What is the toughest lesson I learned? Learning to listen to my heart when the noise of society’s expectations was all I could hear. Let me take you back. There are two types of people in the world, those who know what they want in life and then there are those who are just figuring things out on the way. I belong to the latter type, and for people like me, life is a maze. We take longer to arrive, but I feel that the fun is in the journey.
Back in 2014 when I gave my 12th Board exams, it was decided for me that I was to keep myself occupied for the few months after my Board exams that I would have before I joined a college for my Graduate degree course. I am fortunate to have two elder siblings from whom I can seek counsel when I need it. We decided that I would attempt the Chartered Accountancy course by taking the Common Proficiency Test (CPT) in June of that year. Little did I know that this decision would change the course of my life.
Let me establish that Accounting has never been my strong suit and I always barely scraped through. With sheer hard work and determination, I was able to clear the exam. But the real game had only just begun. CA-Inter (IPCC). I struggled from the very first day, Accounting was out to haunt me. I struggled throughout, for the whole nine months that I religiously attended classes. Just when I was down and beat, I faced a personal loss during my study break and lost focus. I worked through it,
Paper number 1: Accounting. My nemesis. It was terrible. But I was calm and composed on the ride home. The storm hit when I had time to think. Doubt set in. I convinced myself that I was going to fail, and nothing was going to come out of giving the rest of the papers. I didn’t give them. I got the shock of my life when on result day I found out that I had passed in the only paper that I had given. I was disappointed for having wasted an attempted, thrown it away. My mother was in tears.
I learned an important lesson that day, doubt is a killer. I gave two more attempts with full dedication. Even though I failed in all of them, the process changed me, made me who I am today. I’m not a Chartered Accountant, but the lessons I learnt from this journey are the reason why today I am a student of one of the top MBA institutes in the country.
#ABGLP #ABGWOOME #XIMB #ABGWOOMESEASON-2