It’s not about the sleep anymore!
- An IITian shares his first two weeks of experience at the campus
Prologue: Ha ha. Doesn’t the tagline look like the ones in national best sellers?
Do IIT’s offer MBA? Not again I thought. To how many more of my relatives and friends should I be repeating the same slogan again? Should I be happy that most of them knew the college where I am going to pursue my MBA or sad that they don’t know IIT’s offer MBA? Hundreds of thoughts darted through my head before joining IIT Delhi. No, hundred is not an exaggeration. Though I didn’t count I am sure the count would have exceeded.
I have lot of nightmare points in my list about joining IIT Delhi. But to be optimistic, I mostly pushed them to some corner of my brain. I am going to be part of an institute which is world famous for its technical potential and a part of an institute, about which lots of novels and movies are made. Thanks to Chetan Bagat, Amir Khan and Tushar Raheja, I do know about DISCO and more such stuff before joining here.
Sometimes my thoughts will not listen to me and pop out the nightmare points, time and again…Hmmm No, it doesn’t listen to me most of the time. First point on the list is sleepless nights. This is not about IIT Delhi, this is about pursuing MBA itself. When some of my MBA friends told that they sleep 4 hours a day, I thought they must be kidding. I didn’t know at that time that there will be lot of ankurs, sarthaks, aneeshs and sanjeevs in all b-schools awaiting to open the gates of whatever you may call in the name of induction program and they will ensure that you burn your midnight oil till it gets drained.
First nine days of unimaginable happiness. For those, who are still blinking like the tube light in my room, ofcourse I am sarcastic here. One day I wanted to shout ‘Happy like Hell! Happy like Hell!’. The reason being I went to bed at 2 am in the morning. As a punishment, I missed by laptop charger and had to pay a hefty price is a separate sad story.
Assignments knock your door after ghosts go to sleep and you have to submit it well before the roosters wake up. Reading room is as busy as an opening show of a rajni movie all through the night. Even with little work, I can be a topper, I thought. Come on, Vadivel… This is not Thanjavur… Toppers from all over the nation have clogged here. How much ever you slog there will be half the number of class who do it better than you.
There was a model interview on the last but one day of the induction. In feedback, seniors told interview went very well. I could see angels flying along with me amongst the clouds. After a pause seniors continued ‘if we had come for a software engineer interview’. Back to ground again. Lack of reading Hindu or bitter pills as I call them, began to show. How many times had I ignored my dad’s friendly advice to read Hindu. Actually I didn’t ignore it completely. I did read the headlines of sports page. Today ET has to be eaten and digested. What should be done after that? Lot of names and numbers would bemuse you and make you score an egg in the daily ET Test.
People here have forgotten the shape of television. My mom said someone has been eliminated in the reality show ‘Super singer’. Now I remember television existed in my life few weeks back. I pity my roomie. Big follower of rock music has got one who doesn’t know abc of that genre of music as his roomie. Poor guy, he was into music more than 12 hours a day it seems. He brought his guitar, amplifiers, woofers and lot more. Now all of them are full of dust. He has his share of fun by pulling my legs.
Why do we have potatoes 3 times a day and 7 day a week? I asked my friend. He curtly replied ‘Welcome to North India’. When am I going to have the kothu parotta, pongal, idiyappam and lot more of those dishes. But having said that Mess here offers nutritious food which is good for health. So not much concerns in this part.
Street Selling, Market Survey, Poster Designing, Business write up – tried my hands in lot of new things. Of course I was forced to. But I am not bad. I am quite happy with my works so far though it has to scale its height many folds to compete with my peers. How much time had I wasted in learning Hindi before coming here? I could have chilled out a bit more rather than going through those books. Believe me ‘kurchi per baitiye’, ‘ jameen per math baitiye’ stuff don’t work at all. Learn it by just listening others.
My facebook status tells ‘Vadivel lives in Delhi’. I seriously doubt. I have never crossed the campus gates so far. I should change it to ‘Vadivel Lives in IIT’
I want to talk to my close friends. But no time. I heard someone saying only those who cannot manage time will say that there is no time. May be he should be asked to study an MBA. I am feeling sleepy. Let me not bore you and me anymore.
Oh… I thought of jotting down the events and nightmares point wise. But I couldn’t find anything more than the first point above. I was lost somewhere in the middle. Didn’t I tell you my thoughts won’t listen to me…
Now I am going to my office without id card, playing with the little kid outside my home… snap...oh sorry.. I am already in my dreams… good night…
Epilogue: Thanks to seniors for giving assignments in new forms like writing a blog J. Thanks to Pranav for suggesting the title. I am really bad at it. Miss you venkat ramakrishnan, who usually does the proofreading and editing of my articles. So this article comes without editing. Forgive me if there are errors.
