A Magician's Guide To A B-School
“Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts.”
“Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts.”
Surabhi Agrawal is studying HRM at XLRI, batch of 2018. What was high school like for you? How did it contribute to your personality/ the person you are right now? There were many personal ordeals I had suddenly come face to face in high school. I had no way of knowing how to deal with. My entire life had shifted in the past year and I was trying to come to terms with it. I had never before found myself lacking in self-reliance. And which was why I was unable to seek help either. I had never required much of it before. Help is always easier to give than to take. But the very living through it each day, on my own, strengthened me. I learnt how to eventually balance things, manage my emotions, patience, and tolerance. I built many life skills during this time. These I have followed till date. I took to writing poetry and had better understanding of the energies around me, their impact on me. I made friends who are all constants in my life now. They are a reaffirmation of each personal promise that I then made and kept, which has made me who I am and would be. If money was no object, what would you do all day?
When I started writing this article, my mind suddenly went back to the day, when I had to write the online test with several other batchmates of mine before JP Morgan and Chase (JPMC) visited the campus for the internship recruitment. I remember that day specifically because of few very tense hours before and during the exam. When I tried to open the test link and enter my login credentials, unfortunately, I was the only one of those candidates who couldn’t login into the system, and there were those 60 minutes when lots of negative thoughts rushed my mind. I somehow completed the online aptitude exam, and after a few days, I received a mail about my shortlist for the on-campus process.
Shailaja Chaganty is pursuing the first year of her MBA sojourn at XLRI in Human Resource Management. Besides being a trained Carnatic vocalist, she also loves penning her thoughts into poetry and prose. She loves reading during her free time and is a huge fan of Khaled Hosseini.
Snigdha Kakkar is an Electrical and Electronics Engineering Graduate from NIT Hamirpur. She is currently pursuing Human Resource Management from XLRI Jamshedpur. Her hobbies are dancing, sketching, painting, playing Basketball, Carom and Badminton. She is a long distance runner and an NCC C Certificate Cadet in Naval wing. The motto of her life has always been – “My best was good for today, tomorrow I will do still better.” She has always expressed herself through art and she has a web page and an online blog for the same where she exhibits and sells her work.
It is that time of the year again when hundreds of MBA grads are all set to conquer the world. You come in with a lot of hope and zeal only to realise that appearances are often deceptive, you learn to thrive anyway and now it’s time to bid goodbye!
Amidst the hectic schedule and never ending deadlines, we got a chance to have a badinage with Alka, an inspiration for many of us. She sets a perfect example of ‘never give up’ attitude. So let’s unfold her part of the story.