“In an IIM, everyone is your friend, everyone is your competitor. Every possible series of events is happening all at once. Live that way and nothing will surprise you. “
So, it has been a month now that I joined one of the most prestigious institutions of the country – an IIM. Sounds fancy, right? But there exist some lesser known facts about an IIM life which one gets to know only when he takes a leap into the coral beds of this ocean.
The 180
th day of this year brought scholars, from all over the country, to the land of IIM. All the students, from diverse cultures, were all breathing a long-seen dream carrying a heap of dreams in their eyes. There was nothing in this world that could be compared to the gaiety felt by each student on their first day at an IIM.
This one month has been the most dynamic one for each of the students here. The submissions of presentations on per diem basis and never ending events does very well to keep everyone engaged. Students coming from far-off places never feel nostalgic because they do not have time for those emotions. In an IIM, you sleep an hour in the afternoon and you are doomed! Your phone would be inundated with messages and emails and you’ll notice that everyone, except you, had read those messages and emails on time and had already begun working on them. Yes, welcome to an IIM!
Leaving the hostel at 8 a.m. and returning at 11.30 p.m. has become the usual routine of everyone. The duration of the classes is no more a concern because you know that one thing or another will definitely come up to tightly pack your schedule for the rest of the day.
Besides all the thrill, enthusiasm and the happening life, there is one more dimension which runs at a very fast pace during these initial days at an IIM. This dimension exists inside every single student who has been introduced to the IIM culture in an extremely abrupt manner. I like to call it “transition phase”.
During the transition phase, sometimes people feel lost. They feel rejected, neglected, nostalgic and demotivated at certain instances. This phase is very common and almost every IIM student can relate to this, because this is something that internally tears them apart. It tears them apart, and then stitch them again, in a completely different and better manner. This is the phase when you realise that you are actually developing – psychologically, emotionally and of course intellectually. This might be the time when you feel too caught up in the class work besides the committees and clubs work and that you are not getting any time for yourself. The catch is that, simultaneously, some fragment of you knows it quite explicitly that you are investing this time totally on yourself and it is helping you evolve. The change in you is very lucidly visible to you.
The transition phase is a high time for every student. No wonder, this is the time when you vastly increase your network and you get to know people better. You get to learn a very important thing – never judge people by first impressions! People might not be what they seem to be – both in negative and positive ways. Just a month in IIM will teach you, with whom to talk, how to talk and what to talk. There will be people around you who have travelled across seas, people who have had startups of their own, people who had worked at several different jobs before coming here, and people like you, who have just been a student all their life till now.
But remember, the transition phase occurs to everyone. Everybody is scared of this change, at some corner of their heart and they will definitely show this somewhere – consciously or unconsciously. All you have to do is observe and absorb.
The good part is that, the transition phase does not last for a very long time. You might be tempted to believe that it is a “black-hole” in the beginning, but sooner or later, you will realise that it is more like International Date Line – taking you from one world to another, yet in the same old world. All good things take time, more for some, less for others. Beginnings are scary when they are meant to reap something great. Survive the scary part with boldness and the great fruit will chase you the remainder of your journey.