It’s been more than a month since I joined XLRI. It still feels like a dream. I still imagine the possibility that someone will come and pinch me and say “wake up”. But while I am living this dream, let me tell you how my first month has been in fairyland.
I was amongst the first few people to reach the campus and the beauty of the campus gripped me. Many students started coming in with luggage in their hands and dreams in their eyes of making it big in the corporate world. Somewhere in my mind, I was also thinking that these are the best of the best performers in the country for this year, and now they are my competition. But I decided to shrug the thought away and simply enjoy what I had at hand now.
It is easy to make friends here. People here are not just academic stalwarts, but also achievers in every other activity that you imagined you should have taken up at an early stage in life. And then there are people like me, who still don’t understand how they are here amongst such achievers. In a few days you find people having similar interests as yours and you start bonding well.
After the first week of orientation, the real race began. At XLRI, you don’t live one day at a time, you survive one second at a time. Academics, student activities, festivals, projects, assignments, case studies, presentations, deadlines, tests etc., I have seen it all in my first month. The number of things I did and the number of people I met in the last one month is more than what I have done in the first six months of this year.
The campus is hustling all the time and it never sleeps. There are three to four activities happening each day in the college and you want to be a part of everything. You want to do as many things as you possibly can to impress the recruiter at the end of two years. But when you put your hands into so many things at the same time, you are bound to lose out on something else. Here, there is a famous saying – ‘Sleep, Fun, Academics – Choose any two’.
The focus on academics that the Institute has makes it amongst the best b-schools in the country. I am witnessing it each day. The esteemed faculty on campus will make you think in ways you never thought before. Apart from that, the support of the seniors that is extended to us is enormous. At XLRI, you cannot survive without your seniors. When the going gets tough and you have slogged enough the last night to meet the deadline of 11:59:59 PM, someone will have an ice breaker or Bodhi will lift your souls up.
I am not going to pen down everything that happens at XLRI here, because, ‘what happens in XLRI, stays in XLRI’ and if you are curious enough to find it out, do give it a shot next year or if you are already at some other b-school, try visiting us. You will not be disappointed.