Life moves on...

Scene 1:
Me: Dad, I want to give CAT and do my MBA after my graduation.
Dad: How much will it cost?
Me: Depends on the Institute which I get in.
Dad: will you clear the exam, I've heard that its tough?
Me: I will try my best.
Dad:Ok. But you will get only 1 chance at it!
Me: Thankyou dad, thankyou!

Scene 2:
Me: Dad, Igot through to IMDR, Pune. The fees is also very less.
Dad: That's good! So now you are a Punekar.


Uptill now, I was leading my life in the shadow of my parents. Then I came to IMDR, which changed my life completely. This was Quite an experience (rather more than an experience). My classmates were from all over the country, Maharahtra, MP, Goa, Kerala, Punjab...
I was astonished. I was asking myself, "Will you be able to compete here?"

And now when I look back at those 2 years in IMDR, there's no match to it.
Success, defeat, joy,despair, smiles,tears,allegations, apologies, hardwork, laziness...you name it and it was there.

When you are in a group of 66 people and each one of them is unique in his/her own sense, you are definitely going to counter a variety of experiences. And to add to this you have faculties which are Doctors by education but can speak on movie making and printing technology, faculties which are Post Graduate from foreign universities and are doing Organic Farming, faculties which are expert in Human Psychology, it ought to be a great learning experience.

The case studies were used to be like battlegrounds, where one group was fighting fiercely with the others (In the Q & A session especially). But the aim was only one to learn.

The work that we put in to sell the organic food items in our sturday group work. We really had to balance our time table to carry out this activity. I still remember standing infront of the KNP gate at 6.00 am in the morning and asking people to buy the organic food items.

In IMDR the first two trimesters are really quiet cool, you get a lot of time to kill. At that time I was wondering whether this would really help. But then comes Trimester 3, like a hurricane. Marketing case studies (With all the Gyan from Nagre sir), DOC's Hr case studies in which the objective of the group was used to be to just fill the 40 pages up, that too in arial narrow, font size 12 and line spacing 1.5. (We were so used to this format, that people even decided that they will print their wedding invitation cards in the same format! ;-)) Then there was this another monstrous assignment called CMA given by Mr. Atul Sapre. But this assignment was fun because of the group that I worked with. The 7 of us, really got well together and our classmates used to call us "Marathi Gang" (since 5 out of 7 were marathi and rest 2 also knew marathi very well). The third trimester went by like this. We knew no hunger, thirst during this period. It was just all hardwork.

Then came the 2 months of summer training. A lot happened in these 2 months. It was really the first hand experience of industry for me. I really enjoyed working during my summer training.

After summer training, it was time to select our electives and 4 of us boldly (According to me the decision was bold enough) selected operations. We really worked hard for this, changing the old syllabus, getting the faculties, trying to learn new things in operations management.

I must say, the most tensed time period was when the placement season was begining. People had started getting placed and the tension was building day by day. And How can I forget the day when I got placed. It was 1st of december 2005 and interestingly, all my best friends (We were known as "family" in the class) also got placed on the same day. I can never ever forget that day. Then as most us in the class got placed it was party time! The 5 great placement parties.

And as the second year was coming closer to the end everybody knew that now it was time to say Good Bye with a hope that we may cross roads again in the future. (I still remember when in the last party one of friends said "Jaanne ka time aa gaya Dost.")

I left Pune on 21st of april 2006, waving good bye to my friends.

One beuatiful chapter in my book of life had come to end and I was ready to add another one...