Future depends on what we do with the present ...

I got through IIM, my jubilation knew no bounds, after all my life just took off. A two year stint and I would be taking home a pay check of 25-30 lpa. I started getting loads of attention from my friends and relatives after all my market value had just shot up north.

I deserve a good placement after all I am a student from a premier B-School and I carry the coveted IIM tag.

So what if I did not attend classes regularly …

So what if I did not read the cases diligently …

So what if I was not part of group assignments when my group mates were slogging their asses off in the night …

So what if I did not read newspapers regularly …

So what if I did not keep myself up to date with the current affairs …

I still managed to get into a summer internship possibly because all my friends were pretty much in the same boat. The companies were made to believe they would get the best minds out here in campus and they were anyways stuck here and to them a two month internship stipend means nothing if they can manage to pick one solid guy who commits to their organization. They hired a few people no matter what they said or did in their GD’s and interviews.

I went into summer internship and then I suddenly realized that there were interns from smaller brand names who came well prepared for their internships well adept with excel and xpss and other basic tools required for a corporate stint. We IIM guys knew this all along but never bothered with smaller things, after all they had to prove their mettle but that shouldn’t apply to me after all I carry the ‘tag’.

To me the two months stint is a vacation from all the classes and case studies. I don’t need a PPO from this company. After all I can do much better than this company in the finals. I know my casual attitude might end up deteriorating the company’s relationships with my college. Even though one of my batchmates is dying to get into this particular company but hard luck, he is not here. The company might never come back to campus because they might assume we are the representative sample for the campus population but then how does it matter to me. I just hope my batchmates are not doing the same in my dream company as I am over here.

Even though I had the option of working hard for two months, building up the brand name for my IIM, making the company look forward to recruiting people from my institute and if I was that uninterested in the offer finally convey to my mentor that I do not want to make my career in this particular domain/company in the most earnest way. After all a company would never want to recruit a guy and spend some 10-15 lpa on a person who would not give his cent percent to the company. But still isn’t it easier for me not to slog my ass for two months and take the easy way out.

After all I am not loosing anything here

My college looses brand value and reputation

The company ends up loosing faith in the institute

My co interns start judging my institute and batchmates

My two years here was an opportunity to know and connect with the brightest minds of the nation but I never felt the need to go beyond my small friend circle. Guest lecturers came and went, workshops happened on and off all of them plagued by low attendance but I never felt the need to drag my ass out of my cosy bed on a Sunday morning. After all I was dead tired from my late night booze parties and poker nights. I never felt the need to get out of my comfort zone and stretch my intellectual boundaries. And when I saw few of my batchmates doing something out of the ordinary I played my cool self and told everyone it’s of no use and that it was completely unrelated to the grand scheme of things I have in mind for myself. After all I suffer from the same crabs in a bucket mentality to drag down anyone who tries to climb out of the crowd.

I do not take part in the activities on campus, there is pretty much everything that a B school offers you to do, be it the various functional clubs or interest clubs. But my interest lies in something different, so as to what that different thing is I havn’t found out but I soon will until then I prefer to laze around. I do not offer to help out the various committees with their work be it as a volunteer or as a member. I try and look for incentives to drive me to do something and somehow I feel these activities are just a waste of time and effort.

I do not participate in the various B- School competitions that happen in B-Schools across nations, After all who will take the pain to spend 2-3 days to prepare an entry for the competition and then if it gets selected to travel all the way to their campus. After all I have the excuse of a strict academic office which doesn’t entertain official leaves, although deep down I know that its me who gets affected since at the end of the day the stakes are higher for me than for them.

Let me try and look at it from a company’s perspective that comes for placements:

I (a senior most member of a leading financial company) have a few vacancies to be filled this year. I want to gauge the interest of the participants from various premier campuses. I shall first launch a pan India B-School competition and then judge the quality of the campuses by the quality of the entries for the same. I shall then visit the various B schools on my list and give a guest talk to interact with the people and judge the fit at a more personal level. To my rude shock 10-15 people turned up during my guest talk and I was told that the campus had close to 600 participants. Is it a representation of the interest shown by the participants in my company?? Should I even come back to a campus and recruit people who might not be a right fit to my company, people who are not even enthusiastic enough to attend a guest lecture of 2-3 hrs scheduled on a weekend.

I know I am just one of the four hundred plus people on this campus but I know the companies will realize that I am different from the crowd. Eventhough my resume doesn’t state otherwise, it’s the same as the rest of the people on campus, but isn’t it the onus of the company to try and figure me out. I am not sure how many companies would turn up for our final recruitment after all what we did to them but I hope to god they forget and forgive us and come down to campus for our finals. I hope like hell and pray to god that the IIM tag brings them down here if not anything else.

I suddenly realize that even if I am selfish as hell whatever I do or not do out here is directly or indirectly affecting me in some way or the other. It all seems to be a vicious circle… I do something… that affects my institute… which in turn affects me back. I don’t know how I did not figure this out eventhough I was one of the brilliant people who cracked the toughest exam ever to get into this premier institute.