Its been few days since i posted my last entry. I wasn’t too busy but i surely am quite lazy. Life’s been such a roller coaster rides with so many highs to be fascinated about and so many lows to be thought about. Childhood dreams phased out to make way for your college dreams and then they too get phased out to give space to your survival needs. Let me not just survive but live.Let me go back recollecting my life stories all over again because i am starting to like it.
2003: My folks were quite happy that i am only person who used to read in my whole family. Though we never had a collection of books to boast about but i managed to read every now on then just because i love reading. Throughout my college life i was acquainted with so many different types of people which is quite usual for most people. Wish i could be in contact with half of them now. Four years after college seems to be an eternity already. My life was going pretty good with college in 1 hand and social life in another. Never really thought a whole lot about life after college. I joined Alliance Francaise de Bangalore in my third year not because of the love of the French language but the sheer numbers of female folks thriving in that campus. But slowly i started falling for the language and the bug is still biting me even though i havent made much progress in 5 years. This year was also the time when the MBA bug hit me. Most people in the university were gearing themselves for the all important CAT. In India competitive exams are like festivals. Whether you like it or not you end up celebrating it in style. Every major public exams are merely filled due to the tremendous peer effect. I wonder how much of time is wasted due to bad career choices. Wish we had a much more comprehensive career counseling sessions in college. It would have surely helped a lot of people because most students end up in the wrong career due to lack of knowledge.
Somewhere i read that about 70 percent of the B school students in our country comprises of engineers. This numbers show a very clear trend. Either 70 percent of the graduates in India are engineers or most engineers want to be management students. If you want to be a MBA why join an engineering college and waste 4 years of your life. And most MBA students are still freshers which doesn’t serve the very purpose of management education. Throughout 5 years of reading about why MBA, where MBA, when MBA i am a big proponent of having substantial amount of experience before you decide what you want to do in life. Changing jobs in the first few years of life should be very much encouraged in order to find the right interest.
2004: This was indeed the big year in my life. Final semester of our college had only 1 subject so that you can devote most of your time to the final year projects. we scouted almost half of bangalore in search of a suitable internship position but to our utter dismay we found that the only way to land up with an internship position is to have real contacts which our group really never had. Me and SKR did a great job in wandering about IISc campus and took all the courage in meeting few interesting professors about our desire to work with them for their projects. We were very fascinated with the field of Micro Electro Mechanical systems and we did work on accelerometers for two months but the time was really short enough to do anything worthwhile for our final project. So we ended up buying the project from an overnight project vendor whose business thrived on supplying projects to students in need like us and charge a ransom for some stupid codes and stepper motors and microprocessors. I graduated with 71 percentile marks in June 2004 but without a job in hand. The entire final year was spent in the career cell whose only function was to accommodate companies for recruitment dates. I was initially selected by a refrigeration company but i refused to work with them for their low compensation. But after that i couldn’t clear any other companies interview process. Left college with a heavy heart and attended a walk in interview for a leading call center company with no idea what kind of work it would be. The desire to be self sufficient at the age of 22 was very strong. I took up at that job with a pay much lesser than the refrigeration company. We were taught about the effect of articulation and intonations on your pronunciations. English language was relearnt in the first month. Met lots of interesting friends in the company. Drank little Vodka in the terrace during our crazy night watchman shifts. Got packed in a Tata Sumo and were parceled everyday like trash cans but still survived the work which requires you to be very tough and agile all throughout. Didn’t last long in that company and finally quit that firm in the end of December without a job in hand. Life’s suddenly getting a weird turn with three jobs in major software companies. I still don’t understand why software firms hire grads from Mechanical, Civil, Chemical and Electrical to handle their typical code writing and testing processes. Decided not to join because i was considering this manufacturing company in the other hand by first week of Jan 2005.
Goa looks as lazy as me
2005: Joined two more companies in the last two months and decided to leave them by the end of 1st day and 2nd day respectively. I guess they were not meant for me. I took a big break in Goa with my friends. I borrowed money from the bank to go for a vacation since i was too ashamed to ask money from my folks all over again. Got the offer with this company and started working with them as a Graduate Engineer Trainee since March. Well these three years in this firm has seriously been a very damp ride. Didn’t do a whole lot of things which i aspired to do all throughout my life and the I saw the flame of desire was slowly getting extinguished. Mechanical engineering teaches you that every flow needs a driving force. For hydraulic flow it can be pressure and similarly for Success you need passion. Once you get drained out of passion you are very unlikely to succeed. I am involved with the engineering of products which are manufactured in North America so it was quite likely that i would develop the global buzzword of collaboration skills which are needed to deliver these kind of projects. All businesses use a lot of jargon which they can easily live without. The company headquarters in US call us a LCC ( Low Cost Country ) resources and actually treat us like second class citizens when it comes to work. Anything which an engineer in US doesn’t want to do they are sent to India. The product knowledge required to do any decent amount of work can only be acquired once you work on the product first hand like getting involved with the prototyping and testing. I was sent to the US parent location for an year and i worked with one of the engineers out there for an attachment for skid steer loaders.
2006: That project turned out to be very sour and was finally annulled. The team in US was the best i ever had in my entire life. Ever cordial and ever supporting. I was asked to return back to India and my performance scale showed a low performance because of this fiasco and by the end of two years i have the lowest salary in the company and now i am shifted to a different division.
2007: I started developing my image from scratch again and i got a lot of support from my company vice president who became my drinking buddy in the later days. I was about to leave the company when i was scouted like a dog but he advised to me stay back and leave the company when you are at your highest performance. i took a good decision of staying back and proving my capabilities. All these days the MBA thing was still behind the curtains of my mind but the urge was not there to make it happen. Thought of writing the Common Admission Test this year but left it unattended as i was not sincere enough. I fell in love at the beginning of this year and i had a complete blast in my personal life. I guess some one is always required to create that extra burst of energy within you.
2008: Life’s moving fast. Its all about work and life after work. I am having quite a good balance of life but my career wasn’t reaching any heights. Always wanted to do so much in life but never put much efforts in accomplishing it. Finance stimulates me. Was following the stock market since years but i started actively day trading this year and already lost like 90 grands in two months. But i will surely come back with vengeance. I thought i will make some quick money through the markets but the crashes and human psychological pattern destroyed the capital which i borrowed from my dad. I never saved anything in the last four years. Somehow i always believed in having fun and that drained all my resources. Now i am Back in States for few months and suddenly the MBA urge started bugging me. The blogs all over the web are surely great source of inspiration for anybody to reclaim their life. So i thought of getting myself a ticket to hell by booking a date for the ever elusive GMAT which i fled from for about 4 years. I have four months to prepare for the exam but i am more worried about the admission process in its entirety. I am so bogged by the reason of why MBA? I can never come up with a decent answer which seems to be factually correct and emotionally appealing to the ad com.
Its always good to be critically analyzed by your closed ones since it really gives you a better perspective of yourself. Comments like You are impatient, You think nothing beyond the bed, You are totally uninspiring, You are so common sometimes drives you to do a lot more. Hope they do that to me too.
