IIM Ahmedabad - The Journey - Part 1 - Epilogue

After a long Hiatus of almost a year, I hereby return to the world of Blogging! (Sound of trumpets and a drum roll please…Thank you!)

Ladies and Gentlemen, I’ve missed you all… (Yea right!)

The truth is, I was too busy with my first year at IIMA (not busy mugging! That was there, but I was also busy having fun!). So since I do maintain this blog more like a personal diary that I allow others to read, I guess that I’ll want to write down whatever I remember of my first year so that years down the line, when hopefully I become a big shot manager dude (keeping fingers crossed), I can remember how it was like there. Since I have a habit of giving extremely detailed descriptions of happenings in my life, (which is in line with how much I talk), I am going to follow a chapter wise detailed report once again :D.

So here goes:

Day 0: June 20^th 2007.

I flew in from Bangalore and reached the campus in the afternoon. It was beautiful. I was here…. The mother of all management institutes in the country! I had seen pictures of the place before, but it was amazing to see it personally. The brick buildings and the greenery. I had made it! I was in my dream institute!

After dragging by luggage to the SAO (Students Activities Office), I learnt to my horror that I had to drag all that heavy baggage all the way to the new campus! The new campus is on the other end of the spectrum when compared to the old campus. Even though they follow similar architectural principles, they were extremely different. The new campus was very imposing. Large concrete structures, modern… professional. I walked into Dorm 23, nervous yet excited. This was my home for two years!

My room was number 40, all the way on the top floor (later on I came to realise that this was the last room of the last dorm for students). I dumped my luggage in the room and left to meet people whom I knew and to ask about what to do. So the rest of the day was spent walking around aimlessly and talking to friends about how we would be extremely happy to just get by these two years with 4D’s a year and just manage to scrape through. And towards the night, it rained. And WIMWI is full of traditions. This being one of them. According to urban legend , the “Fachchas” bring the rain, and so it happened. The day we arrived, it rained.

The next day was registration. And that day was when it all began! Mile high stacks of books and casemats! HRM, OM, MANAC (The dreaded MANAC!!). They were all in there…

So the rest of the day was spent in fear and absolute confusion as I peeped into those infamous casemats.

Orientation happened, where the faculty explained to us the details of the courses and the summer internship and generally about life on campus. That night we had our very first “dorm meet”. All the dorm Tuchchas and Fachchas were present. We introduced ourselves and we met the seniors and generally got to know each other. The seniors told us about the rules and regulations of the institute and about how things work. About the professors and about the subjects. About how life is on campus and how to survive here.

CLUBs and SIGs

The club presentations happened towards the end of the first week. All the clubs and SIGs (Special interest groups) made their presentations and answered questions that we had. These clubs were one of the most important aspects of life on campus. The clubs opened up their applications and we were required to fill in forms and submit them at the relevant locations. Interviews were scheduled and selections occurred. I was fortunate enough to get into Niche- the marketing club, and the music club.

And with this ended the first week on campus. I hav’nt written a large part of the first week that relates to the classes and the studies and I’ll write about that in the “First Term” post.

PS : Due to numerous complaints regarding the length of my posts, I’m gonna cut them short from now on :D