The Day I Surprised Myself

“You would lose marks for today’s lab if you leave right now”, the teacher said with a firmness in his voice. “It’s Ok Sir”. I walked out of the lab with 1 ½ hours still remaining. It was 11.30 am. A long day beckoned, and it was imperative for me to take rest for sometime atleast. I had slept at 4.30 the last night, and at 4 the night before that. It had started to take a toll. But today was not the day to lose steam. There was a marketing project presentation at 2 in the afternoon. And yes, there was the Student General Secretary Election at 6 in the evening.

To be very honest, I had never wanted to be the General Secretary. A general secretary, after all, has the responsibility of coordinating all student activities in the college- be it alumni relations, public relations, international relations, the student clubs , the induction program of new batch and what not. It demands a proactive person at the helm, and I had doubts about myself initially. After all, the frenetic pace of the b-school life had made me retreat into my shell. However, I had seen room for improvement for the college. The best way to demand change was to be in a position to facilitate change. And the best way to achieve this change was to take the plunge myself. Thus, I had ended up filing my nomination.

I had stayed up on previous nights because I wanted to get my agenda spot on. I had not been the most social person in the batch- not ideal when you are up for an election. Unfortunately, I could not help it in the next 2-3 days. The best I could have done was to come up with a solid agenda for the next year which could make people sit up and take notice. Whether that would eventually convert into votes was an entirely different matter, but I had to try. So I went about brainstorming- thinking, talking to people, taking views. I was eventually able to come up with a presentation.

Eventually, it was time. The clock had struck 6 pm and the batch of 79 had taken its seat. There were 7 candidates in the fray, that’s nearly 10% of the batch! I had appeared sleepy during the marketing presentation in the afternoon. A friend of mine had given me a dressing down – “If this is your energy level going into the pitch this evening, you better forget about people listening to you”.  My measured approach to everything makes me a fluent but mundane speaker. I had to find a way to throw in some zeal but I had no idea how to do it.  

I waited outside for my turn (I was 6^th in the sequence of candidates). 7 contestants, including a close friend was in the fray. A badly split voting was inevitable. I kept thinking about who would vote for me and I had only 3 sure votes to count on. It was hard to stay motivated and sit through that period, waiting for my turn. It eventually came after 1 and ½ hours. 

I walked in to a tired and rather disinterested audience. I had to involve them somehow. So, I started to put my agenda via interaction. I slowly started gaining steam and became completely involved in the pitch, so much so that I had to be reminded that I was exceeding time. The measured approach which I usually take ensures that I do things in a very calculated way and adhering to time is one of those, but not that day. I had become so involved in questions from the audience that I did not realize I had walked off from the podium amidst the audience. I had to be called back. There were vague questions, there were demanding questions and I enjoyed answering them all with full enthusiasm. It was as if I had chosen it to be my moment. I had a vision, I had ways to implement that vision and I wanted people to understand it. That evening, a sleepy and mundane I had come to life. At times, I have repented for not expressing myself properly. That evening, for a change, I wanted to express myself.

Was there a fairytale ending for me in store? No. I lost. Life is not a fairytale. It gives your share of happiness and it also gives you reality checks. The surprise was that I managed 13 votes and ended up 3^rd in the race, 8 votes behind the top ranked candidate. The reality check was the realization of the importance of staying connected to people. As an MBA student, one ought to be social to a certain degree atleast. It’s all right to have a vision and show passion, but people matter in the end. My passion had probably raised my tally from a prospective 3 votes to 13 that evening but that’s the maximum it could have stretched.

So what did I get eventually? Was there a need for all this when I knew I would lose? I would say, YES. That evening eventually helped me break out of my shell. I came across as a person willing to lead. I caught the attention of many people who had not known me properly yet. Moreover, there was a satisfaction of having competed. There was a satisfaction of having lost, gracefully.

After all was done and dusted, a batch-mate walked up to me and said –”You might have lost today, but you definitely have one more fan after today”. It seemed, after all, that I had done something right that day.

