I remember walking in through the gates of IIFT for the very first time, feeling overwhelmed as I looked up at our very own Adonis, the Wings Of Wisdom, and wondered about the sheer number of students who had stood right there with similar hopes and aspirations.
In a way, we all had a vague idea about what we had signed up for, having heard enough horror stories. But nothing could have prepared us for the first 144 hours. Our ‘initiation’ into the MBA life.
Each of us ended up discovering strengths we didn’t even know we possessed. And I can now proudly say that despite the innumerable goof-ups and the countless screw-ups, we have somehow survived. And we, all 170 of us, as they say, live to fight another day.
While I do not know just how much the next one and a half years will change each of us, what I can see is the difference the past two weeks have made. So far away from our comfort zones, so accustomed to being called at odd hours and on short notices that now on slightly less packed days, no deadline feels weird, as if suddenly the days are not moving forward.
We now realise that power naps are a real thing, how navy blue and dark blue are two completely different colours, how even one second can make or break it for the 23:59:59 deadline, how ‘the batch of 2018-20’ is not the same as ‘the batch of 2018-2020’, how coffee is magic in a cup while sleep will be the most prized commodity and most importantly, just how important it is to find your bunch of crazies. The people who will double up as your alarm clocks and update you with all the latest gossip, the ones who will share their notes during GLs, the ones who will iron your formals for you and cheer you up with homemade laddoos, and the ones who will end up being your 4 a.m. therapists.
Two weeks into this journey, I now know that while the next one and a half years might not be anything like how any of us had imagined, maybe it will be exactly what we have always needed, with our very own version of the Wings Of Wisdom.
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ABG Company:
The ABG company I would want to work for is Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd. to better understand the dynamic nature of the apparel industry and how the entry of international brands along with e-commerce discounting has helped the industry evolve. Interning with the ABG group would be a huge learning experience and a wonderful opportunity to interact with the most influential and knowledgeable minds in the country.