11th June 2007 – I was sitting in auditorium for the Induction Program, wondering how the next two years will unfold. All the brilliant people around me were making me nervous. People were already talking about specializations, job profiles and various other frightening things. I felt so under prepared. I was not really sure as to how I will be able to utilize these two years to add value to my career (pardon the MBA jargon). Before joining the college I was working, hence the usual laid back proclivity had crept over these two years of work. So I was not all enthusiastic and oozing with passion for the cut throat MBA studies which suck off every juice of your joyful life. I must confess I was bit scared after seeing the extra-ordinary enthusiasm of my batch mates and was wondering whether I will be able to make a mark? (I am still wondering about that)
As luck would have it, all those thoughts were washed away the very next week when the actual classes started. First week was kind of cool with normal introductions and interactions, getting to know people and faculty. I knew these were the happy times before the turbulent storm. Fortunately or unfortunately you don’t get time to think in here. You just keep churning out reports and presentations without delving into your own life. It’s like you are a machine or something. Well I have my own qualms about the way an MBA college functions but let’s leave it for a later day.
A usual day for me starts at 8:00 am when I need to get up, take the usual dose of ET and TOI and then make haste for the college after getting ready. Just manage to get my attendance for the first lecture. (By the way attendance is a big deal here in SIBM. If you don’t have 90% attendance for whatever reasons you are not allowed to sit in exams.)
To quote a friend here “Breakfast and sleep are luxury in SIBM”. Breakfast because people like me don’t get up early and sleep because we always fall short of time. Whatever be the situation, however less the load be, you will not get time. There will always, always be something to do which u had left earlier.
After every lecture we have a break of ten minutes in which you have time to probably grab a bite or re-look what is on the “To-do list”. I use Outlook for that but as the “To-do list” keeps on increasing with each passing day like the queue at a counter where there is no one to service. Sometimes it seems like you are fighting a lost battle against time. But heroically in the end, everything falls in place.
After four hours of this ordeal, we have an hour of lunch break in which guys like me rush to the canteen because by this time our belly is screaming at the top its voice to refuel it. After the lunch break, students catch up with the lost sleep previous night though lectures continue. It feels like you are in some spell and just can’t keep yourself from giving in.
Lectures get over at 5 pm on a normal day. On a bad day though, you never know when you will be free because anytime the uninvited mail from coordinator will come about extra class so much so that you don’t have time to have snacks. Now is when the day starts for you. You hit the canteen for some snacks and coke. Call up members of different team members to co-ordinate the assignments. Generally one stays in the college till 9 or 10 doing assignment supposedly as a team. Then have dinner and come back to hostel. After the usual discussion on day’s proceedings and mimicry of all faculties, every one retires to one’s laptop and tries to complete the pending work but the enticement of Movies, Friends, Prison Break and Lost is hard to resist. Sleep takes over by 2-3 am and then the same cycle follows the next day. Though the subjects will keep changing and so will the semesters but I guess this kind of routine will follow me for the next one and the half year. Just hoping that after going through this entire ordeal, it will be worth it. The money and time invested for these two years is an investment and after all the knowledge of NPV and IRR I just hope NPV for this project is comes out to be highly positive.
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