CAT-ASTROPHE10!

12th Jan, 2011. CAT results are out. And here I am going places, just to keep my mind off the disaster. Certainly  not the way I had pictured this day in my thoughts! Disappointment, is the name given to the feeling when certain events do not meet our expectations. Let alone what my parents' expectations, I myself feel alien to this world today. After all the build up due to my graduation disasters and my willingness to take up a challenge, I'm right where I started. Gaining experience and learning a lot, but it doesn't help in the immediate run.. nothing more than suggesting brilliant ONE-Liners to the lesser experienced! Disappointment forces me to think. And I choose to write whenever I'm thinking(Yes, that's how seldom I think :P)

Anyways, CAT is a competitive exam. The point is doing your best, which is supposed to be better than the rest.  The results are out, and they won't change. The hue and cry over the unfair results is what I've been reading about from last two days and I am vexed. It isn't fascinating me, the idea to rebel against the authorities. Especially since I heard this term: UNETHICAL! The results were available on the link on 3rd January and that was being spread like wild-fire! And if the result is infront of my eyes, I won't go back to the CATIIM website to check why the date had been pre-poned(this was my thought!).

I had complained to PROMETRIC(the agency conducting CAT) regarding the wrong questions, that were a part of my TEST and very much responsible for ruining it. In a time-based test, if I waste 25 minutes more than I've planned on a particular section, the balance is certain to be lost! Honestly, many people recognized the faulty questions and skipped them. But mine was a different story. I hadn't put in an effort to attempt the questions from topics that I didn't find convenient during preparations(especially with time-check). So, easy as those Quantitative aptitude problems looked, I got the solutions. But in those MCQs, this wasn't just it! I had to tick the correct option, but none of them matched my solutions. Trusting the might of CAT, it never occurred to me that the Qs could be wrong! It turns out they were. I solved them again... and again, but no solutions. Any other time, I would have not attempted them. But skipping those Qs wouldn't have landed me anywhere near the expected scores in that section.  So I don't regret this impromptu decision anyway. Sad that I ended up at 92%ile. Won't play the BLAME-GAME still...


And CAT 2009 was an example good enough. Yes, there was a retest, but concerned people know how much bigger the fiasco was! PILs, RTIs.. make it as complex as you can. Candidates are calling it injustice, or even a lucky draw!

Not that I believe in inaction. Or I feel helpless. Certainly not ideal they are, the results. The complaint I had made earlier, was the most I could do, before the result. But still, I have written to PROMETRIC, asking to give the details as to how the problem was taken care of; which the PROMETRIC CANDIDATE CARE had said they would(not individually, but collectively).

Because there is a 100%iler! There are hardcore CAT aspirants who are at 99.9x%ile, 99.8%ile etc. My point is, if someone has scored 300+ out of 450, it is very much possible. 'Luck' is infact something a winner has by his side, all the time! Any challenge in the world.. any competition, and luck has its role to play! If I am to win something, I would agree, it just isn't possible without the support of this magic-bird. A few thousand have attained more than 99%ile. Some of them would be sitting in top B-Schools in a few months' time! Thats where I wanted to be.. where they stand a chance to be, and I don't. Jealous, I am. But to my deepest core I know it is healthy and competitive in nature!

So I wont comment on whether I was more deserving than that XYZ or ABC.. but it certainly is worth giving another try! IIMs are always a hard chance, with the profile I have! When they are getting all the qualities that I possess with an excellent academic record, why would they prefer me? Well, I'll do my best given a chance in the interview! Also, CAT is what it is. Transparency is lacking but then, the odds of having it screwed were same for all of us. This is the thought that drives me, for now. Perhaps the question, why screw "anybody's test at all?" is the hot thing currently. But honestly I am running a marathon in my head! No more questioning the impossible. Acceptance, not of the injustice, but my failure.. again and again! I had the advantage of having all the time in the world. People who are working, had to put in all of their energy to make it! PROs and CONs are a part of every fight. Win or lose!

Well, as they say, Success is hollow, when it comes to learning from it, and Failure is the biggest teacher! Let me learn before the next 'big-one'. MICA stays the dream destination, and there is a different exam altogether. 20th February. Till then, no negative thoughts, no feeling pathetic about self, and no messing with the LUCK-thingy! Just the belief:

I CAN, AND I WILL!

On a lighter note: IIPM is after my life! They found my phone number from obvious sources, and now I receive 4-5 texts everyday.. called twice! Also a bunch of other B-schools promising a laptop, a blackberry and even a Freshers' in Goa! ;-) An epitome was reached when a certain Blah-blaah Institute of Management sent me a text that read - Dear MBA Aspirant, "Stop dreaming, and be practical!"..... :D

Dream on!! dream until your dream comes true....

Have you ever followed a dream?

It was like two different people inside my head, talking. Baffling my mind. A dream? Well, I sleep pretty deep, and dream every other night! But that wasn't what it was about. I was trying to answer my own questions. Within my head. I had never done this before. Felt like I was sick.

