A Bizarre Construct of Life

31st March, 2:30 PM: I am sitting outside the interview room. The essay part is done and we are all sent out to wait until the interviews start. I am fourth in my panel, and thus the expected wait is around one and a half hours. I am trying to keep my composure, but the pressure is getting to me. I am trying to keep my cool by passing a lot of water through my system, but that doesn't seem to be helping. I decide to sit down and casually talk to myself and try boosting my confidence. This is when I realize that the day has started on a bad note. Everything that could go bad has gone worse. 30th March, 6:00 PM: I have just returned from my C interview . Didi has suggested me not to study much today and instead develop some temperament towards the final interview. I decide that the day had been exhausting and I want some sleep. 30th March. 9:00 PM: I wake up feeling a bit refreshed. I have dinner and then make a list of things I want done before my inte...

After my Bangalore interview  went good, I had a discontinuity of 27 days in my interviews. Looking at people getting done with all their interviews and chilling out, it all felt so sad! I was desperate for my interviews to get over soon. I had so much free time, I even tried to figure out the pattern behind interview schedules and cursed my 'luck' for having my interviews so late! I wasn't studying the whole time. There was still lots to be done, but my engineering instincts got the better of me and I decided to chill out. So, most of the remaining days were spent having fun and I did very less preparation. My interview was on 30th and having studied whatever I could, I decided to give a mock on 29th. Well, the mock went good, quite good actually! I was asked tough Maths questions and gave a reasonable answer to all the questions. The interviewer was impressed! Going through my previous mock interviews' feedback, he was praising me like anything, about how much I...

My  L interview  had gone horrible. No, wait, calling it horrible would mean being impossibly optimistic. To get to hear that how do you plan on clearing other interviews with such bad performance?  from an institute like L, which you should be easily cracking, can act as a real bugbear.  The next interview was for Bangalore. The institute well known for taking ghots like me, had already rejected me once. I was still shocked from the reality of it happening and the L experience acted as a go wild pass for all my hauntings. The fear of failure which had seized me just after my CAT results was back and I was feeling totally pathetic. Thanks to much needed motivation from my Didi & Jijaji and an awesome day out with one of my best pals, I finally got over the fear and decided to make a strategy for my next battle. Clearly, there was lots to be done and time was very less; I had just one week to prepare. The week went good. I took a day off and crammed ev...

OK, so after been asked about posting my interview experiences at different IIMs many times, I finally decided to do so. Starting off with the first one. Institute: Indian Institute of Management-Lucknow. Date: 26th Feb 2012 Venue: Hotel Monarch Luxur, Bangalore First we had to write an essay in 15 minutes about the topic: "Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often caused by lack of wisdom." I wrote something, just something, repeated lots of words and even sentences and did not even quote any examples. Really horrible performance. This was followed by a 10 mins GD on the same topic. I suck at GDs. I really do! And the very idea of them makes the usually chatty version of me go to deep slumber. Somehow, I managed to pass the next 10 mins having spoken maybe, twice with just anything. In the end, one of us was to summarise and what do you know? They HAD to pick me. Confused between "Wisdom" and "Experience" (If you are laughing at me now, t...