As I write this, barely a week is left for the IIIrd Term to end, which marks the end of my Ist year of MBA. To say that it has been a roller coaster ride would be both a cliche and an understatement. A time for contemplation and retrospection, I find myself at a point where so many changes are traveling towards me at a lightning speed and I am thinking of all the changes that I have already absorbed. Every day here has shown me a new side of myself I didn't know existed and I continue to surprise myself. The dynamicity of this place has changed me and I will never be the same again.
With the internship just around the corner, I and my peers are more aware than ever of the fact that 50% of our MBA is over. Excited and sad all at the same time, all of us are scouting OYO rooms or apartments near our offices, already forming Whatsapp groups with the interns in the same city. But while doing that, I can't help but remember that when all of us were scurrying around the campus in our business suits, running from one interview to another. It was a season of jubilation and heartbreak alike, but in hindsight, it was all worth it. We have seen each other through thick and thin, earning well-wishers, mentors, and friends for life during the process. Soon enough there will be final placements during the latter half of the year and the reality of going back to our offices is staring us in the face. Some of us are raring to go back to our offices or enter the corporate world for the first time while others are reminiscing the end of the last leg of their student life. There will be another season of exhilaration and heartbreak, but we will go through it together.
To say nothing of the umpteen competitions we participated in, I for one had a very steep learning graph in that domain. Different competitions mean an opportunity to work with different people each time, getting to know different perspectives each time and learn, each time, something which the book doesn't teach you. We went on a lookout for the perfectly compatible team and let me tell you, no team building exercise was effective as this was in teaching me that no team is the perfect team. A match is not made in heaven and people have to use all their energy and efforts in making a compatible team. Armed with this hands-on experience of people skills and team dynamics, all of us, including I, hope to win many more competitions and add that coveted feather of winning a national level competition, in the forthcoming year, to our caps.
And that brings me to the most anticipated change of the year. As we move closer to the second half of the year, we also transition towards donning the "Seniors" hat. More often than not, it would mean nothing more than a term, which you attain by virtue of being one year ahead academically. But in a B-school, it means much more than that. In a student-driven institution like ours, the students of the batch are closely dependent. Realising that we will be the ones who the juniors will look up to, turn to for advice and mentorship, the onus is huge. To orient them in the right manner when they join depends largely on us, to help them sail through their initial toughest months is on us too and that is not something that we take lightly here. We are a very close-knit family in the institute.
It surprises me to look back and remember myself and others during our first month here, trying to get our bearings, making sense of things. And now, how far we have come to our current more confident versions of ourselves, ready to take on the competition and rearing to employ whatever we have learned in the past year. The metamorphosis is amazing to see. So even as I am sad to see the end of an era, I can't wait for a new one to begin.