Dear Reader,
I myself was wondering when I would actually get to sit down to actually put up a proper post regarding my most recent significant development in my life so far, i.e. my admission to the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. Oh yes, that place, with the yeah, 3 idiots, hmmhmm, yep.
Funny how after nearly two months (wait, what?), I finally feel like I have the time to do so. I have mapped out exactly what needs to be done for which subject and due. I had 4 classes today, and one pre-placement talk, followed by dinner, then helping out a friend who dropped by, with her presentation, then a remarkable 30 minute sleep before I had another quick meet for discussing Managing Organizations write up, followed by a lengthy meeting what we have in mind for Unmaad, IIMB’s mega cultural fest. Incidentally, I am a member of the Student’s Cultural Committee here (ask for my other business card ;))
It’s been quite a journey till today. From one of the most hectic first weeks ever – future bschoolers, look forward to it. To just gloss over the good parts, we were pretty much thrown into the deep end of the pool, and had to battle it out. Met some very good people there (incidentally, a recurring theme at IIMB: you always meet some fascinating folk here on campus. Your untold story is probably even more interesting than that guy who came from Uzbekistan, studied in Malaysia and was born in Germany ;)). (Yes, this is meant to provoke)
Anyway, we were divided and assigned loads of work, and various team building activities. One of the highlights was going to Breakthrough, a physical activities place that specializes in teaching lessons through group activities. More long stories short, I was the first person from the first year batch to present a powerpoint presentation in the auditorium to the entire batch of almost 400 people. Petrified. But well received.
One thing I really like about this place is the energy levels of people. I’d come to learn about the organic structure in Managing Organizations class (fellow IIMB’s rolling their eyes right about now), but the experience organizing and conducting the Aarambh 2010 – the freshers cultural show, in like 5 days, was quite phenomenal. The concept of POC – Point of Contact, helps give some responsibility of communicating and acting as a nodal point, but beyond that, everyone is quite highly talented and able to, well, simply put, ‘make things happen’.
Moving on, classes soon became part of our life. In the early days, it was mostly light hanging out, trying to get out of campus (managed a very few times only). Yes, to clarify, I don’t live in Bangalore. I live in IIMB. I see Bangalore a few times a month, no more.
In between, I put in my hand at some of the tech stuff I apparently am, well, known for. Created a few videos for Aarambh, and for an Ad making competition – where my new found Salsa skills also helped 🙂 Good fun doing it.
Then things got a little crunchy with tests and exams. I’ll touch on this later in another post, because its worth lamenting posting on. 🙂
All in all, IIMB is quite a terrific place. Not a bad place to land up after spending the last few months of your life chasing a cat. (International viewers: CAT is the entrance exam to get into the IIMs. Most news regarding IIMs pretty much involves every possible permutation of terrible puns on felines).
As I was saying, quite some work cut out for me, including studying for final exams next week. Just like to thank Kaushik for reminding me that I in fact, do have a blog (and that it is giving off more malicious warnings on entry than a usb pen drive that was just inserted in our lab computers).
So where next is the obvious, cliche question. Simple answer. I don’t know. But there is definitely something that the interviewers at IIMB saw in me amongst thousands of others (or so we are told repetitively by our seniors) that is going to rock your world.
And as for posting on this blog, I’ll probably have lesser and lesser narrative descriptive tales of what happened yesterday (call me), what I had for breakfast (Twitter), or funny dialogues from class today (Facebook), but just general deep thoughts that I get when I do that brooding me. I figure this is also a reasonable forum to answer any big questions regarding IIMs, though I can only speak from observations and 2 months of life here.
A little warm up gyaan (subtitle: wisdom) here. People say that when you’ve reached a certain position in life (got in IIT (I haven’t), got in IIM (check), got into so-and-so company), “Your Life is Set”.
It’s not.
It only means people’s expectations of you have increased, and the game just got a little tougher. On an optimistic note, that ‘certain position’ guarantees a minimum worst case scenario of a status in life that is perhaps a hundred, thousand, or a million times better than, well, a vast majority of our society.
Just don’t let that get to you. Don’t let your life set. I acknowledge, easier writing this sort of thing on the other side of CAT, but wherever you are, know that there is more to live, and more to live for.
Its almost 4, and I have class in the morning. Ah, sleep cycles should make for an interesting next post, if I ever do get around to it.
