Not(e) to myself

I haven’t written about the mba journey thus far, but since it is occupying majority of the space in my head, I have to write about it. Like I was telling 'smee the other day, writing a piece is like delivering a baby. You have to have it fully formed in your head before you can let it out. My whole mba thing has been in my head for too long now, but I always feared that if I wrote about it and it didn’t come through, for whatever reasons… So I’ll start off with a few things.

If you have been lazy till today then banish it right now. There is no room for lethargy and sloth in an mba run. There are a thousand different things to do at any point in time and though prioritizing and list-making (like yours truly who is a compulsive list maker) helps loads, eventually you have to get all of it done, and all action items checked. That would include calls to your evaluators to wish season’s greetings.

We have a tendency to think in terms of stats and numbers – typically any online discussion board would have name/gmat score/ no of years workex /quality of workex (IT, mech, consulting etc). Good ways to categorize your competition pool but a really poor indicator of your standing vis-à-vis them. Case in point is a friend in Wharton. Her stats would read Name/7xx/2/IT… But it’s so much more than that. I don’t know all of what she has done, but I know she has been damn busy in her 2 years of workex and I am not referring to office work. So all of that matters more than the stats thing. Sure a 7xx gmat score tilts things in your favor. But if I make a success story out of my applications this year, then it would prove that even sub-7xx can make it through.

Banish negativity. It’s easier said than done and in my run so far, it is proving to be my biggest enemy. I just have to read other applicant blogs and I’m depressed. People seemed to have done so much and studied for gmat AND got stellar profiles at work. Well too bad I didn’t do all of that. What I can do is work harder on my essays. Easy to say? Nearly impossible to do!! I can either fall victim or continue to swim against the tides.

Taking a break. SO very necessary, this aspect! My iGoogle sticky on a Friday morning is a clean slate. By Friday night, it’s about half a screen in height, full of things to do for the weekend. I have to list even a beauty parlor visit! Needless to say, most of the stuff on that list never gets done. In fact, I can barely concentrate on essay work on a Sunday. I am lagging behind terribly thanks to this. But at least I am not suffering from writer’s block on Monday when I decide to tackle essay writing once more. You have to decide what you’re going to trade for what. And then once you’ve decided, you ask your conscience to take the day off. Really. Otherwise you’ll go insane.

They say you have to abstain from socializing. I couldn’t agree more. I don’t seem to want to talk on the phone either, except to very select people. In the two years since I’ve left college I’ve forgotten most of my classmates’ names. I think by the time I have to leave for my bschool, I won’t have any names on my mobile phone book to call to say bye to. Tough luck, but I’m ok with it, provided that the day actually does come. Indulging in mindless channel surfing is not included in socializing, thank god for smaller mercies! There are times when even astha* channel will seem interesting – those are mini-alarm bells telling you to take a break because you’re fatigued.

Take yourself seriously sometimes. At all other times take a chill pill. Lay off a little bit and (this is a note to self) stop constantly revisiting your lists. Yes, that includes adding new stuff too.

Now if I could just listen to myself every once in a while...

* Since only Indians are reading this I am not explaining Astha channel here.