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So I was thinking today… I really feel like writing! When did I stop blogging? Its been so long and I miss it!

And I checked up on my old TG blog, gosh I’d ended up on such a sour note. MBA Rejection and all. So some updates since that:

* I never did manage to get through any college for an MBA this season. Fine, I got calls from two reputed institutes which find themselves in most of the top 20 b-skool rankings or so in India. But I think I left my heart somewhere else, somewhere with the eye-aye-yems and the excel-arise, so I made a couple of impulsive decisions and skipped those interviews. I just couldn’t get myself to go for them! No idea whether it was a good decision or not.

* I did realise one dream of mine. Of studying at an IIM. In particular, IIM-B. How??? Well, there was a particular short term course they had organised this summer and I was fortunate enough to get accepted for it!  The best few weeks of my life :) I’ m still reeling… It was almost a dream. And I am a part of the IIM Bangalore alumni network now. Woohoo!

* I’ve been studying a bit for the GMAT. I feel that I’ve got a good chance there,  try for the ISB perhaps this year. Not sure how valuable my work-ex is, but I think the drive is there and that’s what matters right :) Also reconsidering my decision of not writing CAT any more. I might just give the feline another chance! Though to tell the truth, I’ve lost faith in the system. Anyway that’s my old pent up frustration speaking. Times are changin’ and we gotta move on :) And hope that everything happens for the best.

* I might be looking at an unemployed version of myself soon! Watch out for more updates in the near future ;)

I’ll end this post with one of the comments from my previous post. From TG Sir himself.

Especially since it made me think. And you should too.

“You know, years later when you look back at your life you would realize how your choices have resulted in the life that you are leading. Whether you become a housewife, or a software programer in a small cubicle in an office, or a manager leading a team, or an entrepreneur running a company, it will all depend on you(…) It is only you who has to face your own life.”

Choices. choices. And the consequences…

I know this post is long due but I just could not get myself to blog after the spate of disappointments and failures. To recap the past 2 months:

FMS: Not shortlisted(a big big disappointment)

IIFT: Not shortlisted(cleared all the individual cut-offs, missed the overall by 0.2)

SNAP, JMET, NMAT, MH-CET, GREAT etc. etc. : I didn’t give these exams. For reasons unknown to me as well.

And then yesterday happened. Just when I had come back to my senses slightly. Just when I had forgotten about exams, results and all that jazz. Just when I was limping back to my oh-so-ordinary life.

An innocuous buzz on my cell phone.

“CAT 2010 Results have been announced. Please check the site http://www.catiim.in for more details.”

And here I was, with my friends, in a different city, on a small boat, in the middle of some lake, with no possible way to check the damn result. Frustration at its best.

What followed was two futile hours of trying to connect to the site through GPRS on my cell phone. And then an exchange of messages with my brother. And finally a result. The most disappointing one in my life.

I still don’t feel I can talk about it. My 3rd attempt at CAT. With the first two attempts resulting in 97, 98ish percentiles. It had to be better this time, right? Wrong. I got an overall result in the early 90s. Which subsequently shattered all my hopes of ever being getting my MBA degree from the IIMs or a couple of other top-ranked colleges like MDI, S.P. Jain etc.

Whenever I face such disappointments, I always go into this introspection mode and wonder, “What did I do wrong? When? What decision did I take in life that possibly got me to this phase where I’m demotivated, discouraged, disappointed, depressed, and disillusioned?”

As the quote goes, “We are our choices”.  I think its time for me to rethink the ones I’ve made till now. I think that will take quite some time for me to do.

I’d like to say ‘Thanks’ to all my TG Town friends, those who’ve commented on my previous posts and encouraged me in their own special ways. Signing off for a long, long time…

So, my last post was about exams. And I conveniently forgot that along with exams comes another fearful thing, infact something which is even more deadly than the actual exam. RESULTS.

And so, after working hard for 6 months and trying to balance a horribly unsatisfying job and a lonely life devoid of any social interactions in a suburb of Bangalore thinking that it would do me a lot of good in avoiding distractions and sacrificing my social life in order to do better in these MBA entrance tests, I had a lot of expectations from myself. But unfortunately some things aren’t meant to be. I checked my XAT result today and I scored a dismal 96 percentile. What makes it worse is my score in the Verbal Ability section(unmentionable, I think). And what makes it worsest(With such a bad VA performance, I NEED to use wrong grammar so that I can justify the score!) is that I haven’t applied to any other MBA college using my XLRI score. So even if you were thinking “OK, 96 percentile isn’t that bad a score!”, I can’t do much with it now.After two years of giving MBA Entrance exams and scoring 96-97-98 percentiles and just-missing the elite colleges, I should’ve just learnt not to be so choosy this time around. Stupid me.

Somehow I was really confident about this exam and everyone around kept assuring me that I would make it to XLRI(it was my dream college; and so it shall remain). And this result shatters me. I’ve been in a state of nervous breakdown for the past 3 hours(a lonely life devoid of any social interactions in a suburb of Bangalore doesn’t really help in such times). I have no idea what to do now(I’d initially planned to put in my resignation letter as soon as the XAT results came out. Ah, overconfidence!). I need advice; but I don’t know who to ask and what. Afterall they say, one is the master of one’s own fate. If only…

Last Sunday, I gave the last of the MBA Entrance Tests(FMS, for those who’re familiar!) for this season. It went pretty OK, more so since I absolutely lurrrve papers which have lots of small easy questions to solve as compared to the few really tough questions which you have to break your head over(read CAT). And so, on 9th January 2010, at precisely 4:02 PM, I fell prey to something called the Exams-over-now-what syndrome. Yess. Continue reading

I HATE exams… But then who doesn’t? :-)

This time though, I’ve really lost it.

I’m sick and tired of giving MBA Entrance exams, weekend after weekend, year after tear, each time thinking I’ll do much better than the last, each time missing the dreaded cutoffs by a mere half or one percentile.

I’m sick and tired of writing mock MBA entrance tests on the remaining weekends of the year, losing that one precious day each time, when instead I could have helped out someone, made another person smile, done something useful, anything.

I’m sick and tired of this system, the education system(will not launch into a diatribe on this, watch 3 Idiots for that!), my office work culture everything, blah! I waste hours everyday writing pieces of code which will surely be obsolete a year down the line. Yeah I know, “We’re getting paid to do this”. But it’s all a sham.

Honestly I’m lost, I’m confused and I’ve no idea what to do. I hate to say I’m waiting for something good, something new to happen in my life, ’cause all that’s in my hands, but somehow I still choose to wait and watch.

Anyway, I think I’ll be taking a hiatus from the online world for a while till I’m done with the exams. Do send me your best wishes :-)

Happy New Year 2010 everyone!! :-)