My Mind’s Extramarital Affair…

“Hi dude! Kahan ja raha hai? Any assignment due tomorrow?” I asked one of my batchmates at 2000 hrs last night. He replied, “Nahi yaar, going for case-prep.” The placement week is not too far and everyone at ISB is busy preparing for interviews.

Almost all the students here formed their groups for interview preparation in November itself and since then, have been preparing for case-based interviews (in which you are given a business problem and you are required to solve it), personal interviews (in which you are asked behavioral questions) and technical interviews (mainly for areas like finance). The fact that these guys here are so sincere and hardworking makes me wonder whether ISB did the right thing by letting me in.

If you are an ISB aspirant or an ISB new admit and reading the above paragraphs made water vapor condense on your forehead, just relax…ISB is not full of these guys who slog it out day and night just to crack an interview in which you are asked a simple case. There are also a FEW studs ;) who never formed a group and are pretty cool at a time when more than 95% of the junta here is slogging.

I am one of those “groupless” people at the moment (though I am not a stud). I did a few cases in different groups but dropped out very soon, after I realized that cases are not that difficult to crack; you just have to be logical and need to have good reasons for your assumptions and recommendations. Moreover, I am bored of the set procedures that we are supposed to follow in the case-interview (and I do not think this boredom is because of jaundice that I am suffering from). If I prepare more, by the time my actual interview day arrives, I will be bored of solving cases which would undoubtedly show on my face during the interview. I do not think cases require the kind of preparation these guys are putting in. I will not call there preparation an ideal preparation. They are working like school kids and are probably memorizing the cases by heart.

I normally remain cool but when I see these people preparing so hard, I cannot resist asking myself, “Should I become like them and start slogging like they are, or should I believe in my capabilities and be what I have always been – abhishek ‘cool’ chandra???”

May be they are not wrong and do not deserve the criticisms I am bestowing upon them. May be I have a different way of working that suits only me. I know it won’t be long before I have these hypotheses verified. But until then, my mind that is married to “my aims” will have a tough time sleeping with “the above questions”…And I can’t help but be a mute spectator to my mind’s extramarital affair…


Note: Guys, I promise to increase my frequency of writing blogs but it will be after the placement week. Though I am not working too hard and stressing myself, I think I should at least pretend to ;) !!!]