Ten days into interview prep, I still cannot say I'm confident about landing a job during interview week. This could be one of the banes of studying in a place with 800 students. The conversation in the halls is constantly centered around interviews and dings and closed lists and case prep. Walk into MBA Cafe at 7pm on a Saturday and you'll find the place buzzing with students steeped in case prep and mock interviews with their prep groups. The level of collaboration, given that everyone is competing against each other, is heartening to behold. When I say this I'm sidelining for a moment the cynical MBA who would say they are all ultimately motivated by selfish interests :D. Nevertheless, the intensity of the atmosphere jumps out and grabs your gut. It's quite an experience!
However, I believe that these weeks of preparation and the interviews themselves will hopefully increase my depth of understanding of the stuff I've learned so far by forcing me to pay more attention to detail. I think this is a good outcome to achieve irrespective of the status of the job search process. Now that I have indulged my craving to write at 2am, I should probably try really hard to sleep and ensure that the rest of the day is productive. Ciao!
I should get a job. No, I will get a job. I might just get a job. I won't get any interviews. But I have a few interviews. But what if I don't get any interviews from the firms I'm really hopeful about? And I go on and on this way, night and day. The relaxed feeling from the break is gone and paranoia and lunacy have taken its place. Internship interviews are looming large and soon I will know who I'm interviewing with. There's nothing else on my mind.
I don't even know if I'm handling this right. I have a great group to prep for interviews with and I have time to become really well prepared. I'm making a conscious effort not to let my academics slip in the race for a job. I keep myself gainfully occupied all the time and am keeping close tabs on the caffeine intake. It still does not feel quite right or enough. Crazy! At least I'm glad I'm not stressing too much. Because when I think of ending the interview period without an internship in hand it does not give me a shiver or make me lose my mind. I'm happy about the level of perspective I seem to have. Hopefully I won't be a nervous wreck if I really am in such a situation :-). Time will tell...
It's 4.18am and school starts today (can't call it tomorrow anymore) and I just can't get myself to sleep. What a way to begin the new semester! I always nullify all the good a break does to me on the last night of the break. I just cannot reset my sleep cycle (not that I have one). My body refuses to obey the clock when it comes to sleeps. And I think that is logical in a way, you sleep when you are too tired to function, which really happens only once in 48 hours or so. When I claim this, my friends say I'm perfect for Wharton and the jobs after. Whatever!The winter break, however, was great. I did nothing related to Wharton, MBA or jobs, though I should have. I read a lot, though not quite enough. But then there's no such thing as enough reading. I finally gave Camus his rightful time, I made him wait for too long. But there's a different place and time for book reviews. I watched a whole lot of movies too, some of them for the first time and others all-time favorites. Breakfast at Tiffany's, Roman Holiday, Godfather I & II, Fight Club, Om Shanti Om, Schindler's List, Shawshank's Redemption, Simpsons-The Movie, The Man from Earth and a few more I think. 'The Man from Earth' was particularly good and all thanks to a friend who brilliantly recommended it on another such night of insomnia. I went to a party in California for New Year eve. I ate home-cooked south Indian food for the rest of my stay there, met up with some friends and slept in till noon the whole week and stayed glued to the internet. Bliss!I think I will feel jealous of myself when I read this post again two weeks later... Nevertheless, here's to a new semester!
I vividly remember this time last year. I was ecstatic about being admitted to Wharton and was still dealing with the enormity of the change my life was about to take. One year later and after six months of Wharton, life is still changing, inexplicably so.
