We live in a competitive world today. Everyone is fighting tooth and nail to achieve their goals and ambitions. A B-school is no different, but the severity of competitiveness increases to a multi-fold here. In TAPMI, where there is an emphasis on academic rigor, a student is also expected to be an all-rounder. Thus, the various committees and competitions at TAPMI give us a great opportunity to work and showcase our skills and abilities. As an individual who loves to be actively involved in some or the other activity, I was highly interested to be a part of the ‘Student Executive Council’ (SEC) in TAPMI.
SEC conducted its elections in July 2018, where I’d to pitch in front of my class of 60 students. Based on the number of votes and my pitch, I would be shortlisted for the next round. I didn’t get shortlisted. I was not too dejected by this and took this rejection as a small hurdle in my next two years at TAPMI. Later I applied for my first committee. Rejected. Applied for the second committee. Rejected. Third committee. Rejected. Fourth committee. Rejected. Fifth committee. Selected!
I thought this is the end of my rejections and now, stepping on these stones of failures I’ll able to achieve success. Then started the Summer Internship Season. It was rejection after rejection before I converted an internship opportunity. The number of rejections I faced in just 6 months of joining TAPMI was more than the number of rejections I have faced in my entire life. I collected feedback from the parties who rejected me and started working on them. I participated in as many competitions as possible. I didn’t win most of them but kept on trying to improve myself and become a better version of myself. The only win last year was, a research paper co-authored by me got published in ‘TAPMI Journal of Economics and Finance’ (a student-run, peer-reviewed journal).
Every year the SEC gets dissolved and re-elections are conducted. In February 2019, I believed in myself and again stood for the elections with the hope that ‘Apna Time Aayega’. However, this time the pitching was done in front of the entire batch of 480 students. This time the batch voted for me and I got shortlisted for the next challenging rounds of SEC and eventually, I was able to be a part of the esteemed Student Executive Council. All the above failures didn’t seem so sad anymore as they seemed when I was going through them. During my internship in a sales profile, I faced many more rejections and I accepted them gracefully. I looked for something optimistic from these rejections and with my ‘never give up’ attitude kept on persevering to achieve my goals. Surely, there’s a long way for me to go and become much, much better to achieve my life goals. This is just the end of the beginning!