Road to the "B"eehive!

Okay, this is it. The post that I have been hoping to write for a long time. The journey to the start of the most exciting phase of my life!

I have written time and again, in this blog-space about my managerial aspirations. 

Many people have asked me, "With a cgpa of 9.84 why don't you do Technical Research or do higher studies in Engineering?". A senior once explicitly told me that MBA is for people with bad academic records in Engineering. 

But I did not see MBA as an alternative to a technical career. It was not an escape route to me. An MBA (or rather the Post Graduate Program in Management), to me, would complement my career. 

Okay, now that sounds like a too wise and polished-for-the-interview kind of statement, right?

But it happens to be the truth. I frankly did not have such clarity when I first decided to do an MBA. It was quite an immature decision triggered by:

• My interest in Extra-Curricular activities
• My inability to do as much as I wanted (and as I could do) in the extra-curricular field due to my being the "day-scholar-girl-in-ECE-possible-nerd" - easily the worst position to be in for a girl with ambitions to hold positions of responsibility
• My discovery of the talent I had in covering up blunders and the joy I derived from the few organizational things I'd done in college

The Not-So-Good Start..

So, early on, I enrolled for CAT 2009 full-time course at T.I.M.E., though I was eligible only for CAT 2010. The classes were fun (though it was full of seniors!) and I particularly enjoyed the Verbal Ability classes handled by a spectacular teacher. I was enjoying English classes for the first time since the heavenly days in Std. X at school!

Though I attended the classes regularly, I never worked at home for CAT. The laziness was due to the extra year I had to prepare. The MockCAT season started for CAT'09 and I attempted the mocks with zilch preparation. Though I knew that the analysis of a mockCAT is more important than taking the mock itself, I rarely did it. The early bird strategy was backfiring and I was helplessly falling down the pit of not knowing what/when/where to start a serious prep for CAT'10.

The Revival..

Then came the Blessed SMS from T.I.M.E. in December 2009- "We are starting Revision Classes for CAT'10 aspirants who joined us for CAT'09 classes" 

And during those classes, which mostly ended on an inspirational note by our QA/DI coach, I got to know Bala who was also working with me for an event in Kriya'10. Post Kriya, we decided to team up for CAT prep. 

And we worked. Hard. Maybe it could have been harder. But it was much better than the laggard state I had previously been in. 

The Fever..

The mock season started. I was scoring mostly around 98%ile, with a rare 99%ile and a relatively more common 97%ile. There was also one mock where I reached the late 80s which left me depressed and in self-doubt. But these scores kept me on my toes and I never lost focus. I knew that as a General Category student I needed a 99+ to get the coveted calls.

I used to work out Quants during classes at college; a couple of teachers even caught me in the act. But, incredibly, they let me off, wishing me success :-O

Prep gained momentum with the weekly toppers' batch classes that introduced me to many serious students who shared innovative ways of solving problems. 

The Test..      

November 3, 2010, was the day. 10.15 a.m.-12.30 p.m. The exam turned out to be weird. With wrong questions and the obscure normalization, I had no idea of how things would turn out. Discovered, to my dismay, that I had made 2 silly mistakes in DI. Waited for Jan 12, 2011, impatiently.

The Call..

Quant: 98.49%ile [ :) ]

DI: 88.77%ile   [ :( ]

Verbal: 97.65%ile [neutral]

Overall: 98.70%ile 

I was terribly unhappy at 00.30 hrs on 12/01/2011. Due to the General category, my chances of top calls were very bleak. But my past deeds came to my rescue and I got a call from IIM Bangalore :) 

The Introspection..

Time for me to do some Qualitative thinking instead of the Quantitative one. I looked within me for the true reason I'd been working away furiously all those months. Those reasons I'd mentioned earlier seemed too childish and irrelevant, though they formed the seed of the thought process. I saw how management was part of every activity we did. Even in our completely technical project "Voice-Controlled Robot" I found a lot of management aspects. And I enjoyed the power-point presentations of the work more than the MATLAB coding- which is reason enough ;) 

I tried to express my purpose as clearly as possible in the SoP. 

The Interview..

The day before April Fools' Day. I'd done a decent job on the essay on Social Networking. The Interview was a random psychometric process, with me voicing my opinions on God-Men, Maoism (enacting a Maoist!), Films and Censorship. It was incredibly short (one-third of the time that every other candidate had spent inside!) and I was not sure of the result.

