The final placement process has been once again set into motion today with the first shortlist coming out. A prominent management consultancy company has shortlisted me. Not that it was much of a surprise, but still feels good to be on the right side of the list. And yeah, everyone from our wing who had applied, including
As an aside, I usually don’t expand my initial so a lot of people started wondering who this new guy was when they saw the surname “Shashidhar” on the list.
Somehow think I’m different from most people. If we can find a “distance metric” by which we can measure the similarity between two people, I can safely be classified as an outlier. Along most dimensions.
Dark side of being unique:
1. Most people can’t appreciate my view point.
2. Absolutely no one can understand me; not even my mom.
3. I’ll have trouble clearing “culture fit” tests in interviews.
Many more which I can’t think of right now…
It’s high time I get down to mugging for my final placements. Hardly 3 weeks left and I haven’t even started. Looking back, I started wondering how I managed to mug for those entrance exams I managed to do well in…
Going back six years. All of April 2000, I studied for not less than 10 hours a day. Intensified to around 14 a day as the JEE approached closer. It used to be such a pleasure solving those problems in coordinate geometry… Used to give such a high when I managed to crack one of those conversions in Organic Chemistry… I would almost masturbate when I would use multiple Physics concepts to solve a problem…
The basic reason I managed to push myself so hard was because I enjoyed the PROCESS. It was NOT because I had dreamt of getting into IIT ever since I was six years old. It was not because someone else told me that unless I study hard I won’t be able to crack the JEE. It was simply the process of mugging I loved! That I eventually did well in the JEE was simply a side-effect!
It’s exactly 2 years since I wrote CAT. Exactly 2 years since I came out of the Loyola Auditorium singing “Comfortably Numb”. And English, Math and “Data Interpretation” aren’t exactly the kind of stuff one would particularly enjoy muggging. The way I did it was to just do sample papers. Did around 30 Mock CATs leading up to the real CAT. Those time-constrained pressure cooker situations I used to put myself under made my mugging fairly enjoyable!
Where do I go from here? I need to prepare for the case interviews but the HBS interview guide is hardly inspriring. Hopefully, when I actually start doing the cases, I should start enjoying the process. Else, jai only!
When i’m not in form (which is the case quite often of late), I can be a really boring guy. Hope i don’t lose form on placement day!
It’s a strange feeling. A strange combination of laziness, disillusionment, helplessness and what not. Following the exhortations of a few seniors who visited campus during the weekend, I finally decided to start mugging for placements.
Haven’t found the “HBS Case Interview Guide” too inspiring. Too much ‘global’ stuff. Just don’t feel like reading it. And given this spectacular start to my preparation, wonder how the rest of it will go.
One of those numerous days when I’ve gotten totally pissed with “the system”.
Due to secrecy concerns and fears that people from IIMA or IIMC might “steal” our companies, we are forbidden from putting company names on BRacket, our internal message board. However, there are many situations where one needs to talk about a certain company. This has led to certain “code names” being
Some codes are fairly mundane, such as “the company which will have its PPT at 6:30 tomorrow” or “B***”. A few people, however, seem to have come up with some more creative stuff.
For example, the other day there was someone offering a “swap” for “The superman killer PPT”. Later, someone else figured out that Superman’s killer was someone else, so this was actually the “batman killer PPT”! Then, somebody else wanted the analyst report for the “family feud company”. Then, there was someone else who wanted to go for the “colonial gas maker” PPT. Somebody else decided not to apply for the “Aussie Fast Bowler/Ex Batsman” company.
Must say people at IIMB are more creative than I thought.
Update
One of the juniors has come up with this masterpiece: company that woofs at potato chips brand!!! Strong stuff…
During the last one week, four top bracket consulting firms came to campus for their pre-placement talks. And all of them skillfully dodged the question regarding pay. They simply said, “we will pay competitively and on par with what the other top bracket firms are offering”.
just hope that these guys don’t form a cartel!
I’m in the middle of a programming contest. After about four hours of insane fight, I managed to solve one of the problems. Looking at the scoreboard, it seems not too many teams have got that right, so it must be a tough problem.
Feeling euphoric on one hand and stressed out on the other. Either ways, I have no enthu to implement the beautiful solution i’ve come up with!
Woresht
The world wraps around. There is no such thing as a left extreme or a right extreme. In most cases, you can see that the left extreme and right extreme don’t have much of a difference. We just see them as extremes because we are projecting reality onto a 2-dimensional space where the ‘wrap-around’ doesn’t show.
I feel exactly the same way when I’m feeling extremely hungry or extremely full. Under both circumstances I don’t want to eat anything. The only way to resolve it is to exploit the unstable equilibrium at the “extreme point”. Eating just a little bit brings my system out of the extreme point and collapses it to one of the two states “hungry” or “full”.
I feel exactly the same when I’m really really happy and when I’m really really sad. Under both circumstances, I don’t feel like doing anything. Under both circumstances, I feel like talking to someone. Under both circumstances, I’m liable to get angry easily. However, I’m yet to figure out how to exploit the instability of this equilibrium in this case!
Can go on providing such examples but it’ll be too much pain for you to read them. Want to close by talking about this convention in contract bridge which one uses to figure out how many aces the partner has. You bid “four no trump”. Partner bids “5 clubs” if he has zero or four aces, “5 diamonds” in case of 1 ace and so on. The information you have from your hand helps you resolve between zero and four aces, so it is easy to resolve this ambiguity.
Extreme points in life are like a Five Clubs bid!
The vagaries of the business cycle have been catching up. After the fantastic high of Thursday night and most of yesterday, the low seems to have finally hit me. Hope to get over this quickly.
I have this vague habit of cancelling my posts mid-way. I’d’ve written half a blog-post when I decide it’s simply not worth subjecting my readers to reading this crap so I just chuck it. For example, the post on MA at IIT was written thrice over, because the first two times I thought I wasn’t very communicative.
Thursday was one fantastic day. Went home. Masala Dosa for lunch and dinner. Slept. Talked to parents. Had a nice quick drive back to campus. Was so hyper I couldn’t talk properly. Even when I messaged her and didn’t get a reply, I didn’t go down. Started singing arbitly in the middle of a game of gulli cricket.
Went to this PPT of a top consulting firm yesterday. Amazing presentation. Just one slide. Guess the fact that one of the presenters had read my post on PPT attendance helped. Half an hour of PPT and and a pizza later, we were asked to “informally interact” with company reps.
Was totally out of form then. Screwed up this interaction. Asked a couple of stupid questions, didn’t get the feelers that the guy was in a hurry. Anyways no one will remember my name so that shouldn’t affect my shortlist. Hope to be in better form during the interview.
Of course, this screw-up has been hitting me for the last 12 hours. And that reminds me of the fact that she hasn’t responded to my mails or messages for a long time. Pushes me further down. Feel like totally giving up in life.
I remember all the screw-ups I have ever done in all my interviews. I remember all the times I have said some arbit things to her which have pissed her off. I remember all those occasions when in a moment of agony/ecstasy, I ended up doing arbit things which I would regret later in life.
Life is a sinusoid!