Common Sense after CAT

Once CAT gets over, relief and lack of motivation follow. Hence you tend to overlook a few things during this crucial phase. From my experiences, I have a list of suggestions which might be useful to the candidates in the coming days:  

·         You would have always thought about reading newspapers but might not have started it yet! And now people might be suggesting you to read Manorama year book to prepare for GK! It’s great if you can do that, but if you can’t, then the bare minimum you can do is to start reading the Opinions and Editorials of http://www.thehindu.com/. Opinions are quite lengthy and you must read every opinion in one go as this will prepare you for the Lengthy RCs of IIFT, provide you with excellent perspective for your GD-PI rounds and improve your GK. Keep following basic news so that you do not miss sitters from GK in the exams.

·         If you are a Facebook addict,  ‘like’ the Facebook page of The Economic Times and make sure you read something on that page every time you log on to Facebook. Read the page of ‘Indian Economy’ from Wikipedia. You will come across unknown terms while reading that page and you should search meaning of such terms and understand those. If you have a Smartphone, download the app for Mint (HT Media Ltd.) and get regular updates of business news on your phone.

·         If you are very strong in a particular section and you did not perform well in that section in NMAT, then definitely go for a retake.  If your score is somewhere close to cut-off, go for a retake.

·         Although IIFT might have sectional cut-offs, these cut-offs are quite low. Hence worrying too much about sectional cut-off in IIFT would not help much. Make sure you attempt a few questions in every section to avoid mishaps, but then go for your stronger sections will full vigour.  

·         Vocabulary has a crucial role to play in the exams to follow. So improve your vocabulary by using the Vocabulary section in the study material of different coaching institutes and giving mock tests.

·         The Decision Making section in XAT can be a make or break section for many. It is not a difficult section at all if you have done some relevant practice through mocks and previous year papers. It is excellent if you can attend some classes for Decision Making by a good faculty or take help from a friend who usually aces this section.

·         Until and unless you absolutely messed up CAT, fill the form of FMS and do not skip it out of laziness thinking that you will anyhow not get a call from that college! Make sure you write the SOP (Statement of Purpose) in the FMS form with proper guidance from someone who has written SOPs before. Questions from your SOP are bound to crop up in your FMS interview later.

All the Best!!

First Impressions: Inside the Gates of IIT-Bombay

Monsoons are probably the most romantic of all seasons, and I am definitely not the most romantic person around to live up to the ambiance it sets up. Still, as destiny would have it, I have found myself shifting to places which are famous for their monsoons in their own way- Manipal, Pune and now Mumbai.

In a scene quite fitting to my trysts with monsoons, I arrived in Mumbai on 11^th July amidst crazy rains. If arriving in IIT Bombay was a dream, it was a very wet one indeed! The rains ensured that I stayed inside my hostel the whole day. As someone who had lived 4 years of his life in Manipal, it was impossible not to think about the hostels of M.I.T, Manipal that day. Make no mistake that IIT Bombay is a college with very good infrastructure, but the kind of hostels, hostel facilities and mess facilities that Manipal had bestowed upon me during my stay was truly world class. It would be an understatement to say that I missed being in Manipal. I literally craved to roll back the years that day.

Such memories are there to be cherished, but the reality dawns sooner than later. It was back to reality soon as the college began the next day. A new college always brings with it endless new possibilities. With the start of the induction program, the series of introductions began; Introduction of classmates, introduction of teachers, introduction to facilities at IIT and ‘talks’ by IIT alumni in the coming days. The advantage of being in a city like Mumbai was quite evident with the ease with which an alumnus would just walk into IIT Bombay while going back home from his work or during his lunch hour and deliver a ‘talk’ to us. The talks were supposed to give thoughtful insights about the industry as well as a sneak peek into our life at IIT-Bombay for the next two years. I, however, found myself completely at sea during the talks. Many a times, I could not comprehend the facts and figures which were being spoken about. It was difficult to stay abreast with the questions which my batch mates put to the speakers. I must say the curiosity level of my batch has surprised me, but may be this has given me an opportunity to improve an important aspect of my personality here, i.e., to inculcate more curiosity in myself.