The Result..

April 18, 2011. A night out with the F5 button on my keyboard. The site was hacked! What an omen! I dragged myself to bed at 1.30 a.m. but sleep was elusive. The results came conveniently after 13 more hours. 

The "Congratulations!" message took time (and ten views) to sink in. 

Well, the work of one year has paid off. And I'm on my way to Bannerghatta Road, to the place which is popularly called the one to "B"e in.

The rigours of the curriculum and activities do look a bit scary, but I am ready to take it on.

Adios!

Disclaimer: A longish one, this just-released-from-the-drafts post might attract "Yawn" reactions. :)

"You have done, in these four days, all the lab work that you have never done in your past four years"- a teacher joked, upon our recent completion of a relatively simple job. This kick-started the cliched train of thoughts which I boarded to go down the still more cliched lane of memory.

What have I done in the past four years?

I decided to breeze through the time period briefly.

Have I enjoyed life in this college? Not really.

Can I quantify my learning here? My non-academic learning should be well over a thousand times my academic cgpa over the same denominator. 

First Year..

Started with Josh and eagerness. Happiness that I got to choose the college I want to join. Getting used to the fact that there can be two Physics labs in a campus and not reaching the correct one on time will result in being told-off. Hourly attendance. Freedom to bunk. New Friendships. Fights. Movies with friends became a matter of habit. 

Second Year..

IV, Intrams: Possibly the best time of these four years. We were never united as a class, both before and after this period. And the third semester comes closest to what can be described as "enjoyable". Subjects like Analog electronics and Electro Magnetic Fields were really brain-stimulating! After all, this blog was conceived while studying them :) Got to know a good lot of friendly seniors; even did my first mini project! 

A short stint at Reliance Communications, Mumbai for an In-Plant training after the second year served the purpose of changing my "Mujhe Hindi malum nahin" to "Mujhe Hindi thoda thoda malum hai" :P

Third Year..

I Block!! The 135-step climb to the classes (while the elevators were reserved only for faculty members and physically challenged students) kept us fit throughout the year! We started working on Embedded Systems, celebrated a "Batch" Day with only the girls and started taking placement prep tests. A tough period for me, for I didn't want to risk opting out in favour of an MBA and simultaneously hated learning C/C++ in greater depth. I preferred Quant Books to "Let US C" or "The Complete Refernce to C/C++" , earned the wrath of the Placement Representatives, being an unyielding girl, went unprepared for the first mock interview (which turned out to be a blessing actually, helping me get in touch with two Great Seniors I still adore) and skipped the second mock interview! YLGC'10 was fun and I decided to attend more Model United Nations conferences. And then there was Kriya. The joy of organizing and seeing my words on the official homepage were temporary. The most valuable thing I got out of Kriya'10 was my study partner. I don't prefer group study usually, but without this guy, my CAT prep would have never gained momentum.

Fourth Year..  
I started planning for my life beyond this college. Fervent B-school entrance prep, laced by occasional studying of Engg subjects (the occasions being the Internals and Semesters!). An enjoyable Model UN Conference at VIT with Bala & Sathya provided a respite from studies and made me richer by Rs.1000 :) 
An incredible first-shot placement success. Several lessons, learnt on the personal front, added to my mental maturity. 
Jobless Project-work sessions. Realization that even without flexing a single muscle for your project, you may gain the maximum score of 9/10 in the Project Review (err.. I'm not sure if this has yet been officially renamed as "Fingerprint-Attendance Review" in honour of the component that counts). You may have broken your leg in an accident, you may have attended interviews or you may have just casually bunked college. Everything seems to be the same here. Absence is absence. Legitimate and Illegitimate reasons don't appear distinctive.
And finally... The Nearing End! 
Am I nostalgic? Will I miss this place? 
The answer happens to be a loud "No!"
There were good moments; so also were bad, worse and even worst moments here. Each of those has contributed to my evolution in the past four years. For these, I thank you, PSG Tech.

An Insomniac's Rant

I may not know the Theory of Relativity perfectly. But, definitely, Time is Relative! 

One week before an interview seems so short a span, while the same week before a result seems endless.

