Memories from the golden years of my life (8)

I had initially thought of attending that guest lecture .. but dropped it just to prepare for an exam at 9:30 in the night. This was just the beginning. Beginning of sacrifices. Beginning of deciding what my priorities are. Beginning of what was going to be a long journey of trying to get a bite of everything … everything literally. I reached the examination hall at 9:20. I was made to sit in CR101 which was also my classroom for first year. There were some strict looking seniors with papers. Finally, after the room got full, they distributed the papers.

I was shocked to see the paper. It has been almost 3 years now and I don’t remember too much but I think the paper had broadly 3 sections – Finance, Marketing and Management GK. Of the three … just imagine I thought Management GK was the best! … I who had never been good at GK! The reason being I could hardly understand what the questions said in other two sections. Marketing was full of jargon though still we could understand English. It was Finance that sent a shiver down my spine. I knew nothing!

Dreading awful things, I turned my face around. Believe me it was such a relief to see blank faces all around me. Anyways, for one hour I broke my head on that paper. One of the guys who had completed all that he knew (and I am guessing it was as good a nil) wanted to leave the room in half an hour only. But the seniors did not allow that! They said we have to be there for complete three hours! So after I was done, tried going off to sleep on the chair only, though could not manage to catch any sleep at all. I was surprised to find some guys sleeping so well. I distinctly remember the senior having to shake Helly up, to wake her when they finally decided to let all of us go. As we came out of the hall, I was glad to find that like me .. the others also knew nothing. And I learnt my first lesson at HelL .. without anyone even mentioning it to me.. “What others are doing and how well are they doing it will be equally important to me if not more, than what I ought to be doing”

All was not well … As we came out, there was another notice on the same notice board. We had been divided into groups of five and had to make a presentation on the topic assigned to us, the very next evening after the induction lectures. The topic assigned to my group was something like this :

“Comparison of Weighted average Cost of Capital for refining and textile sectors”