Two Weeks Into IIFT
At the time of writing this article I am two weeks into my gruelling MBA program at Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi. It has been a mixed bag as of now. The inaugural session was quite interesting and raised our hopes quite high, but as soon as the day ended, we were ushered back into the Auditorium by the Personality Development Program team comprised of the senior batch, whose sole objective was to bring us up to the standards expected by the esteemed faculty and the subsequent corporates who’d visit us here at IIFT. As it usually happens in situations like these, our zeal and enthusiasm were damped, as the seniors managed to find faults in every single one of us juniors. We were quite shaken by the sudden onset of pointed fingers, for very basic things such as not buttoning a collar or fumbling while introducing ourselves. These nuances, that most of us hadn’t bothered to work upon before joining the institute, were a constant source of worry and pain for most of our batch. We stayed up late, till almost early morning. doing team assignments, with tight deadlines of as low as 30 mins to prepare a presentation on a topic hardly anyone of us had ever heard of, let alone, read about. This did instil in us in a sense of batch unity, which was quite new to me personally, as I had never experienced such unity and camaraderie building on the first day itself. I speak from experience in this matter, I have juggled around six schools across India. On the second day and the following 4 days after that, we could only manage around an hour of sleep before our reporting time. Unfortunately, this took a toll on some of my batchmates, some physical, some mental. I, myself, found it hard to get accustomed to the 15 min meal breaks at the whims and fancies of the seniors, but that did teach every one of us to push, what we thought were our limits. The ones who had improved themselves, could be seen taking care of their roommates and anyone for that matter, they felt they could help. By the last day, every single one of us was up to the standards prescribed and expected of an MBA candidate here at IIFT.
