I scored really well in all my exams and made it to SCMHRD. I have achieved one of my dreams by coming to SCMHRD, despite all the hurdles I faced and I am proud of myself for doing what I did.