What’s the first day in B school like?

To start with, it could be like anything. It could be like a two hour interactive session with one of the senior faculty members where you were explained about the do’s and don’ts of the institute followed by the lunch break and then continued with some ice-breaker sessions so that you could easily intermingle with your course mates. It could also be like an intimidating experience where in a span of two hours, all your misconceptions (read your dreams about the life in B-Schools) will be washed out by the free flowing language of an expert in his own field, who puts it down in very simple words that even chartered accountants can fail in their first term course of accounting. It’s scary to know that the attendance requirement is almost 100% (I am wondering I have no any plan 'B' to cope up with that because for all my life I have faced this attendance problem. Yeah, for all my life, right from grade 1) well, this is not all, you have to clear all your papers in one attempt. You come to know that there is a strict grading system and the moment you cross the lifeline of two D’s, it can very well shatter your MBA dream. You slowly realize that as the course will progress, it will unveil many more surprises for you (though they will be termed as “Challenges”) and if there is something to learn from the experience of the seniors, it’s like you would soon start wishing that why there are only 24 hours in a Day?

Lastly, there is one more side to this first day in B-school. It’s the time to continue from where you left your preparatory days. We all must have worked hard during our preparatory days (remember those days when we were like writing one examination every other week) and it’s the time to take charge of our lives. All those passage which we have read for the sake of clearing cutoffs now increases in length and become case studies. You have to read them in record time. All the vocabulary you have learnt by heart will now be used to impress your instructor. Quant questions will be replaced by quantitative methods in the first term and DI with statistical reasoning thing. Night outs will take a new dimension and you might wish to carry your laptop with you also (I have heard that some B-Schoolers even take it to Disocs also).

But yeah, things change for good. You can see happy faces around, some anxious ones and even some calm ones (We just discovered that we had only one calm person among us). People are happy as they see this thing as a partial fulfillment of their cherished dreams, people are anxious as they are still to come to terms with the nuisances of a B-school life and people are calm because perhaps that’s the only way they live. I represented those who were having mixed feelings as I am still to feel the rigours of the course. The seniors have helped us calm down a bit by showing their indifference towards interfering in our lives during the early days (that’s really good thing about this place that you have some really cool seniors).

Anyways, have to attend a 9’o clock class and me and my roomie are still to use the bathroom, have to iron my clothes (well, have to iron clothes of one of my friends’ too, that’s the price I have to pay for living in hostels). I guess, I’ll be late for breakfast, or for the lecture, man! Crazy times ahead. Well who cares? I am a B-Schooler now.