Monday, April 18, 2011

Back to work…Life in the real world…some random thoughts….Part 1

Graduate from a Well Known Management School in Central India…a plush consulting job and a comfortable 7 figure salary and newspapers filled with reports of the excellent placements and exorbitant salaries that have been offered, relatives can’t seem to stop talking about my exploits at IIM and a look of a wizard from the layman (who maybe from oldest B-school in India and BTW earning a close to 8 figure salary) who thinks I can do anything and solve all his problems…life can’t seem to rosy enough right, !! aha…think again..
This post is written as an afterthought and rather innocent ignorance of an earlier post (Written right below this), which I wrote when I just entered into the so much revered hallows of an IIM, the shortest shortcut to being filthy rich and hugely respected in India.
Some very heavy reality checks that happened to me, as soon as I got into campus and spoke to seniors, and this made me think if I have been conned by the media hype. To an extent now I feel yes, because although MBA does mean a comfortable job and lots of respect, the extent of dreams that newspapers and media reports fill, it is very much similar to the extent of India TV hyping a Rakhi Sawant and Mika news. A frank confession, when I entered my campus, the dreams of entering Wall Street and being a hot shot banker were so very much alive that even my DC++ nickname (which is the local data sharing server) spelt like – WSHIC (Wall Street Here I come) and so many times the gtalk status read “Living the IIM dream”. This huge over-smartness very soon gave way to the feeling of reality and a fear that the rat race will have to be won or at least finished in the top bracket, else that password won’t even be spelt “DSHIC”…referring to the Dalal Street.
Add to that the frustration of listening to desperate for respect professors, some of whom were dismal when compared to my undergrad college…all roads could lead to just one thought – a reverse counting, when is the IIM experience ending.
On a very serious note however, I had the pleasure of listening to some excellent professors as well, who did shape and guide me well, and well hugely smart. However, unfortunately enough more than 70% of these were visiting professors. Countless hours bitching about the campus, the Profs, the randomness this place had attached to almost everything did help a lot, since it meant that at least you could vent out the frustration and thank god that you are not the only one who got conned and is now stuck!! Analysis (Now that I am an MBA and even more so a consulting firm pays my bills) leads to the fact that a certain bureaucratic rule that a Prof at IIM has to be a PHD in his field might be a major reason for this. Plus being in a city, that is more of an industrial hub than a corporate one also detracts the best faculty to other tier 1 cities.
However, the one thing that frustrates most is the randomness attached to the place. Will discuss a huge lot more (it being my fav bitching topic) on that in the next post…