The end of the beginning?

As the convocation weekend approaches, the campus has now begun to take on a semi-festive atmosphere. The roads are being scrubbed clean and the auditorium is beginning to look like the venue for the local Oscars! The hostels are getting a fresh coat of paint and overall, the campus is looking like it's just emerged from a very refreshing bath in the middle of a hot summer afternoon.

The members of the senior batch are back from their various sojourns to different holiday destinations in the country. Right now, they are busy uploading their holiday pics and showing their parents around the campus. We are happy to see that the senior generation is suitably impressed. They also carry themselves around with a slight spring in their step, proud of their children for having emerged successfully from these hallowed halls, bloody yet victorious! :-) On Saturday, the seniors will line up in their graduation gowns and embark upon the march which will mark the beginning of a new chapter in their lives.

At the same time, there is a slight amount of wistfulness on their faces. After all, they are leaving their home of two years for good! We juniors, apart from feeling slightly sad at the seniors' departure, are happy that we have a fairly free weekend to recover from the intense firing we have been subjected to in the past 2 weeks!

This day last year

A year has passed (almost to date) but my recollections of that day seem crystal clear. The date was 13th March 2008 and the place was Delhi wherein I walked into the venue about an hour before the scheduled time. I was ushered into what seemed like a class room of some sort. I saw some people listening to a huge guy talking animatedly. He was from Boston, US and was loudly complaining loudly about the Indian heat. Oh! I thought another of those showoffs. Hardly did I know that Mr Boston here would end up in my dorm, being my neighbour and we would end up sharing some of the most wonderful experiences of our student lives.

As time passed people started filtering in and we all had that meaningless conversations that you have in all these GD/PI groups (one in which no one believes what the other is saying but fails to bring that to everyone else's notice). Soon the panel was called for the GD. The topic was about the apparent competition between Dictatorship and Democracy. I made a couple of points and was happy with my performance. The GD lasted for about 12 minutes after which we were again made to sit inside the classroom to wait for our interviews.

My interview was third in my group so I had some feedback about the process followed by the panel. The average time for the interviews seemed to be 15 minutes. The second guy finished his interview and my name was called I go with my usual apprehension into the room. The first questions are about my GD stand. I think that I fend them off well when one of the panelists delves into my academics (Difference between Flywheel and Governor........) I think that that went well too. Then they ask about my XAT percentile (which stood at a no too bad 99.42). And then when I seemed to be ready to get into the darker dungeons of the interview, the panellists just thanked me and told me to leave. I was shocked and so were the others. My ordeal seemed to have lasted only about 5 minutes. I was sure that I had made some blunder and that the panellists were livid and sure to chuck me out.

But due to some divine intervention I made it. When I joined I found out that there were 3 others from my GD group to make it to XIMB. And so began the journey which continues till now........