Facets of Human Beings

There are many things in a b-school , which you do at a time, which may seem abnormal to most of the people ,and they often tend to bring unusual results. One of them , is going to canteen for having tea at 3:00 AM. But, this tea is special, because along with it, you usually find one or another of your friend roaming around and while you came for tea , you end up doing lot many things.

Similar story is followed today , when i went to canteen with a friend and find 2-3 more roaming there. Since, tomorrow is sunday , a holiday, people were very relaxed , the most i have seen them after coming to IMT. Soon, we found ourselves discussing over plethora of topics. Started from summers ( the buzz word around the campus!! ) our discusson ventured into various areas.

One thing on which most of us agreed was the level of artificiality in the college. Most of us encounter people who tend to behave in a very artificial manner. The style of talking , the body language , infact you can instinctively identify this phenomena. Then , we tried to find out the cause for it. The primary reason we found out is "competetion" ( The most cliched word in the B-School Lexicon ). The blind comptetion, increases the opaqueness between people, because they do not trust each other. Nobody wants to speak his heart out, nobody wants to discuss about their plans. In conversation , people let their brain dominate their heart. Everybody wants to be politically correct, although internal feelings may be exact opposite to that.

Some argued that this is common among all B-Schools.People here are professionals. There is little, if any place, for emotional attachment. Everybody looks for his/her benefit and other things come after that. They laid stress on again a "cliched word" Networking. They argued that talk to people , incerase your network, so that you can use for your advantage in future.

Some how, i do not subscribe to their view. If human beings were computer , then we could have simply connected wires to make networks. But we are much more complex than computers . As our HR prof use to say, science has taken all the easy problems leaving the complex ones for the behavioral studies. According to me , a person should be genuine in whatever he/she do. Faking can give you the initial edge, but in the long run you would be whatever you are. The key for this is to accept the imperfectness in us. We should never try to become perfect, because its the imperfectness which teaches us lot in our life. We may loose a few things in being genuine, but we do not have to carry the burden of 2 or may be 3 facets of our life.

Being a CR , i am lucky to interact with almost everyone in the class. There are all types of people. Some are your close friends , some you know, some which gives you smile and acknolwedge you when the see you ,and also some who behave in a way such that you did not existed at all. The catch is that this is not what they are from beginning. They started in some category and ended in another. Some people who talked with you normally in the beginning , suddenly changed their behaviour after being a member of some "elite" groups. They give an impression that they do not care about other people in their class only.

Once i was sitting at the first desk, and a group was giving presentation, suddenly a girl quipped, who is he ?? is he in our class?? May be the lack of knowledge may be overlooked , but the attitude cant be. Even if she does not know, what's the point of shouting. Thing is that, people take pride in it , showing themselves elite.

There are some people, which hardly says 'hi' when seeing . You will almost remain unnoticed. Yet , at 2:30's and 3:30's in night, you would be aksed syllabus, class timings, quiz timings and all. May be this is the way the things are supposed to be ,may be i am too naive to understand it, but this is not what i was brought up with. Somebody told me , very early in my life, the cheapest thing which you can give to someone is smile, somehow it seems to be the most costly in the contemporary times.

I do not want to point out some one , or say something malicious about someone. The only thing which i want to say is that life is simple, respect its simplicity. We are in habit of complicationg our lives. Listen to your brain, but also give a thought to what your heart says. Competetion may be high, stakes may be high , but its people which matter and not things . Just remember , happiness does not come with achieving it comes with helping other people achieve it.