I believe a large part of business school is the continuous change it entails. I came in naiver than I am today, maybe even less sure of myself than I am now. I discovered the much feared peer pressure, dissected it and would like to think I conquered it. I found new ways to stretch time to make the days seem longer than 24 hours. I found stimulating pursuits to replace sleep and achieved new levels of insomnia and new levels of inebriation. I learned to "deal" with email, to skim, sift and separate the important from the not-so-important. I even mastered the art of color coding, tagging, flagging and archiving to surpass human levels of organization. I confronted the American grading system, got bewildered, questioned every method I've employed thus far in my previous academic life and finally devised a way to make results proportional to effort. I made friends, friends I can call at 3am. I have friends I can discuss philosophy, economics, films and music with while getting drunk; I can even be my cynical self to them. I realized I don't miss India, neither do I think America is the end of my journey, I proved to myself that geography holds no significance in my life. I witnessed cultures from all over the world, analyzed them to death and ultimately decided diversity is overrated. I understood that everything is negotiable, that perseverance pays, that charm is a weapon, that diplomacy can delude.
I learned all of this and more, way beyond what this blog can express. Here's hoping Wharton continues to be the enigmatic, priceless, eye-opening lesson in perspective it has been so far. I'm enjoying my journey. I hope you enjoyed my retrospective rant. Wish you a very Happy New Year!
I was at Orlando for thanksgiving and had a blast. I enjoyed the weather and the 8+ hours of sleep every night more than anything else. We went to Universal Studios and Sea World, it was awesome fun. It's amazing how they have created a whole new world inside Universal Studios. There's so much for kids to do in the United States! Here are some pics which my friend clicked :D...
I came back to Philly last night and spent most of my Sunday morning writing a speech for my communications class and sleeping some more. Four days is just not enough to catch up on all the sleep lost at Wharton :-)
It is my birthday tomorrow and Diwali too. And I have no idea what to do. I didn't even have time to buy a new dress. I should ideally be getting drunk tonight, I'm doing an all-night-long meeting instead. I can't party tomorrow night either because I need to be on a bus to NYC at 5.30am on Friday for the Wharton Finance Conference. I can't throw a party on Friday night because all my friends will get back from NYC really late. Saturday is out because the Wharton Diwali Party is happening then. And who parties on Sunday night (other than me, of course)?
I didn't want to crib at first. But cribbing on my blog somehow feels better than cribbing to people and wasting their time. I guess my current state of mind is a cumulative effect of the past couple of weeks, for I have been running around without pausing to think. I've not had the time to blog, write, read or do anything I really want to do. I have been learning so much in my classes without having the time to really absorb things. I am very tempted to question if I'm really getting what I want out of my two years at school. I thought I will at least figure my life out completely :-). Usually I don't have the luxury of thinking beyond academics, recruiting and extracurricular commitments. During a rare rebellious moment I feel on top of the world. And the rest of the time, I feel like I'm chasing an elusive, disappearing, almost chimerical ideal. I know this is just temporary sullenness, still it's a little too depressing to go down this path.
In nicer, more benevolent musings, I just realized that Wharton Round 1 interviews are starting next week. If anyone is doing their interview on campus, feel free to drop me an email (thembasaga at gmail dot com) and I will be glad to meet you, take you around Wharton if possible and of course give you all the moral support you want :-)...
That's it for now. So until a better mood graces me...
I am writing this post when I should actually be studying for my Statistics final. But then anything beats studying stats and blogging wins hands down :-). The truth is I have no idea what to study.
In more exciting musings, I have a day off on Wednesday. I guess I will spend a part of the day shopping for clothes! I really need to sleep too, hopefully the drinks I am sure I will have tomorrow night to celebrate the last final will take care of the much needed extra sleep :-). I'm going to Florida for thanksgiving and need to research what fun things are there to do. I also have a meeting with the Follies team and a bunch of things to do for the Wharton Journal. (&#%* this post is turning into an exhaustive to-do list!) Speaking about the Wharton Journal, it is an awesome place to get the insider scoop on life at Wharton. All the major events that happen over the week are covered and there's some fun stuff to read too. The journal is living proof that people at Wharton do cool stuff and are not all quant jocks who only study, recruit, network and do other such boring stuff. So check it out at http://www.whartonjournal.com
I will sign-off as a painful all-nighter is staring at my face. Ciao...
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