Feeling nostalgic.... (Part -1 )

If you observe my blog archive properly, I had taken a long hiatus from blogging for almost 6 months during this time of last year. To be precise from November-2006 to May 2007. Ah!! those were very hectic days of my life and more importantly reason for why I am going to be Jobless starting Jan 2008.

I think it is no brainer for guessing why some people (say with work ex < 4 ) take a 2 week break from work during November time frame and yes you guessed it right ..it is to prepare for CAT . I was one of those aspirants appearing for test in the year 2006 and it was really a memorable one for many reasons.

After working for 3 years, I felt that I was very comfortable with the work I was doing and it didn't motivate/challenge me much. Switching job was an option, but again scope for gaining new knowledge is very limited. Then I started to think of what I wanted to do ..say some 10yrs from now? I didn't have an answer then and I don't have an answer even now. But I was sure that I didn't want to continue in technical line and wanted to do something different than what I would be doing if I did continue in this technical line for some more years.

I decided to take up CAT and joined weekend classes. I actually intended to do a part time course offered by IIMB initially, but once I started attending the classes and interacting with the people over there, my priorities changed and I wanted to do a complete 2 year course instead of a part time course.

Having a liking to do a course is different and the amount of effort one puts in to realize it is different. There was a huge gap between these two in my case and that was my biggest problem. 2 weeks prior to CAT is when I realized that I had not put in much effort and was taking the exam very lightly. I did slog for those 2 weeks and there was considerable improvement in my scores in Mock CATS. But it was too late and when the D-day arrived , I felt that I had just missed the bus. But my performance on the D-Day was my best compared to 20 other mock cats that I had taken during my preparation.

I knew that I was not going to get any interview calls and decided it was time to concentrate on my work at office once again. I was offered to go on an assignment to Rome immediately after my exams and I thought it was welcome break. I decided not to take up XAT and FMS entrance exams and went on ahead with Rome assignment. Results were declared when I was in Rome and my 89 percentile scored ensured that my tiniest of hopes of getting into a B-school was completely sealed off.

PS: Will continue rest of the story in Part 2