Finally after so much of effort I get to live my dream, the dream to be in an IIM. There was so much going on in my head, so overwhelmed I was with the very idea of leaving my home for the first time in life. I was scared, worried, excited and all those other feelings mixing up to leave me utterly blank.
So, I began my journey, stepped into the campus of IIM Shillong. Feeling the fresh air subtly mixed with the smell of pine cones, I was mesmerized by looking at the beauty of the greenery around backed by the green roofs of all the buildings situated in this campus. As I moved forward I came across the 2017 batch, my very own seniors, welcoming and guiding new students and their parents. It already felt like home with the way they were attending to us. I registered for my hostel room the same day itself.
I was told that my roommate had already moved in to the room. I was very excited and curious to find out who she was going to be as this was going to bring a huge difference in my life. I remember I wished she would be just like me, and amazingly to my surprise she is. We have so much in common, we love the same colour, our birthdays are in two days gap and we even follow the same books on spirituality. As I finally began living the campus life I came across a college life very different from what I had experienced during the course of my graduation.
To begin with, the seniors were extremely helpful and humble and they have been taking care of us and making sure we feel like a family. There is a huge diversity in our batch. From engineers to lawyers to Chartered Accountants, Economics graduates, we have them all. The major take away from this diversity is the level of peer learning we will be able to achieve. There are CAs taking accounts classes for us engineers and we are taking classes for statistics for them. It is amazing to see how all of us despite coming from extremely different backgrounds are coming together as one, as a family.
We recently had a one week course on sustainability which opened our minds to a completely different concept. Sustainability, not just about going green. We were given a completely new picture wherein we learnt how sustainability is not just about managing resources of the environment but bringing about a change in the most pressing issues of the society, primarily being lack of education.
Towards the end of this course we were taken for a sustainability trek. This was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life as I had never gone on a trek before. I had never walked into a forest before but I did, that to a Mawphlang sacred forest. Further on we went for another longer trek at Lyngoing village with constant drizzly rain, holding hands and crossing the difficult terrains together, getting our shoes dirty, laughing together and experiencing the scenic beauty which could only be captured by our eyes.
It already feels like home here. I do talk to my parents every now and then and they sure seem to miss me more. It is amazing how to begin with I was so scared with the thought of living on my own, didn’t even think my transitioning would be so smooth. This has been my journey so far as I wait eagerly to see what is coming next, to only slowly watch the time fly.
Anushree Bhatt
PGP 1st Year
IIM Shillong