If the alumni sessions brought their own set of challenges, there were activities which were pure fun. The biggest advantage which one gets being in a B-School is the opportunity to stretch one’s limits, in tasks which might be very important and even in tasks which are meager and unimportant. Every small task, however, plays an important part in the development of an individual here. So within the first 6 days of my stay here, I ended up participating in a treasure hunt for the first time in my life, and I ended up preparing and acting in a small skit for the first time since my school days. I could not help but notice few interesting aspects of my batch during these activities. This batch has got excellent diversity when it comes to people coming from different regions of the country. You name a state, and we have a student from that state (except the north-eastern states). The learning about the cross-cultural group dynamics is going to be top notch in such a scenario. The challenge will be bigger for an experienced professional because he or she is used to operate in teams which usually have a hierarchy and a boss! But there is no hierarchy and no boss in such groups here. Everyone has his own view which often ends up being quite different from the other person owing to the different cultural upbringing. It is the co-ordination which matters the most. How one reaches a common ground in such a scenario will be fascinating to experience. If cultural diversity acts as strength of IIT Bombay, gender diversity is an aspect where this college fails miserably. Such skewed gender diversity creates the risk of creating new taboos, which is a lose-lose situation for everyone around.

So far I have only talked about the facts on the surface of IIT Bombay. There is, however, one more aspect to consider when you arrive at a new place- the kind of comfort zone it provides you. Prior to my arrival in Mumbai, I had stayed for 4 years in Manipal, 3 months in Trivandrum and 2.5 years in Pune and had moved into a comfort zone of mine in these places in no time. That comfort zone is somehow missing in IIT Bombay. There is something about IIT-Bombay  that reminds me about my stay in Kota; staying in small sharing rooms, being all at sea during the sessions, curious questions flowing all around, and a lot of jargon being thrown at you. It’s almost a flashback into my initial days of Kota, a stage of my life (Std 11^th – 12^th) where I made terrible mistakes; mistakes which were made because I was out of my comfort zone, mistakes which were made because I had been a very protected child, mistakes which were made because I had too arrogant a thought process to believe that something could even come in my way which could bother me. However, my experiences of Kota taught me the biggest virtue which I possess today, and that is ‘patience’. If ever there was a time and place to implement the experiences which I got from Kota, then this is it. Since the natural comfort zone is absent, I need to use my patience to ease in here. I do not fall in the category of people who take charge of the situation and make things happen. I am, instead, a believer of biding my own time. I even have this tendency of retreating into my shell sometimes.  Even if I get into a shell, I have tried to learn to keep the target just somewhere within my sight, so that when the time is ripe, I can have a go at it with no holds barred. The key here along with patience is to have a clear idea of what you want to do and more so a clearer idea of what you don’t want to do.

Now, with the end of the 6 day induction program today, the stage is set for the classroom to begin tomorrow. And I am ready to bide my time. The mistakes made in Kota made sure I had to wait for 7 more years to become an IITian. What better place than the IIT itself to rectify those mistakes. And as a professor told me during the induction, I can do that in two ways- one by being a guest of IIT, or the other by becoming a host here, by treating IIT as MY own college, as my second home, and having a sense of pride in being a part of it. The second way it is for me. It’s time to begin.

CAT : My Journey and Experiences

PART 1: THE ROAD TO CAT

I am not a believer of New Year resolutions. For me, those are just gimmicks of weak-willed people. So I refused to categorize my first lecture in Career Launcher on January 1, 2012 as a New Year resolution. I was just happy to be in a classroom, away from my office. People had partied hard the night before, and as a result there were only 2 people in the class of Reading Comprehension that day. Many teachers would have felt inclined to cancel that class, but mine went ahead with it; a clear sign that she respected the two individuals for showing up on 1^st January. A good first impression, I must say. She was to go on to become my strongest mentor and supporter in the days to come.

