MBA. A degree that speaks of hopes and dreams for many people. Each wanting to carving out their own identity into this microcosm. Some try, some work hard, some win and some are able to realize the dreams they had. Few are those, privileged are those. And behind the façade of achievement, is an average Joe, who like you and me, worked in silence, slogged and made it big.
I had the perfect boring life going on for me. Working in a corporate firm in Gurgaon! Listening to “exciting” client stories! Looking out of the window and seeing 20 storeyed glass & concrete structures staring back at you! You know the ‘clichéd’ good life. And I really didn’t mind any of it. And yet here I was on my first day at XLRI.
So you have decided that MBA is for you but it might seem as though getting into b-school is too difficult a road to traverse. The unrelenting assault of DI and LR in CAT, verbal dizziness brought upon by a 'serious case' of paragraph jumble and the unfortunate dilution of the quantitative section to set the deck against engineers: it might seem as though you don't have what it takes to get yourself an MBA from premier b-school. This is exactly what you need to forget about getting that coveted call from your dream b-school. What you need to remember and understand before you venture into this phase of your life are your strength and weakness and by that, I don't mean whether your quantitative ability is weak or your inability to crack LR. These are the symptoms of your problem, not the problem. I want you to look for something more fundamental about yourself that you want to work on to get to your dream b-school.
‘Do… or do not. There is no try.’ These are Yoda’s words of wisdom ingrained in the brain of every MBA aspirant. And I was no exception! But Yoda smacked me across the face with failure time and again. For me, the 3-year journey to XLRI was more an experience than an achievement.
I happen to belong to this prestigious category of our country’s most inconsequential people. Quite honestly, most of us hail from this section of the country’s ever-increasing population. We lead a normal existence, have fixed schedules, snooze the alarm at least thrice a week, snap atrociously at our loved ones when stressed, get panic attacks at the most trivial situations, spend hours at the dining table staring at some XYZ space, smile out of the blue for reasons best known to us. This is Me. This is You. I am no different from you and you are no different from me. All of us have our lousy ways of getting the right things wrong. Well, I adore myself for my imperfections. This unassuming, unplanned and highly disorganized way of looking at life attracts me these days. I now love to be associated with people who don’t worry about time wasted, who procrastinate excessively, who are fun loving, less organized, and who live life without worrying too much about tomorrow. I am quite curious to know the reason behind this sudden transformation of mine. Had I been the earlier ME, I would have tried a hundred methods to reverse the change, to go back to being a person who loved being perfect, meticulous to the core, and yes, fastidious to a great extent. I wouldn’t deny that the qualities of being fastidious and striving hard to achieve perfectionism in everything I undertake still rests with me, and that I have probably inherited from my mother, who can give anyone a run for his/ her money! But what made me change? This is something that makes me ponder, makes me analyze, makes me introspect…
Every year when June happens, happens the advent of Mangoes in the market, Monsoons in the weather and entry of tens of thousands of fresh graduates in a business school. Little do they know that they’ve signed up for a roller coaster ride and nobody knows where the STOP button is. Let us try to break down the 2 years into a few ‘critical moments’ that come into the ‘b-life’ of a management student till the time he/she lands a job.
