Reality Bites !

So, I have always believed that I am pretty open about my life to this world. All my near & dear ones will testify to the fact that I am an open book (though I hate those kinda exams !). But let's be honest and mark a line between telling lies & not telling the truth. I have always taken a fact in lighter vein if someone asked whether my parents knew about my drinking liquor ...saying not everything needs to be told to your parents. But hiding certain facts is no different than lying and I have know that deep down all this while. They are just two sides of the same coin. Hence I am penning down certain facts which I have been not expressing to the MBA junta for past one year.

Yes it's true that I have not cared for GPA from the moment I have entered the hallowed walls of B, but for a long time I have been thinking that at least a 3.00 is what I can call... graduating with Honour (I am pretty sure that my BITS degree stating B.E. (Hons.) will fit to the above criteria as I managed 9.25/10.0). But continuing with the last post, we know that wishing for something and making them happen are different ball games. So, if I want my so called Honour, I better start wishing & acting on the same front with some serious focus.
      Coming to another revelation, yet again I will begin with my defense that job was never on my mind (forget being specific about sector or a dream company)...since internship happened. Though the announcement of PPO at Philips was no surprise, it did bring a sense of insecurity about placements. The first two days coming back to campus were spent thinking about Lateral placements. To be specific, for the first time thoughts of not having done anything brilliant during my first year to put down on my one-pager-resume began piercing my heart. Being honest, this insecurity is also complemented by a sense of increasing responsibility as I don't treat myself as single for obvious reasons !

Too much of Reality Dose......now let me walk you through the first week of phase II journey here back at Bengaluru. The entire week showed one prominent face of MBA graduates-the face which had bitchy, selfish & backstabber written all over it. What led to reflection of these faces was group formation for various electives. As if betting (not bidding) on the horses (read electives) was not over and was too comforting for all of us, we all were welcomed back in the Managerial world with loads of these stinking faces. The entire 100 acre campus seemed to be a simulated Royal Rumble game with the DMLs being clear winners. Everyone wants a group with the people who know only two things in their lives-mugging and RGgiri. But people here forget the basic idea of coming to the institute which boasts of accommodating most diverse peer group across entire country. The idea is to learn from the best & leverage the diversity. These graduates seem to have taken Marketing too seriously and never give away any opportunity to segment their peers into groups based on GPAs. I sometimes feel pity on fate of this country which is gonna be run by these Ethical future managers who really don't give a damn about survival of the low GPA segment but the only thing which matters for them is to widen the gap between them and other segments.

There have been cases where people have evaluated the market value of an elective as a 4.5 lakhs course. Now I am no one to question how that figure was arrived at but I must share that I was amazed at the thought process of people while deciding the electives. Phew ! A typical student will be brimming with joy if he got good grades because of some random grading but the same guy will crib about having scored a C because of randomness of another subject. Now all that we will take away from this place is that life is going to be random (if professor or pedagogy or grading or peers can be taken as a benchmark for real life) in future. But I guess most of us here are still to learn how to appreciate the two sides of this randomness. It is called random because it has no logic attached to it and hence not always will be the result as per your expectations ! So, smile on being the right side but do not crib if you sometimes fall on the wrong side.

I will like to conclude by sharing some positives of the day.  Combination of MPAEC & Sardarji inspired me to deep dive once again into an area which I have loved to study upon in the past. I hereby vow to myself to put maximum efforts and prioritize this subject over others as this one seems logical and will definitely help me to read the pulse of nations in the future. Also, when a friend is high and calls you saying that he is missing the good old times of togetherness-it feels bliss. After all life is about all these memories you create and the moments when someone remembers you in their good times to share their happyness. Long after we are gone, we will also be memories.
    Last but not the least I will like to share one of the principles I follow closely in my life. Giving exams is the difficult part and taking some steps to check your answer sheet is the easiest. No matter if you already have a feeling of not having done good in paper or you already know your marks beforehand. You should still go and check your paper, just to see if some question is left uncheked or there is a possible totaling mistake. It did help me to add 2 marks to MacroEconomics and my revised grades now read 3.31 instead of 3.00 Not to forget BGS grades revised from 2.32 to 2.81 and an overall CG changing from 2.85 to 2.90 May be its a small difference but it makes me feel that I have taken a step closer to my Honour. It is all about how you feel, it gets reflected in your thoughts and in your personality and it can do a world of change in your attitude towards looking at life. Thankfullly, I seem to be presented with accolades from the Almighty......just hope for the rightful deeds over past one week.

