I graduated in the year 2017 with a Btech degree in Electronics and communication from NIT Durgapur. I was fresh out of college and was going to join my first company which was IBM. I was really excited for my first job and was eager to learn as much as I could. I underwent a 2 month training after which I would be assigned to a project. My colleagues and I were really eager to know the client we would be assigned to.
To my surprise, I was allotted Idea Cellular- one of the leading telecom service providers, that too from the house of the Birlas. My Grandfather had worked in Hindustan Motors and he used to tell me stories about the superior culture present in the Birla companies. Hence, I was extremely excited to work with an Aditya Birla Group company.
Fortunately, I was assigned to work in the client location, so I worked right out of the Idea Cellular office, which made my anticipation even more exciting. People say, that your first job is very important and I am glad I had the privilege of being under the shade of two big corporate giants – ABG and IBM. My seniors at Idea were really humble and helpful and I learned a lot from them. It surely has had made a deep impact in my life and I will always remember my first client – Idea Cellular an Aditya Birla Group company.
A few months after I joined Idea Project, Idea confirmed its merger with Vodafone India and started work related to that. Finally, the date of merger was fixed at 1
st September, 2018. We were all anxious about the change, as change is never easy. I, especially was worried because, I was preparing for B-School entrance exams and I didn’t want to hamper my preparation because of high working hours because of the merger related activities. Also, that was just a few months before the entrance exams, which is supposed to be the peak time for preparation. It became really difficult to juggle both work and studies and I had to find a way to balance both.
The first week, I struggled to cope with my studies and I knew I couldn’t continue like this. To come out of this sticky situation, I created a “not to-do list”- a list of things where I wouldnt spend my time anymore.
My parents lived 4 hours away and I used to visit them over the weekends. I stopped visiting them during those crucial few months. This made me save around 8 hours a week which I would have otherwise spent travelling. The next remedy was to take shorter breaks at work so that I could complete more work. I stopped going for tennis sessions in the evenings, which again resulted in saving close to 4 hours a week. After going through a rigorous 3 month period, the D-day finally came and I performed well too. When the results came out, I was over the moon when I learned that I had scored 99.83%ile in the SNAP examination. I was glad that those 3 months of hardship paid off. Another important learning from those 3 months were that 24 hours is a lot of time and one can easily all the things he wants to do , but only if its managed properly.