The next 9 months were the actual preparation period for the exam. People suggested that I was risking saturation by starting so early. They were right. It is actually tough to maintain the same intensity throughout and you run the risk of losing interest. This race had to be run as a long distance race. As Dhoni would say- rather than beginning well, it is important to peak at the right time in a long tournament. So I tread at a smooth pace for the first 5 months before steaming up in the months from June to September.

 I have been asked this question often whether I felt exhaustion or found it difficult to manage my time between office, weekend classes, two mock test series’ and the inevitable cricket which I never gave up. My answer would always be the same –“I am just relieved to be sitting in a classroom.”Indeed I was relieved; relieved because I was proving to be a complete failure at work in my company and the classroom was the only place to relieve my bruised ego and earn some accolades. In my company, I literally used to hide behind people when we were assigned work. No one would mention it explicitly, but people thought I was a liability when it came to coding. It hurt. It hurt more because it was all true. What kept me going was the belief that the people around me in the office might be good at what they were doing and I was nowhere near their level, but I was better at many aspects which we were not concerned with in my office and I ought to give myself a better chance to uncover those aspects of mine somewhere else. So classroom became the place to be- every weekend –6 hours. It’s not that it was a cakewalk in the classroom. Maths was something I always struggled with, but I always used to look forward to the Reasoning and English class. My English teacher by now had grown fond of me, and she was more like an elder sister to me than a teacher. 

And it was not just about the subjects or about the teacher. The classroom gave me two of my best friends – Anshul Utpal and Prateek Chaturvedi. We competed with each other and at the same time derived happiness from each other’s success in the tests. Anshul was more consistent of the three when it came to mock tests. I and Prateek had more in common – we struggled with Maths, loved English and swung between excellence and mediocrity in the mock tests. I loved the unique camaraderie that had developed among the three of us.

As the D-Day came closer, I studied harder. I, however, cut myself off from studies 3 days before my exam. I watched movies and TV series to lighten myself. The D-Day arrived on 15^th October. The exam passed smoothly and Anshul was the first person I called after the exam. My words were – “I have attempted 26 questions in English and Reasoning section and I am quite confident of scoring well there (> 96 percentile). I have attempted only 18 in Maths but that is the most I have attempted ever in a test”. So it was an improvement but there was nothing extraordinary about it. A decent score was expected but nothing flamboyant, not after I had managed an average 88 percentile in my last TIME test and a lowly 72 percentile in my last CAREER LAUNCHER test.

A surprise awaited me when the results came on 9^th January, 2013. I had got 99.56 percentile (96.42 in Maths and 99.74 in English). This is the most I had scored in any test and it was a coup of sorts for me. The result was hard to sink in and congratulatory messages flowed from everywhere. The news got leaked in my office as well. This was the best part because the loser from yesterday had suddenly got cult status among peers. People who had never ever talked to me wanted to congratulate me now. Old friends called too as and when they came to know about the result. There was no one happier than my teacher on hearing this news. She welcomed me with the brightest smile I have ever seen on her face when I went to meet her. What was my reaction to all this? – I just let the moment flow. After a period of mediocrity, this was a welcome change in my life. That night when Prateek asked my response to all this, all I said was that “I was relieved”; yes, again the same feeling of being relieved; because no one was going to take this score away from me and the possessive me had the right to hold on to it forever.  I did not want to go to sleep that night because I did not want 9^th January, 2013 to end. It was that kind of a day, one of the best of my life.

             
PART 2: THE ROAD TO ADMISSION

The whole process of CAT and its results can be a very draining experience for a candidate. If all goes well, it takes some time to soak in that feeling of success. Time can slip by quickly, and you suddenly find yourself staring at an interview. I had to make sure I did not fall in that trap. I started my preparation for the interviews the very next day of the result. The ease with which I had prepared till CAT did not replicate itself in this phase. The personality assessment phase is anyways considered tougher than the actual CAT and it lived up to its reputation. 

