Loosen Up!

Midnight binges of finance books and discussions on derivatives, seem to dominate one set of classrooms, while the other class rooms have smaller group giving the last minute touches for the assignments in ERP, while the HR students seem to be involved in some activity, as the class room floor is strewn with straws and origami designs. It seems like a battlefield that is active at all times, except between 6 am and 7 am, when silence prevails as students use this time to head back to the rooms and get some rest. The last few days have been tense, running from one assignment to the other, burning the midnight oil for the finishing touches to the CGPA's before the placement season starts. Hunger and sleep seem to be my main issues, as too many cases and promises stack up. I feel like a over worked battery that has lost the enjoyment in the MBA program.

I just rewound life over the past 3 years . I was dyslexic to coding at Infy, and after 14 months of confidence taking a beating, I decided to quit Infy and join a job that allowed me to breathe. Sulekha seemed the right panacea, but at as time wore on, the enjoyment in the job was slowly getting lesser, due to some politics played by some higher mandarins of power. I battled on challenging myself parallely with CAT and GMAT preparation and finally reached a stage when I again reached a stage where I wanted to breathe again. CAT and GMAT didnt go as well as I wanted it.

I got a new lease of life with an employment in Delhi, but that was shortlived as the Great Lakes MBA call came along after the Otto Beishem admit fell through due to visa delays in a student schengen visa. April to January, I have run this race and discovered some great friends, some free loaders, some brainy nuts and in the process have observed like a passenger observes for hours at a station, with trains one by one passing him, to the extent that he doesnt even remember which train passes, but just remembers that the chillness of the air, when the train passed was an experience to cherish.

Now Cases and assignments dont really get me started all up. I have taken in too many things and am just waiting for a break, but as soon as I get a one day break, the feeling of guilt breakes through, as some case/assignment would lie staring at me. Nor have I got peace nor have the assignments got my attention fully.

There is a sense of tension in the air, as the mind is mentally prepared to adjust to the workload that the excel file instructs to complete, and sometimes a sense of resignation too. For the past 2 days, I had taken some long walks around the campus area into saidapet, with the music on, and that seemed to have cooled my frayed nerves. Frankly that's the best part of the 24 hours that I look forward to thinking about a make believe world, with the songs buzzing in the ear, as I walk along.... thinking about what I want to do about my life.

Life poses many questions with many unfinished ambitions and desires, all of which takes a back seat, during the mad-helter-skelter life at B school. Am I working more hard to get more of this in the years to come? Sometimes when I ask myself this question, I go numb, as the more I work at things that dont exactly give me time to breathe, I go claustrophobic and the small break becomes the whole object of reward for the work, which ultimately affects the work and the break. I spend the whole day wondering why some crazy bunch of CEO's took some path breaking decisions, and suggest ways to break the problem, by some obscure imaginative reasoning, but when the same applies to decisions in my life I just freeze.

What decisions you may ask? Its like a fight between ego, fame, ambitions and the risk factors and the monetary factors. Newer factors get added....to add to the confusion, when life presents with you with too many options. Strange isnt it? You come to the MBA program to have more options and when you have more options in life, it leads to even more chaos when it comes to choosing. I anyway take decisions based on gut feel in the end, after worrying days over it, so I guess nothing new this time around.

Just feel better penning my frustrations. I guess all this would be laughed at when I take a look at this post 2 years later. Thats life... you keep progressing from one state to another, but the catch is that the problems increase in magnitude too :-). So that pretty much means I have to loosen up for the final leg of this 1 year race. I am 75% complete with the MBA....