But could not help it. The question I myself created, never left me alone. No answers popped up from the sub-conscious. I decided to think over it. Have I ever dreamt? Yes! Now I knew what this was about. It was a question I had to answer. No more escapes. A query that could have kept my fresh plans at bay. It was about a challenge I was trying to take up. It was about CAT. The big one!!

I am quite lucky with company I get. Since I was a kid, I have had good friends, healthy family relations, and quality competitors. Lucky, because I never worked hard to gain these. Perhaps the reason I never valued the same. Company that kept telling me I was brilliant, had a lot of potential. I had a good academic record back then(what mates used to call toppers), loved almost any kind of sport and was participative in all the 'third-world acts' of a kid. A complete affair. Never concerned though. But times passed, environment around me changed and so did I. More inclination towards things that entertain. School was no more fun. For ranks I even slipped out of top 10 of my class. I knew not what was coming.

Mediocrity, now it shows in me. My lifestyle. Considering sports, I support Rafael Nadal. A great player. Yet Roger Federer is considered the best ever in tennis. But I am a die-hard fan of his(Nadal). I support Liverpool FC, although the club has been dominated by bigger footballing giants Man Utd and others for past 20 years. Because when they win, I see some hope. Champions we have been. Greatest ever club. But in a condition of high uncertainity, in current years. The abilities, the skills are all there. But things dont seem working. When the underdogs turn the world upside down, its like what I have wished for years.  People writing them off. The system against them. Lo! and still they managed it! Thats a bigger champion for me than any other. The dark horse.

Mediocrity, a world where I didn't belong at all, according to the people who knew me. But the facts said I was badly stuck in it. All the winner qualities were gone. I was unable to deliver in any kind of challenge. Because I was satisfied. The zeal never broke up within me. And even if I did excel somewhere, I was considered a surprise outcome. People would commend even if I was beaten. Just because I took that task up! Still things didn't bother me. I said to myself, 'I just did it, and I can do it again, anytime'. I simply felt better off not doing it. Except that one time when I had a desire to prove to couple of my teachers that I wasn't a loser in +2, where I went all out for Mathematics(although I got 99); I never even tried. Mediocrity had me.
 

And on today's date I was confused again. I had had bad experiences with graduation in engineering. Low on performance, lack of initiatives, an uninterested and laid-back attitude. And then this miraculous thing happened to me. Final semester of engineering. And I was DETAINED. Attendance concerns. Infact I had no attendance at all. I was popular in my college; for all the wrong reasons. Every student knew the name.. and I felt pointed fingers matching my face to it. The first ever bolt to my satisfied self! A bolt at a time when I was to carve out my career. I had plans, cliched though, but all were compromised. A certified loser.

Still I call it miraculous. And human-beings don't share bad miracles. There are no bad miracles. I took it far too optimistic to hurt me. I wasn't pathetic. I did not want to face pity. It is comforting; but sorry, comfort could deprive of the strength; I'd moved on pretty quickly. "Nothing's gonna change my world". Music of The Beatles kept playing in my mind. I informed every person who mattered, no inhibitions to stop me; and unhappy as I wasn't, people gave me all support and no pity. Lucky as I am with friends. :) To me this meant something new. Maybe it was time to think. I knew, I had nothing to lose now. Visibly. Something that had been restrained inside me for 20 odd years, and has been struggling to pop out. Something revolutionary. And it shapes my career too. I figured it out. I was taking CAT.

I reckoned the glory that CAT carries with it. Logical reasoning, basic quants and verbal abilities were all that it tests. Something is special about this one, I always thought. Even considered taking it before. But this time something was different. Some spark in me. Why CAT? Honestly the glory I talk of. The fields it tests upon. And the CHALLENGE it poses. That's all. I didn't want to know what was lying post-CAT. "Why MBA?" is not my question. I didn't care. A friend of mine to whom I owe this. We built this dream together. Not to suspect his efforts, he has already made it to Joka-land this year. IIM-C. The huge one. That's like Nishant! And when he was revered by all, I realized he had turned into a person I looked upto. Will always cherish those memories mate, and truly, you have my admiration(in absentia:))

CAT was the big platform where I could excel and leave behind mediocrity. At the same time that would take care of the million-dollar word 'career'.

Have I ever possessed a dream? NO! not before today; and that's the difference between yesterday and tomorrow. Now I dare to.

I dont know yet where I will land up, or where I stand. But this energy has to be of a winner. I dare to dream of an IIM C call converted..

A book I had read a few years back, Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, means a lot to me. Every line of that book is like a holy sermon to me. It proves that a dream you live, makes you immortal. A seagull who dreams to fly high. Fly, not just to feed itself. But for the love of flying. The challenge. For me, what will be, is in the future, waiting for me. Waiting because I have dreamed about this. I have created the world for me. What others think, I have never ever cared, and this continues.

This is life-affirming. This sets an upbeat mood. Have I ever dreamt? Yes... I finally have a lucid dream. And I am gonna live it for sure!!