It is no understatement to say that getting a PPO or not does influence one’s second year on campus to a large extent. Whether the PPO is one that you will accept is quite often beside the point. If not your preferred career choice, it does certainly provide you with a strong bargaining chip during placements. Let’s see how life after a PPO pans out on campus for most of us.
Post final presentation in Internship
Nearly every company in every sector attaches significant value to this, as do you. Right after it gets done, you do have a sense of how it has gone. There is some feedback and many farewells. In that party scenario and the joyful impending return to college, the thought of a PPO quite slips from your mind. You cannot wait to get back with friends and relish the idyllic life on campus.
The first PPOs are announced…
15 days into the term, somebody gets a PPO. It is an occasion of joy for the person and her/his friends. But it suddenly reminds the rest of the campus of what lies ahead. Now an uncertain wait begins. Whether you get a PPO or not is certainly a biting worry. But more irksome is the uncertain timeline. The company refuses to divulge even a prospective date or period for the announcement. It could come tomorrow. Or it could come after 4 months. Your guide is sincerely trying to get updates but the HR stays as non-committal as ever. The initial frenzy subsides as you make peace with the fact that it will come when it will.
Deciding a plan of action for the year
By now, the term is well into a month and you have conjured some sort of a half-baked plan. What if you do not get a PPO? You plan out your academics. Like every other academic term in your entire college career, you do that same folly of trying to calculate what CGPA you can reach if you top your batch this term. It is a futile exercise and experience has repeatedly taught you so. Yet, you persist. The very act of punching in numbers and calculating a good potential CGPA causes delight. You convince yourself there is still hope. And then you get back to social media and the parties at night.
Moment of Truth
2 quizzes into the term and you are back to reality. You realise that you are not really fashioned for academics. You turn to the other big avenue for B school students – case competitions. Alliances are formed and competitions chosen with care. Some succeed, many fail. The sincere persevere while the laidback people fade away after a few lacklustre performances. This continues and nearly everyone is looking for one way or the other to improve their profile
PPO arrives
Out of the blue and very unceremoniously, the PPO arrives. You are in. The initial feeling is quite overwhelming and a bit later, quite underwhelming too. It has been so long coming that the anticipation has quite dried out. The wing party happens and the congratulations stream in.
Life post PPO
While this was the main subject of the article, I delayed it quite a bit. The reason being that life post-PPO is all the more enjoyable due to the uncertainty in the preceding months. The contrast is stark. Now, one suddenly feels liberated from the need to spruce up one’s profile. You zero in on your favourite haunts on campus. You swim everyday and party regularly. Your waking up timing has never been as out of sync with the sun as it is now. You go to sleep when the sun rises and awake when the sun sets. As you are freed from the compulsive need to perform, you tend to enjoy leisure more. Leisure happens not as breaks between bursts of productivity but for the sake of leisure itself.
Then comes the exchange term. Most PPOs are out by then. And even if they aren’t, it does not really matter. Everyone is planning their Europe trip, Himachal trip, Andaman trip or South Africa trip (the best of them all). That is a term when even non-exchange students are more outside campus than inside.
Then along comes placements. The frenetic activity returns. PPO or not, once more, everyone is competing. For PPO holders, they have to make the best use of the 2 or 3 companies that they can apply to (depending on the placement policy of the college). There are, of course, many who are happy with the company they got the PPO in. But even they are busy helping their friends prepare for placements.
Placements come and go in a rush, like always. And the college rallies around for one last burst of eternal memories, joyous moments and “bakar” in its most pristine form.
All in all, a PPO is just one of the many aspects of college life. Also, in no way are the above words representative for all. There are many who do not secure a PPO and yet go on to secure amazing and targeted placements. There are also those with PPOs in their desired companies who still give it their best to academics and ace several case competitions.
To each, her/his own. But a PPO does give one good leverage during placements which, even at the best of times, is a somewhat random process.