Updates from Term-3 at B- School

One of the things B school education prepares you is for handling Murphy’s law at any point of time. I’ve experienced it twice at B school and sometimes going for a certain class seems like Timbuktoo playing Australia and playing to survive and extend the game. There are so many activities apart from class room education like assignments, pre reading sessions, class participation, committee work, personal development and ....a plethora of things. Now the trick and challenge is to spare your energy for the best, but how can other activities be regarded inferior? There is also the possibility of laying it too thin and seeming mediocre across the activities. Its like wearing the war paint and ready to strike on all occaissons, which seems easy on a blog to type, but so far has seemed difficult to follow. Amidst all this work , some favourite hobbies tend to be sacrificed and all off a sudden there is no back up to cushion on that stress that seems to gaining day by day. B school life is never about pick and choose your best. Its about a defining experience in knowing how well you fare across all the things and then picking and honing your best, even as you digest the fact that you are not cut out for certain things or certain types of behaviour.

One slack activity in a session and people start to judge you and evaluate you, and a certain recognition sticks on after a term or 2 for the better or worse. To help you further Murphy’s law conspires against you to project you in a light that you just didn’t want to see yourself in. Now when you are all at sea with the activities, you obviously seek respite, and I mean immediate respite to start feeling good. What do you to feel good, when the group around you is making hay while you bask in the search of feeling good? The group is feverishly working on the next assignment, while you still are seeking for that one activity that would help you get into an inflated state of enjoyment. You seem to have done something , that you haven’t done in years like, call a friend or read a funny novel or see back to back movies, only to come back and realise that you spent too much time over relaxing while the world at B school has progressed by pages and concepts. You stare at your face in the mirror, wondering what’s hit you....and why do you have so much of a backlog...and as you wonder you realise that you have been wondering for 6 hours as its now 5 30 am, and the first thing you notice is that the guys who were studying at a feverish pace last night, have just finished studying and retiring to bed , even as you hazily watch them.

Since competition is fierce in various spheres, no love is lost between folks and this only seems to bring out a certain cut throatedness in handling situations or shows insouciance in its various forms. B school education will bring out a burning fire in your inner gut, when you see that if you put 100% commitment and the other guy puts 20% commitment, sometimes your work tends to get overshadowed by the other and in some situations, because of the other insouciant partner, you tend to get penalised.

B school life is about a 100 threads connecting various persons with different levels of dependency and when each one pulls the rope without a synergetic team focus, chaos reigns and each person would want that much of the rope that would save his day. Competition becomes intense and it translates to a battle in the mind to win the required component. This is where one sees secretive alliances and survival strategies in its own small way that builds the faculty of the B schooler preparing him for the onerous challenges in the corporate environment.
B school life is all about 2 things, namely accepting the fact that failures will come, and secondly to think on your feet, to be mentally agile and active in all periods. It doesn’t matter if you have been knocked down, but you need to realise that even worse knocks are in store and proceed to get up and run to knock the next person. Losing, if you are used to it, can be the most refreshing experience at B school life, as one needs to see the flip side of life to accommodate it in one’s value system. Another thing that comes to mind along these lines is the need to try out various things at B school, so that you know for sure what are your strengths and weaknesses.

I have so far made many mistakes and been knocked out several times, but when I reflect back, I realise that the knocks were taken because I was adamant about not protecting myself against an impending onslaught. After the knocks, I was too scared to get up and was slowly pushing myself against the ground aimlessly, but given that the traffic is high, one risks the ignominy of getting run over and the whole objective of coming here was to run the race and complete it rather than vying for the 1st or 2nd position. Each race runner has a special skill and will find his band of admirers from the corporate world. Its all about being positive and starting to run with a smile all over again, and invest in hope, as this is the only thing that can give Murphy’s law and bad luck a run for its money.

I have started running.... More updates as I keep running over the course of 8 terms.