July 11, 2012 – B-School application cycle for a re-applicant and the game of cricket

Being an Indian, the passion for cricket seems like a birth-right. There are very few things that cannot be linked to the happenings in cricket and specifically the Indian cricket team. That said, the line of thought can very easily be applied to football as well. Maybe, the English or the Spanish might prefer to relate the stuff around them to the happenings in the football. I happen to be a football fan as well but we are now digressing from the topic. J

So how can the entire re-applicant cycle be associated to Cricket, you might ask? For starters, the thought of thinking about the need of a MBA is akin to a starry-eyed child wondering about what it would be like to be seen on TV. The child wonders about it and starts playing at his local school level. Very soon he realizes that he might have the potential to do something big, be good at this entire playing thing but he needs some expert guidance, some specific coaching. No doubt he looks for a good academy. The change here though is in his reasons for seeking this boat that might help him. While he initially wanted to be on TV, he now seeks to join an academy to sharpen his skills, to become better at what he does. I guess, you now get my point. Somewhere down the line, the only driving force of seeking admission to an elite institution is to learn really great things, to better one self. All the other attributes like fame, money, success take a side-track.

Ok. So far, so good. What the hell does a re-applicant have to do with this? I would say pretty much everything. There are a few children that are born winners; they excel at everything they try their hand at. Not everyone is so fortunate. A majority will make mistakes, fall down, learn from their mistakes and grow better. I have always believed that as long as you learn from your mistakes and more importantly do not make them repeatedly by applying your learning then you are on the right track to rise high. All right, I probably made, in fact it needs to be said that I have surely made mistakes in my last application which is why maybe I did not make the cut. That does not mean I give up. This stage can be made akin to either child who has failed to make the cut to the academy’s final team. Even better, it would be worth associating this analogy of failure with a talented guy who has had a loss of form and is struggling to really nail down his place in the team. Hmm, this now makes some sense maybe. What am I getting at now?

The re-application is like trying to rediscover the form. An ugly truth of life is that when things do not go your way, everything seems to be going wrong. Even the noblest of deeds turns into unfortunate accidents and the simple actions seem to be like a mammoth road-block. Does one stop trying or living then? The answer is obviously no. Like a struggling batsman / bowler, one needs to take one thing at a time. As the commentators say for a struggling batsman, “He needs to face every ball by thinking about one ball at a time. He needs to spend some time at the crease”.

The same way, it is pretty straight forward with my re-application. I need to take things one at a time. My immediate task is the GMAT. While it is very much needed that I work on my application simultaneously, I need to tackle one thing at a time. There needs to be an effective game-plan. I need to take baby-steps, for, rather than taking huge leaps once in a while it is much better to be steadily moving forward. Slow and steady wins the race after all. I am working on this part of my profile. Once this is out of my way then I can whole-heartedly and fully concentrate on my application.

Please note that I have intentionally written that “then I can”. There is always some spare time that can be saved / squeezed in our daily routine to work and think on the aspect of the achievements in life till now. These are essentially the base points, the skeleton on which the application is going to be built. One can always see 15 minutes less of TV, sleep less for 15 minutes and avoid that urge to spend 15 more minutes on the social network or check the personal mails once a day and save around 10 minutes. Not all of these things maybe applicable to everyone but then I hope you get the point. It is not impossible to get a measly 30-45 minutes every day to just think about your life’s story till now. To write one point that comes out of this thinking maybe once in two days. This will ensure that when the essays need to be started it is more a stage of picking and choosing from the available options and develop the story.

I am working really hard to study daily for at least 1.5 hours but I end up procrastinating throughout the day and end up hardly having 30 minutes of quality time studying. I desperately need to stop this now. It is about 65 days for the application dead-line and there is the GMAT, the essays, recommendations, et. all.

I surely have to write pretty soon on the effects of procrastination on my application so that I avoid it all costs. This has to be my next article. Why write about it, you may ask? This is because I totally believe what my father always told me during my schooling days. Writing once is equivalent to reading 10 times. An article will totally reinforce in my mindset that I cannot procrastinate.

Hope this analogy and read today were not outrageous for your taste and time spent reading. Extreme situations have the uncanny ability to give birth to creativity, you see. There are a few things that seem so well timed right now that I am getting a feeling that this might be my time during this application cycle.