The Induction and The Seniors : Day One

Now onto the experiences with seniors here. It all started with the evening of the first day of the induction with the seniors. They all came (formally dressed) to the classroom in which we had our last session. There were about five of them. They introduced themselves as the Student’s council of IIML. The president of the council talked with a lot of aggression about how he will not let anybody to tarnish the image of IIML and that for the same reason, they will run certain tests to ensure that we were fit to be studying there. They said that the outcome of the tests would determine whether we get to stay here, get to enter certain committees or even get placed. They seemed very serious in their talks. The president told us that the single point of contact between them and us would be the mess notice board. He said that if he posted any notice there at 2:00 am in the night, we should know it by 2:15 and not later. Then they said that they have assigned everybody certain mentors (5 seniors). A CV form was then distributed to each one of us. We were required to fill the form and get it signed by 3 out of 5 of our mentors. This meant we had to run here and there, search for those seniors and get their signatures. This also meant that they could reject our answers we had written in the CV and make us fill them all over again before signing. Then they said that a quiz was scheduled for us at 9:00 pm. We were supposed to assemble at certain halls for the quiz. Till then we were supposed to get the CV filled and the signatures done. We all went to the mess then. Surprisingly, most of the batch without even bothering to find out who the mentors were, started having their dinner. This was real fun to watch. We were supposed to be tense and worry about the signatures and all we were doing was eating.

Come 9:00 pm, it was the time for the test. Firstly the seniors shouted at people for not switching off their mobile phones and then for not bringing calculators. Then the test started. It had questions related to Marketing, HR, Finance etc. with some case-lets and case studies. We were supposed to fill in the blanks in the question sheet and we were provided an A4 sheet for the answers. The rules were :

• All questions compulsory (regardless of whether we had a clue or not)
• There was negative marking.
• No extra sheets provided (although there were six case questions to be answered in 300 words each ! )

Needless to say, I wrote real funny answers there and so did most of the batch. Many were caught for cheating, illegible handwriting, looking here and there etc. It was total crap. We were supposed to complete the test by 12:00 am, but they finished off the test before 11:00 pm. Then we were taken to another room and shown a video about a lady teaching what “Financial Statements” were. We were supposed to complete a write-up of that 27 min video and submit it before 6:00 am in the morning. Many people didn’t even understand the technical stuff the video said, but they rushed in all directions as soon as we were allowed to leave. I and a friend left for the FPM hostel to a friend’s room and used Wikipedia to search for the meaning of Financial statements. I slept at 3:00 am but my friends kept on writing. I woke up at 5:30 in the morning (2.5 Hrs sleep) and wrote two pages by looking into my friend’s work and putting it into different words. We then went and submitted it just on time. This was the end of the first day. I’ll write about the next days of the induction in the coming posts.