We all are fascinated by stories. Stories take us to another world. They storm the most powerful emotions out of us. They make us empathetic, sympathetic and help conquer our fear making us a bigger person. The b-school life is no different than a tale. It is a play that is staged in our lives for 2 years. The best thing is we are the actors in the lead role and the entire cast revolves around us.
The sweet taste of having converted the coveted IIM call is nothing short of having conquered the world. But the first day of orientation program is generous enough to burst the flamboyant bubble. What follows is an intriguing realisation of this roller coaster ride called MBA. No amount of advice from your seniors, mentors or (*MBA*) Gurus/ (*Pagal*) Guys is enough to prepare you for the b-school journey. The impending two years bring out the best and the worst in you. As the academic year at IIM Lucknow draws to a close, one can’t help but retrospect her learning as an (almost) PGP 1 survivor.
Like now, almost four years back, when I graduated from NIT Trichy it was the time of farewells and goodbyes. Though I didn’t know anyone before going to NITT, it was by luck I got a room with a group of friends who were from the same school with whom I stayed together for the rest of my time in college and at that point of time I didn’t know that we were set to become friends for life. The last few months of college went away in a jiffy, with most nights spent playing Dota or discussing random stuff till morning and sleeping through the day or going home during the extended weekends we used to get. Nearly everyone in my gang was either going to work in Bangalore or was going to study in the US except for me who was moving to Chennai.
A few years back, the male protagonist in a Bollywood movie recited these famous words "Main udna chahta hoon, daudna chahta hoon, girna bhi chahta hoon...bus rukna nahin chahta", which translates to ‘I want to fly, I want to run, I want to fall in life but never stop.’ The words resonate with most dreamers like me as I am someone who is highly ambitious and have an exhaustive bucket list that I want to live my life by. However, a year into my journey as a management student in one of the premier institutes in the country, I find myself constantly pondering over questions about all the race(s) I am a part of - the race for bagging the best company in summers, the race to fetch the highest stipend, the race for a PPO, and then the laterals and eventually the final placements. It makes me wonder if we are missing out on something more important: something as important as simply the joy of learning.
The moment you set foot in an IIM, the first thing you notice is the abundance of engineers. You wonder whether this is a b-school or an F-school for engineers. F stands for finishing (among other things). It can get a tad intimidating if you are not one of ‘them’. That was not a problem for me as I was a freshly (almost) minted mechanical engineer straight out of an NIT. Engineers come here in all shapes and sizes. On one hand, you have the guy who can weed out your percentile from the source code of a centrally monitored web page. On the other, you have that person, including yours truly, who cannot fix a fuse even if their life depended on it.
“Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts.”
Strength lies in differences, not in similarities
Before anything let us go a few years back and recollect the moment when we had to buy our first mobile phone. Such an ‘important’ decision of our life as this was going to stick with us ever as “OUR FIRST MOBILE PHONE”. We had limited specific requirements except for the budget constraints and so there were a few phones falling in our range and we bought one of those. Easy process, wasn’t it? Not so much today! With innumerous phones falling in every set of requirements and budget constraints you would believe that the process would have become easier since we could choose just the perfect phone for us but unfortunately if you delve deeper you would realise that is not the case. In fact, a research suggests “almost 53% people dislike when they have to choose from amongst too many options”. This is what raises the topic of Tyranny of Choice or popularly called Paradox of Choice.
We all are fascinated by stories. Stories take us to another world. They storm the most powerful emotions out of us. They make us empathetic, sympathetic and help conquer our fear making us a bigger person. The b-school life is no different than a tale. It is a play that is staged in our lives for 2 years. The best thing is we are the actors in the lead role and the entire cast revolves around us.
The sweet taste of having converted the coveted IIM call is nothing short of having conquered the world. But the first day of orientation program is generous enough to burst the flamboyant bubble. What follows is an intriguing realisation of this roller coaster ride called MBA. No amount of advice from your seniors, mentors or (*MBA*) Gurus/ (*Pagal*) Guys is enough to prepare you for the b-school journey. The impending two years bring out the best and the worst in you. As the academic year at IIM Lucknow draws to a close, one can’t help but retrospect her learning as an (almost) PGP 1 survivor.
Like now, almost four years back, when I graduated from NIT Trichy it was the time of farewells and goodbyes. Though I didn’t know anyone before going to NITT, it was by luck I got a room with a group of friends who were from the same school with whom I stayed together for the rest of my time in college and at that point of time I didn’t know that we were set to become friends for life. The last few months of college went away in a jiffy, with most nights spent playing Dota or discussing random stuff till morning and sleeping through the day or going home during the extended weekends we used to get. Nearly everyone in my gang was either going to work in Bangalore or was going to study in the US except for me who was moving to Chennai.
A few years back, the male protagonist in a Bollywood movie recited these famous words "Main udna chahta hoon, daudna chahta hoon, girna bhi chahta hoon...bus rukna nahin chahta", which translates to ‘I want to fly, I want to run, I want to fall in life but never stop.’ The words resonate with most dreamers like me as I am someone who is highly ambitious and have an exhaustive bucket list that I want to live my life by. However, a year into my journey as a management student in one of the premier institutes in the country, I find myself constantly pondering over questions about all the race(s) I am a part of - the race for bagging the best company in summers, the race to fetch the highest stipend, the race for a PPO, and then the laterals and eventually the final placements. It makes me wonder if we are missing out on something more important: something as important as simply the joy of learning.
The moment you set foot in an IIM, the first thing you notice is the abundance of engineers. You wonder whether this is a b-school or an F-school for engineers. F stands for finishing (among other things). It can get a tad intimidating if you are not one of ‘them’. That was not a problem for me as I was a freshly (almost) minted mechanical engineer straight out of an NIT. Engineers come here in all shapes and sizes. On one hand, you have the guy who can weed out your percentile from the source code of a centrally monitored web page. On the other, you have that person, including yours truly, who cannot fix a fuse even if their life depended on it.
“Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts.”
Strength lies in differences, not in similarities
Before anything let us go a few years back and recollect the moment when we had to buy our first mobile phone. Such an ‘important’ decision of our life as this was going to stick with us ever as “OUR FIRST MOBILE PHONE”. We had limited specific requirements except for the budget constraints and so there were a few phones falling in our range and we bought one of those. Easy process, wasn’t it? Not so much today! With innumerous phones falling in every set of requirements and budget constraints you would believe that the process would have become easier since we could choose just the perfect phone for us but unfortunately if you delve deeper you would realise that is not the case. In fact, a research suggests “almost 53% people dislike when they have to choose from amongst too many options”. This is what raises the topic of Tyranny of Choice or popularly called Paradox of Choice.