Demons on Tar

"Road fear and Exam fear are the two fears I've never had and will never have" - so said a 16 year old Shilpa who was studious and raced town buses on her BSA Ladybird! 

I have strongly stood by my statement till date, well, literally till date!

This very evening, a motorbike screeching past, too close to the right of my vehicle and a not-so-pleasant experience of being sandwiched between a carefree push-cart vendor and a car whizzing along, left me with something like an electric shock in my heart.  Is it sane to call yourself fearless of a blind demon slashing away in all possible directions? 

Possibly, the speeding car that rammed my vehicle's front panel and left my circulation system short of a few hundred millilitres of blood (or whatever quantity is sufficient to soak a sandal and drip over), has made me more conscious and cautious on the road. 

My two-week bus travel post the accident made something of an early bird out of me and on resuming my two-wheeler ride to college, I found that it was actually possible for me to start earlier than (the usual) 8.30 a.m. to reach the 10 km-away college before 8.50 a.m.! Travelling in a relaxed mood, I have been able to observe my fellow road-commuters. A surmise that applies to a majority of them is this- An Absolute lack of a sense of coexistence! Eight out of ten people seem to possess a book of traffic rules that reads:

• Your own job is the most important! Get to it as quickly as possible; never bother about anything else.  
• You may start as late as you please; but ensure that you always reach your destination on time!
• You don't have to slow down at cuts or U-turns; the  moron driving straight ahead with no clue as to your sudden arrival in front of him shall pay for his ignorance.
• Jump the red signals; the recently installed cameras near traffic lights are actually for screening people for bike-stunt ads.
• The noble pedestrian has all rights to cross the road with no regard to the vehicles coming ahead; the road, after all, was built using his tax money!
• "Keep Speeding" is the mantra; "Keep Left" is outdated.
• Horns that sound like a pack of wolves' howling are the in-things.
• You may remove the silencer of your motorbikes, to draw attention to your sleek assembled bikes and your cool riding stunts.
• Helmets are for sissies who prefer safety (haha! what danger can ever befall a hero?!) and don't mind hair loss!! 
• You may even start your bike without a key (well, some new technology will crop up) but never ever start it without both your ears plugged to your I-Pod or Cellphone with its media-player belting out your favourite songs!  

There are definitely more of these and might be observed by yours truly in the days to come.

I admit that I used to be a very fast driver pre-feb 18,2011. But now my eyes are wide open to the road around me. I'd always believed that if I ever met with an accident on the road, it would be by my mistake. Alas! I was shown that there was atleast one guy who was a more careless driver than me. 

Does everyone need to pass through such an ordeal before he/she realizes what I have realized?!

Fear, may be uncalled for; Awareness, most definitely, is needed!

The Sine Curve called Life

Life is such an amazing thing! It has put me through a vast gamut of emotions in the past one week.

The week last started with a visit to the lab where we do our project, with the least of hopes, for we had been going in circles, trying to resolve a recurring and seemingly incorrigible error. We had no hopes of wrapping up the project and were sad that we may have to disappoint the most wonderful project guide one may get. But wonder of wonders! A slight change to enhance the compatibility between certain sampling rates and there we were with our almost accurately working code. We later learnt that a 100% accuracy can never be obtained in practice! :D 

Then came the trip to Delhi. I was a little tensed and the usual thrill of visiting a city for the first time was somewhat missing. The vast Delhi University campus left me in total awe! The Group Discussion and Extempore (where I was lucky to speak on Hogwarts!!) processes went decently well. The Interview's gruelling last part left me apprehensive and I returned, with no big hopes. 

On return, a news of a certain unjust occurrence reached my ears. Though I knew the right way to handle it, I was also aware that I was not mature enough to accept injustice with nonchalance. The declaration of the final admit list of a B school (whose written test I had failed to clear by a whisker) added to my woes and I felt that I was at the very rock bottom, then. No words of consolation or advices of "ignore-it-it-doesn't-matter" could penetrate my thick skull. 

The next day dawned and I was sure that the soon-to-be-declared results of my Delhi trip would be negative. After all, I had run out of luck long back, in my opinion. But I was ready to face anything. Talking to a respectable person who gave me neither consolation nor advice but just hard facts from her life, made me bold enough. 

