First Day at IIM, Udaipur
Dreaming in broad daylight, I reached IIM Udaipur. My heart was racing and to say I was nervous would be an understatement. All the hard work through the ages had paid off; the training, the interviews, the GDPI sessions. Finally! I got into an IIM. It was utter delight and insane excitement at the same time. The idea of your parents back home telling everyone, my kid is in an IIM, my kid is in an IIM, your friends dancing about full of praises (For once considering how all they ever did till a few days ago was pull was leg), it is a proud feeling. To have a name that big, to be associated to you. “Indian Institute of Management”. It has a ring to it, won’t you agree? Plus, the cherry on the cake, Udaipur. The Venice of the east!
Dawn of a new day, a new beginning...The air around was filled with a lot of excitement. We had a rigorous schedule planned for all of us. The admission office handed out all the essential documents we required during the first few days. The smell of new books and the feel of them in my hands was just mesmerizing.
On reaching Udaipur, I quickly dumped my luggage in my lovely new hostel room, only to run faster to get ready for my first class! (Of-course I dont wanna be the late comer in my first class!!)
A typical day at IIMU begins at 9 and stops at....Well, read on to guess when does the day ever ends...Our day began with a session with Prof. Sunil Handa. Well, to give a brief about him to all those who do not know, Prof. Sunil Handa is a professor at IIM, Ahmedabad and the founder of Eklavya Education Foundation. He is an entrepreneur with a difference and a teacher with purpose. Each moment of his session was highly motivating and inspiring. As the session proceeded, each one of us realized we had an idea, a dream we wanted to work upon. What Prof. Sunil Handa did was just water the little seed of the idea we had and let it blossom into the next big business venture.
As we finished our first session, we walked back to the mess to have our lunch. You could clearly see on each face how encouraged we felt. He had stirred up the fire within us...Our day continued with on-on-one session with Prof. Sunil Handa, where each one of us talked about our ideas with him. He guided us as to how we can work upon our idea and make it the Next Big Idea! He would ask us a few questions to make us have a clearer vision of what exactly are we looking for. It was invigorating!
We finished our session by around 6pm and quickly rushed to the mess to quieten our grumbling stomachs. Our day extended till around 9 with another energizing session with Prof. Handa. Tired and exhausted, we felt hopeful to get back to our rooms and relax for a while.
We had just stepped in our night dresses when we get a mail regarding an urgent meeting with our seniors. In all excitement, we rushed to our common rooms to find out what urgency called up for a meeting at 11 in night. Our seniors began the session by introducing themselves and telling us about the hostel and college rules and regulations. We listened carefully as they explained us how rules were the stone boundaries which can never be crossed or even stepped upon.
In all seriousness, in the back of our minds all of us were planning how we will go about our case study we had to prepare for the class scheduled the next morning. Our train of thoughts was broken by the words of the seniors. We were asked to submit a report of the session and about what we bring to IIMU by 1am at night! Oh crap! No time for the case study! We couldn't afford to not read and go! The meeting was dismissed as we all rushed to our rooms to finish our assignments before the deadline. One motto which was the most important here was : "Deadlines are sacrosanct" and we couldn't lose our impression on our first submissions itself. We quickly came up with the best we could and submitted our assignments. Phew! Finally! Done!
One assignment done, another one to go...We all gathered our pens and notebooks and started working on analyzing the case study provided to us. Sitting in the common room were a few strangers who didn't even know each other a few hours back, but now we felt like we had a connection of a sort that only we experienced..That's what life at an IIM is all about...Learning, growing and developing ourselves as individuals as well as working with the best of minds around the country.
First day finally came to an end, when none of us couldn't afford to open our eyes...We retired for the day...It was exhilarating and exciting....An awesome day with amazing people. A day comes to an end at IIMU. This is just the beginning....Keep reading this space to know how life changes and how we as individuals changed in just a week to become...well, to become and think like managers. Another blog coming up soon!:)
