Wasted Weekend

Last weekend was quite a long one, Friday being Labour’s Day. We (me & my husband) stayed at home as I had a GDPI scheduled rather "conveniently" on Saturday. Anyways Friday we had been invited to our relative’s place for lunch & the rest of the day just moved on.......

On Saturday I had this GDPI (I would not name the institute as I am not going to say too many good things about it :D). We left early in the morning since we had to reach the venue by 8:30 & the college was quite some distance from the outskirts of Bangalore. The college had a huge campus; it was typically a residential course. The construction was still going in some parts. Frankly speaking I was there just to boost my adrenaline levels. I am not mad enough to spend 9-10 lakhs on an MBA course from any college. Fine, if its an IIM or ISB, no one’s going to think before shelling out 10-20 lakhs. But with this college, I just couldn’t expect a return on investment. But they had few rounds in their GDPI session (GD stands for group discussion & PI for personal interview), which I did find interesting. They had a preliminary elimination before the PI based on the scores in the test which would be of the GMAT format & an extempore. I simply wanted a general assessment of how I would fare in both of these, as these tests kind of stimulate me & extempore would be good experience as I hardly knew how I would react to it. PI held least interest for me as I was not particularly inclined to grab a seat there. Even after reaching the venue on time, i.e, 8:30, the test didn’t start before 10:00. It lasted for 45 minutes & it was as simple as it could be. The next in line – the extempore, didn’t take much time & started around 11:15. There were 15-20 expectants in our room & 2 panelists, apart from the 2 hosts who were there to guide us through the rules, etc. My turn was somewhere in between, so I had the opportunity to listen to a few people & judge what was going wrong in their presentation & kept in mind not to repeat them. I also intended to include some novelty which uptill then was not introduced by any of them. The topic I was given was quite simple – "Westernisation of Indian Culture", a very general topic, so I did have some pre-conceived views on it which were quite unique & thus formed the introductory phase of my speech. I tried to make my presentation interesting in terms of content as much as possible in the short span of 5 minutes preparation time, & while delivering the speech I kept modulating my tone, stressing on the key points, thus I was to able to hold their attention. Panning through the room & keeping eye-contact with most of them, I was happy to notice that they were listening. The presentation was supposed to last for maximum 3 minutes though it could be less than that, also the last 30 seconds were meant for concluding the speech. Though I had completely forgotten about the time management aspect, bless my good luck, I just finished in time. Covered all my points & shot a flickering glance at the time slide running in the reverse mode, there were exact 30 seconds left, enough time for me to pack up. It couldn’t have been better!! And then a good round of clapping which just puffed me up :). After these 2 rounds they were going to put up the score chart for the preliminary elimination. In the meanwhile, there was going to be a presentation by the faculty about the college & the prospects it held for us. As instructed, all of us met in the seminar hall by 12:00 after the presentation round. However, we were again made to wait & the Faculty Presentation started around 1:45, thankfully didn’t last for long & we were sent for lunch by 2:15 with further instruction to assemble by 3:15 at the same place. I went downstairs to join my husband & we went for lunch. He said we were the last batch to leave, it was then I realized there was this other batch which was the cause of all this delay. Hungry as hell, it didn’t take much time to finish off my lunch. I didn’t feel like staying back anymore. I even asked my husband to pray my name’s not there in the list. As I said I was not going to take admission here, it was just the test & extempore that I was interested in & that was done. But my dear husband wanted me finish all of it & come. So I went upstairs again. Once inside I was chatting with a girl sitting next to me & there were few inputs from her which were kind of useful. She told me they have increased the number of seats & they would have to take almost all of us to fulfill the intake. I was little surprised. Once they had put up the list, I was sure what she was said was right. Only a handful of people were eliminated, rest were all sitting there including me. There was only one reason I was still there – to feel the sense of achievement on seeing my name in the final list. But how can you feel a sense of achievement if everyone you are competing with is selected? Though my name was put up in the preliminary list, I quietly moved out with the few whose names were not. I relayed all of it to my husband, & then started insisting to leave rather than wasting another 3-4 hrs. He couldn’t help laughing…….and after sometime we were back on the road. So much for the wasted long weekend. However, there was one good outcome that day, I managed to write a poem in the long hours of forced waiting!!