The dreaded results came in due time. Opening the pdf, I found the names of some famous Puys and felt happy for them. Suddenly, just beneath the name of one of the most respected people in Pagalguy, I found my name and roll number!! I couldn't believe it. I reopened and refreshed the pdf some ten times and took out my admit card to verify my roll no.

I am getting to do an MBA this year!!!  

Well, the sine curve of life has started moving upwards for me. I am well aware of the fact that it will start falling again, sooner or later, but I am prepared for it :)          

The Case of The Missing Blogger

'The Social Network' won Three Oscars today. But its real victory has been on a much larger scale, over this very Blogosphere. 

I joined Facebook around the end of May 2010, basically to get in touch with my old schoolmates and relatives who live far away. But it turned out to be nothing but a pointless chat platform, with most of the people commenting on your statuses and photos being the ones you actually interact with daily! 

The popularity of these social networking sites is mainly attributed to the human mindset. We tend to get bored, looking at long pages of text which will require more time than what our average attention span lasts for. A mere :) or :( on your wall will attract a good number of likes and appropriate comments (albeit in inappropriate cool or rather kewl lingo). 

Sharing photos of everything from your latest lunch with friends in a nearby hotel to a random bee on a flower in your garden, eagerly pressing the F5 button for comments and likes and visiting friends' profiles for updates- can easily be a very popular pastime today. 

Facebook also has other apps. Farmville and Mafia Wars provide gaming attractions while you can create/like any number of pages, describing anything from a popular personality to an institution at the corner of your street. 

Sharing videos, writing notes (by far, the closest to blogs) and getting to send your friends virtual gifts on their birthdays and anniversaries.. Mark Zuckerberg has created (even if not conceptualized) a revolution of sorts in the human interest domain.

Each creation has an equal and opposite destruction. The victim of the latter is the free flow of thought that leads to enjoyable prose in blogs. My blog has been a victim, yes. And I have been distracted and diverted by fb. 

Still, thanking the rusted iron gates of my mind for not being permeable to Twitter usage and subscription to further social networking sites, I shall end on a hopeful note that I shall be back on Blogger sooner rather than later ;)  

A Root Canal operation needed..

India is not new to scams. Power and money have an anti-gravitational tendency- they get to people's heads easily. But the recent spate of exposed corruptions is nothing short of an avalanche of stinking reality, breaking through this bubble of democratic freedom that we live in.

While the general feeling that prevails these days is frustration at all these, I'd rather feel happy that issues previously in the dark have come to the fore now. The more the scams unearthed, the better.Fear has been instilled in corrupt minds.
You can be dethroned in a jiffy even if you head Asia's largest integrated aluminium production firm. Black money in your pocket will reach out to stain your white collars, even if you had the highest judicial contacts or if you felt the landscape in Switzerland would beautifully camouflage it. Flout rules and just norms, favour your cronies in handing out spectrum or contracts for games or apartments (which are non-Eco-friendly by the way), and your next stop would be at the headquarters of the CBI (which is learning to stop being a ruling-party's-investigator). If you were a hypocrite sitting at the vigilance headquarters, you shall soon be exposed. You will be fined five years from now, if you currently manipulate stocks during IPOs. But if you are an Italian gun-deal middleman with compatriots who ghost-rule the country, you are safe at least for the time being.   
The backbone that supports the whole of the previous paragraph is the fourth estate, the common man's informer, the supposed-to-be-honest Press. But our Great Indian Democracy has proved its capability of managing to corrupt even this area, resulting in the "Paid News scandal" which was ironically aired by none other than the Press. Freedom is always prone to be misused. A journalist's job is to take the truth- to the people- as it is. To this extent, he has the freedom of speech and expression. Learning about the misuse of these, by those pursuing the only profession I have passionately adored, is painful.
However, we, as a nation, seem to have woken up to address the root cause of all troubles- the  now-so-familiar word "Corruption", in every domain. But how do we tackle this issue? We cannot be corruption-free tomorrow or the day-after. It is a deep-rooted evil. Let us start from the grassroots level. Mere Moral Science lessons don't help a bit. A sense of pride in being honest, a true feeling of integrity in upholding one's ethics and values sans yielding under any circumstance, the joy that results from giving one's best to one's job- all these will need to be instilled strongly.
Okay, I do sound like an idealist. But this is just the beginning of what is required to overcome the problems faced today. If these are unrealistic, then the calls to clean up the blotched democracy are, sadly, in vain.