The fact that this was my first experience with CAT and thereafter meant I actually encountered many surprises at this stage. When the calls started coming, I realised scoring a near ton in CAT was not good enough. With a score of 75.2% in 12^th Board, I missed out calls from IIM-A, B, C, K and I. Anshul (94.08 percentile) and Prateek (96.72 percentile) found the going tougher. A score in the range of 94-97 percentiles is the perfect case of ‘so near yet so far’. Besides, there are the perks to deal with if you are a general male engineer candidate, as the three of us were.  My score ensured that I faced less hassles as compared to Anshul and Prateek. But there were definitely more roadblocks ahead in my way than what I had imagined on the day the CAT scores had been announced.

But withstanding all that, it was time to move forward. Filling the forms for the next stage was a tedious affair. I had a tough time coming to terms with the current affairs of the world because my GK was pathetic. I did not speak a word in my first 3 mock GD’s because I felt irritated at the idea of raising my voice in a fish market where we were actually supposed to make sense. I often wondered what the right approach in an interview was because every faculty who took my interview had a different opinion and prejudice about the interview procedure. The mock interviews were still crucial because they familiarized me with the basics of what I might face. The mocks also taught me to judge the fine line between being honest and being stupid in an interview.

I had 13 interviews scheduled; 3 in February, 7 in March and 3 in April. I had to travel a lot for the interviews and mentally I started getting so tired that I took the step of resigning without a single convert in my hand. I paid off my notice period and thus gave myself ample time to travel, relax and study. Before resigning, the interviews appeared like a burden. After resignation, they became a merry ride. The process became enjoyable.

 I have many memories from these interviews. The one which completely caught me in alien territory was my interview for IIM-L (6^th March). They would just not let me take the interview towards the area of my strength and kept attacking my weaknesses. Despite coming up with a decent GD and Essay, I failed to convert that call. It did not help that the same interview score had to be transferred to the new IIMs too. As feared, I could not convert the new IIMs too. One instance where I became very nervous was the GD round in FMS (22^nd March). They had 14 people sitting there for the GD! FOURTEEN! I was absolutely blown away in that GD, and it was curtains to FMS then and there.

Most of the other calls I converted. The one that I enjoyed most was the experience of IIT-Delhi. After the terrible experience of GD in a group of 14 in FMS, here I was sitting in a Board-Room type of set up in IIT Delhi, on a huge round table, with 14 people in the group. Yes, that dreaded number 14 again! Bad memories from FMS came flooding back. I decided that there was only one way to tackle this GD. Instead of getting lost among the voices somewhere in between, I thought that the best way to tackle such a situation was to start the GD come what may! So as soon the buzzer went off, I spoke. I spoke as if my life depended on how much I speak at that moment.  I was soon cut short by another participant and I did not speak again in the entire GD. A flawless interview followed and I converted IIT-Delhi in the first list.

Another interview with interesting memories was the one at Nitie, Mumbai (2^nd April). I had a GD group of only 9 people. Alas! The other 8 were all shouting. It was the worst GD I had participated in. I had earlier given up in my GD of FMS and was determined not to do so again. I kept my cool, pitched in a few points but those were not enough according to me. After the GD, two of my fellow participants came to me and said – “Dude, I can’t believe someone can be so calm in such a hostile GD. Hats off.” If my GD was hostile, my interview was worse. Again this was a scenario where the interview kept drifting towards my weaker areas. First thing I did after coming out of that ordeal in Nitie was to call Anshul. The first words I said were, “Humse Na ho payega Nitie”. I eventually converted 2 out of the 3 courses offered by Nitie.

