Today, we screwed up our C&S presentation BIG TIME. I was expecting this to happen but the scale of the screw-up was breathtaking!! I loved this course and I love the Prof. In fact, despite knowing I would get bad grades, I bid for Advanced Corporate Strategy (now renamed Strategy & the Organisation) for Term 4. Well, I dont want to go into details of why the screw-up happened. We could have tided over the bad PPT if we had done well at the Q&A. But we all just kept contradicting each other and made utter fools of ourselves.
I havent felt this bad since I gave up completely on acads after Term 1. I remember being in tears after a very bad ManComm presentation in Term 1. I often got down and depressed when marks came out in Term 1. And then Term 2, I got way too caught up in personal problems to really care.....for the first time in my life, acads became completely insignificant. And then when Term 3 started, I decided id give it a good shot but my priorities in life had changed.....drastically.
I had always been a good student right from school. Throughout, I studied only at the very last minute and still managed good grades. The only time I prepared for an exam throughout the teaching period was when I gave CAT. Otherwise, I have always been the kind who sits in the last minute and mugs. There are people like that who do well in exams because they listen in class. I never ever ever listen in class. I daydream...and at IIMB, I sleep. Yet I managed to do well in acads in school and college because even if I sat a day before the exam, Id study like crazy.....12 hours a day types. And for the rest of the year, i would have fun.
So what changed in IIMB? Is that I could not cope with the competition? Maybe...quite likely. Still, I could have done better than I am doing now. I think in the 1st term, the quant orientation psched me out completely.....moreover, I completely lost focus on acads.....there was club work, there was 24/7 free internet, there was hostel life and new friends, long phone conversations and chats with old friends, an active extra curricular circuit on campus...it was like a whole new world opened to me and I was so involved in exploring it that acads, though they remained important, were not treated with the focus I had.
Then Term 2 came with resolutions to do much better. But I was dealing with the one and only problem in my life at that time.....there was a time when I truly and seriously considered leaving the insti because I was so unhappy. I was worried about more important things than grades.....I simply didnt care about grades.....I cried myself to sleep every single night.....one doesnt think about grades when one is in a situation like that. Now, armed with the weapon of retrospection, I can say that I could have avoided it so easily. I am largely to blame for allowing it to reach the stage it did. Im also at fault for making it larger and more unsolvable than it was. If I had dealt with it calmly and coolly, or taken certain steps quicker, things wouldnt have reached the stage they did. And now.....yes, it is a BIG lesson and one im not ever going to forget.....but then, the incident hasnt left any permanent scar on my mind!!
When I was coming back for Term 3, I wondered if I was going to become grade oriented this term. I knew I should be. But then, I had changed. In school, I was extremely ambitious and worked because of the competitive spirit...I didnt like too many people doing better than me, especially my friends!! And in 12th and college, it was because my grades would affect my future...college admission depending on 12th marks and college marks affecting my chances of admission into a top B-School. And so I had ambition, a goal...and studying was a means of achieving it. So I studied since I had motivation. I do not believe in studying for the sake of studying.....ridiculous!!!
But now, I dont really see the purpose of great grades. I dont have that driving ambition anymore. It has been replaced by a sense of satisfaction that has made me extremely laidback. Im in IIMB now. I've gotten this far. I dont give a damn about high-paying, high-flying jobs. If by some grave error, some I-Bank or Consultancy offered me a job, im not going to take it (I admit the salary is extremely tempting but the work hours....no way!!!). All I want is a simple straight forward job in an NGO or in the HR department of a small firm. I'll be quite happy with a salary of 35k in hand, which Im sure to get here anyway, whatever be my grade.
So studying wasnt going to serve any purpose anymore. Somewhere along the line I had changed from an ambitious individual to a very laidback one who was happy to just stand and stare as the world went along. Sure I want to travel all over the world and I will. I want to write a book...someday. I want to study history or politics or english literature at Oxford/Cambirdge. I want to be a Ph.D. I want to clear the civils and go into the IFS (foreign, not forest). I want to become a politician.....a corrupt one. I want to adopt 2 kids. I wanna live in a small city by the seaside.....yeah, Vizag. Other than the travelling and adoption parts which Im sure I will do, I strongly doubt any of the others will happen. Oh yes, I will definitely write a book but again, I doubt it will ever be published. But I dont mind if any of these dont happen either. There is nothing wrong in dreaming, as long as you dont have a clause that those dreams should become a reality. Im a dreamer and an optimist.....a Pollyanna.....but even I admit that its not reasonable to expect all your dreams to come true. But thats no reason for me to stop dreaming, is it?
