Ohh… AaaaI’ ll be joining AAIAAIMB

Attitude! that’s the thing that I have noticed in past few days. Simply because I am also joining IIMB..I have seen/interacted with lots of my future class mates recently.

I have seen some very weird reactions of these future IIM students and that have forced me to write this particular entry.
I understand that there is very fine line between being proud of your achievements and being arrogant, but still i am very interested in defining this line more clearly, When exactly a highly successful person starts to look cheap thanks to his constant bragging.

This also reminds me of my earlier days of college life. How we used to mock all the private colleges in our MNNIT days, How it gave us extreme pleasure to tell someone that we study in MNNIT.. and how we thought that the other guy must not be knowing our real value if he failed to respond accordingly.

Coming back to the topic..no need to say that most of these guys must be having a great profile, then they have cracked CAT and must have had a great day on their GD/PI day.

But still, what does this say about them?

1.they are very good at cracking a CAT like paper(OK I extend it and say that they have good aptitude)

2.They have an impressive profile/personality.

But I can still not allow someone with these limited (proven) credentials to be an egotist.

Tomorrow if they become successful businessmen and create some value for this society (that has otherwise given so much to them) I will have absolutely no problem if they ridicule every second person and open every gate with a kick. 😀

But not now, I feel extremely uncomfortable with persons who don’t show minimal respect that must be granted to every human being.(and not boasting about your IIT/IIM tag when you are talking to any other guy or at least concealing that condescending attitude should be a part of that)

I thought a lot about this and then I thought about some really inspiring personalities..(In Indian context, for me it will be Mahatma Gandhi, JRD Tata, Ambani, some gallantry award winner soldiers like Capt Batra, Lt. Pandey, stars like AB Bachchan(you may hate him, but you can’t ignore him), A.R.Rehman, great doctors, architects) ..very few of them have these IIT/IIM tags.

Now coming to my list, what sets these greats apart is not the degrees that they hold but its their focus, passion and talent/intelligence.

In fact most of them were not that promising in their early 20s(now most iitians are on seventh heaven at an age of say 17-19 ), they had moderate talent ..which they were able to grow just because of their passion and focus.

I would like to talk about intelligence as this is one of the most difficult word to define.

To me it has many parameters. You need not be too good on all the parameters to be called as intelligent, if have an spectacular command on some parameters, its enough to show that given the time and desire you can master any other parameter as well.

Here are the parameters –

-Logical ability

-Quantitative analysis(may in turn have many parameters like number crunching, problem solving, correlating powers etc etc)

-business sense- ability to think about how to do your work by hook or by crook.

-memory power

-consulting power(how you can reach a good solution and how well can you put it across)

-Creativity(if you can create an awesome piece of art, which can be anything ..music/painting/movie whatever, you can never be dumb)

etc etc.

The only point that I want to make is that getting into an IIT or IIM is surely a great thing to do ..but its not the ultimate thing. And though a person insures that he will be earning a lot in future ..nothing else is insured(compared to the kind of dream that we usually have.. like being the Jack Welch, Gates or Branson of tomorrow).

So why get so obsessed with this IIT/IIM tag, its not the only thing to define a person..he himself will have to define him in future.

I could never join an IIT because of my low rank..but had I got 15-20 more marks I would have got an under 1500 rank for sure. Similarly had I got one more question wrong in Language section of CAT this year ..i would have probably got 0 calls. What I mean is that we all are different in so many aspects. Very few lucky ones get the chance to get into IITs and IIMs ..but they have to understand that there are thousands of others who would have replaced them for sure had they got a bit better opportunities, guidance and maybe luck.

Ps. I can blabber on this issue for hours. So I might be posting again on the same topic once I get an insider’s view :).
And one more thing is that the issue here is a lot broader, I have seen such a weird behaviour of so many govt employees towards common junta, Comp Sc students having such behaviour towards Civil Engg guys. Indians having such behaviour towards Africans(though they receive the same in much more quantity frm Europeans n Americans) n all that.

We all are guilty of evaluating others based on face values specially when it is none of our business to do so, we forget that the God has used the greatest of algorithms to diversify talent and skills across all possible parameters like demographic groups, classes, gender etc.