“Congratulations, You have been selected for the HRM program at XLRI Jamshedpur”....These words echoed through my mind as I stood in front of our giant Learning Center admiring its beauty. Six months in XL had passed yet it seemed like we came here yesterday, how time flew amongst all the submissions and assignments was still a mystery, amongst the hustle of lectures and the constant paucity of time, I stood there wondering, “Do I really belong here?”
I remembered the time I went to give the interview for XL. It had been a long wait since I was the last number in my panel and the time seemed to pass even slower due to the nervousness of the GD. I looked at my reflection on the glass door in front of me, trying to put on a brave face, I wanted to hide my nervousness behind my smile. How similar was that day to this, the struggle was still on and like me, everyone else was trying to put on a brave face so that no one else is able to see their self-doubt through their eyes.
A lot of noise coming from one direction brought me back to reality, a class had just gotten over, they had a presentation perhaps, all the students dressed in proper formals left the lecture theatre chatting amongst themselves, some wondering how they could have better answered the question that they got nervous and could not answer, some discussing how their classmates were unreasonably difficult with their groups than the others. I remembered how presentations used to be during my graduation days, seniors would pass us on the projects that their seniors gave to them and we used to simply go and read out what was written. Practical exams were the best, standing in Vivas mostly with blank expressions on our faces knowing that the professor would ultimately give us marks to pass maybe less due to the goodness of his heart and more due to the fact that he was least interested in seeing us again next year.
Those were better days weren’t they…simpler times way lesser tension and no pressure to handle. I stood over there wondering why I took the decision of coming here, was I even worthy of standing there, maybe the professors committed a mistake in gauging my caliber, maybe I qualified XAT just because it was my lucky day, maybe I was stealing someone else’s chance who was better than me, maybe I shouldn’t have been here at all in the first place, maybe I really didn’t deserve this.
Then suddenly it struck me, this wasn’t the first time in my life that I was thinking like this… similar thoughts had crossed my mind when I was unable to make it to any famous engineering college, I had lost all hope then, two years of hard work and yet I couldn’t make it, how doubtful had I become of my own capabilities. I had convinced myself that nothing better would happen to me now and that I was destined to failing in all my endeavours.
But here I was standing today in one of the best B-Schools in the country, I remembered the struggle I had gone through to reach here, the sleepless nights, the numerous mock tests, mock interviews, the hassle of managing coaching with semesters and what not. After all, I had admired XL and had given everything I had to make it till here. Then why was I doubting myself again today? After all, I had passed the first test, I had proven myself wrong, I had gotten success.
In that moment I realized, it wasn’t so that I was incapable, it was neither so that I was unworthy but it simply was my fear of failure that was stopping me from believing in myself, I was so afraid of losing at anything that I had convinced myself that I shouldn’t even try. I realized that if I wanted to succeed, I needed to set my inhibitions aside and believe in the fact that I deserved being here.
A lot of students in B-Schools go through such crisis, life becomes tough and coping with it becomes tougher. But one should always remember that there is no way that you could make your way into the finest B-Schools of the country by sheer luck. Sure maintaining sanity is tough but you are capable of handling it and that is the reason that you are here. In any tough circumstance, just believe in yourself and stay close to the people who motivate you and trust me you will do wonders in life.