However, the college I am finally going to is yet to find a mention. It is in fact Shailesh Jain Mehta School of Management, IIT Bombay. It was the only interview (8^th March) in which I was asked the question, “Why MBA”. It was the first interview where they took interest in the fact that I loved cricket. So a barrage of questions followed from cricket; and I answered them all. I was at my happiest after this interview. It was also a very pleasant experience being in the IIT Campus and the chance to become a part of that campus was exciting to say the least.

There are two ways to look at this eventual result. The first way to look at it says- “I succeeded in making it to a college like IIT Bombay and I should be proud of that”. The second way says- “In spite of getting 99.56 percentile, I could not make it to a big IIM and I should be sad about it”.  At this moment, I would like to remember what my teacher told me- “There are no good colleges or bad colleges around here for MBA. What we eventually get into should be the ‘Right College’.” In some ways, IIT Bombay seems like the right place for me. The cut off score in IIT Bombay was 99.08 percentile this year.  All my to-be batch mates, after a score of 99 plus percentile, must have dreamt of making it big into an IIM. The fact that they could not and instead ended up being there in IIT Bombay means that they were all imperfect in their own ways. This gives me a chance to be one among equals. That is not always a bad thing. So instead of being unhappy about not making it to an IIM, I am today happy and thankful to God for what I have and I look forward to make the most of it when I join SJMSOM, IIT Bombay on 12^th July, 2013.

P.S: - Anshul made it to XIM, Bhubaneswar with his XAT Score while Prateek made it to IMT- Ghaziabad with his CAT Score. We still remain in touch and hope to continue this friendship for a long time to come. Touchwood!

.

The Futility of Advice!

I am sure all of us have taken or given advice during the course of our lives. Sometimes we are so short of ideas that we need family and friends to fill in for us. In difficult situations, we are faced with tough choices, and even in favorable situations, we may have a problem of plenty!

It is here at this point that we commit our greatest mistakes. We seek advice, and we turn it into decisions. All of us, at some point of time in our lives, have been guilty of letting people influence us into making decisions and doing things which we actually did not want to do.

Come to think of it, are there really any right or wrong choices in this world? From what my limited experiences tell me, there are only two kinds of acts: “legal and illegal”. If we are idealists, we might have another category: “moral and immoral”. If, however, a category called “right and wrong” exists for us, then we might better look out for some kind of rigidity which might have overtaken us.

From where I see, there is nothing called right or wrong. There are only perspectives.Perspectives of people who think differently because that's how mankind is supposed to be. For example, an entrepreneur may look down upon a government job for being insipid. The same government employee might look down upon an entrepreneur as a mindless risk taker.A girl might dump her boyfriend for becoming a pain for her .That guy,at the same time, might feel heartbroken. A child might want to be a painter in life because that is his best skill but his parents might want him to opt for a safer career. So are any of the above people wrong? Not really. These are just different perspectives of different people.

So,instead of understanding ourselves and understanding our own perspectives, we often fall in the trap of seeking advice from ill informed people. These ill informed people are present even among the closest family and closest friends. Just because we are close to someone does not mean that we should seek advice from that person.By doing that, we typecast ourselves. We run the risk of falling prey to our comfort zones.We also run the risk of falling prey to preconceived notions of such people.Make a note of it,advice is often based on experiences,but at the same time,advice also highlights the egotistical notions of people. Such people would go to all means to justify what they say and believe, and we fall prey to the strength these egotists possess. When we heed the voices of such people,act accordingly and eventually realize that things have gone wrong ,these egotists are nowhere to be seen and accounted for,and we are left to fend for ourselves.

In my opinion, it is more important to seek facts,rather than advice, from people who possess more knowledge than we do.Only these people,even if they are not friends or family, give us the right facts. It is then our duty to analyse ourselves,our perspectives and finally see where those facts lead us to. That is the only way we can do justice to ourselves and show true respect to our desires and ambitions. Remember, that no one,and absolutely no one understands us better than we do ourselves.

And at the end of the day if someone comes to you and says-“You don’t listen to anyone but do only what you have to”, the most crisp reply would be – “Probably the best thing I do ! “  Its your life. Live it your way.