Cheers!  

The choice...is Yours !

One of the 3 best friends of my school life has finally reached the pinnacle of success. Now how do we measure success? I am sure it has different meanings to different people. But if I say that she got AIR 66 in UPSC and has become what she always dreamt of becoming (IAS), I am sure we all will admire her brilliance in achieving this success.

When I heard about the news, I felt great and very happy for my friend. At the same time the thought of doing something great started striking my mind-that's the mild way of putting my thoughts. Expressing my feelings strongly, I began thinking that I am doing nothing in my life but wasting it. From my childhood, I had goosebumps on seeing people doing great things. Be it watching typical Bollywood hero saving millions of lives or reading about our Jawaans fighting it out at the battlefield or an Indian singer renowned worldwide for his musical talent. I guess I have been obsessed with fame all my life. And let's admit that there is nothing wrong in getting inspired by fame. Unless and until you dream of doing great things, you can never make a dent in the universe (Yeah...I know. I truely admire Steve Jobs' journey and The Apple he created for world to remember him ,even without having a bite, long after he was gone).

But the problem arises when your efforts are not concentrated and strong enough to match your energy level when you were inspired. It's like saying that you want to be the President of U.S. and then doing nothing about it. Time and again I have been inspired by some events/personalities, but have failed miserably to continue the fire burning for a long time. This being the last academic year of my life (at least for a while) I am pinning my hopes of doing certain things on these kind of success stories.
                        Its like you come across all kinds of goods and bad habits of different people and it's up to you as to what you want to pick from them. So, I want to chose to be inspired and not bogged down with negativity of comparing my achievements with those bench marked by others. I chose to adopt good habits and positivity around me ( however small they might be) and ignore the ones which have a potential to irritate me. As rightly said, while cribbing about our lives we all shall remember that it is an outcome of path we consciously chose to tread upon. Our life reflects what decisions we took in the past. So, if we think that something wrong is going on at present than it is because of some wrong decision making in the past. And we shall also not forget that it is entirely upon us (and no one else)  to change the course of our journey by learning from the past. I will like to conclude with a favourite quote of mine: I don't make wrong decisions. I take decisions and make them right !

The Journey............Begins !

Let us begin with the end....end of internship @ Philips. The only souvenir to keep from these two months is memories and a few words to express them. The highlights include staying at an awesome friend's place for nearly a month and a half and talking about everything-sensical & nonsensical. There was no learning as such which Philips could offer to me but it did provide me with an awesome opportunity to meet my near and dear ones and to have a cool-breeze-break from hot college life. All the weekends were memorable and will stay registered in the most precious corner of my heart for a lifetime!

Boarding the flight back to college, I had a bag mix of emotions on my shoulders. I was happy that I will be seeing some of my friends with a golden heart while I knew deep within that the fake diaspora too, awaited simultaneously to suck my inner peace. And this is how the journey has started routing towards the final destination. It's like a train we all have boarded from different places and once it was full with 406 fachhas, there were only 2 stops. Journey till 1st stop didn't seem like a train journey but felt as if I was sitting on a roller coaster at Wonderla! The only point worth mentioning is that I am very happy about train reaching the first stop in such a short span of time. All I am looking forward is this fresh start and to do something different in the phase II of this journey before it gets over in no time.

Yes I am liking the start of it...infact I am feeling great about it. Beginning from the desires of penning down my emotions or the positive energy in' N ' wing or sitting right upfront in classes for that matter; I like everything about this start. I agree that it's too early to comment on the success quotient of this journey but no one can take away that it's indeed some start! I will have to keep myself motivated to keep this getting better with some compositions, some more readings, being knowledgeable of the worldly activities and getting myself engrossed with the MBA studies. I was wondering in the morning while taking bath about the happyness I am seeking from all these mundane activities and soon I realized the reasons behind them bringing me a sense of satisfaction-Its the change! I have always loved doing different things or doing things differently for that matter. I have never bothered about the world's reactions and always dived in a pool of change, even if it had no water.

Beginning from taking daily showers to offering my prayers to Lord Shiva to my continuous efforts of reducing my sleep hours to being attentive in class. Everything is a change and that too a positive one. I am looking forward to make this journey count and I will seek God's blessings and friends' support to make it a time immemorial experience. Its no point cribbing about this place and its selfish people. Those facts are not going to change. It's time to be the change myself and to prove to myself that it was the best decision of my life to be a student.....again !!