An Outlet - Part 9

19 February, 2024.

Today was a nice day.

B school life is coming to an end and it looks like I'm going to end it on a better note than I thought a couple of months back.

My morning began with a simulation class. It was a very interesting exercise along the lines of team decision making via a climb to Mount Everest's summit. Unlike usual, the professors in this subject never stuck to the original APO groups made and always forced us to work with a different set of people in each class.

For this exercise, she asked us to create our own groups. Since I don't have my usual friends in this class, I thought it was going to be difficult for me to get added to any group. Thankfully (and surprisingly), I got asked to join a group within 10 mins. Great! I'd like to take this as one of the examples of successfully stepping back into the "college community" after being gate kept for so long.

Now this group is made up of some toppers who have previously exhibited an egostic and highly competitive behaviour. Which is why I thought I may not able to voice my opinion here and may give up my personal tasks for the others. However, that didn't end up happening. I was able to tell them my point of view and it was accepted as well. I like this!

The simulation went on for an hour and a half afterwhich I came back to my room and spoke to Vera for a bit. Soon after I got ready to leave with Vera and Steffani to a popular sandwich place a little away from college. Due to changes/division in priorities, the three of us haven't hung out much in the recent past so this outing, however small, felt nice.

After lunch, we walked to a nearby clothing store in hopes of finding some clothes that we could possibly wear to our post college trip in March. The three of us tried out one outfit each but didn't like the fit of any. I had a class to attend so I left by 1:45 PM leaving the two to hopefully pick up a piece or two.

It was a good 15-18 mins walk back to college but it felt so nice. I was used to walking for long durations back in my hometown (because I used to majorly travel alone) but that sort of reduced quite a bit here. Hanging out with Ryan is slowly bringing me back to that state tho and I'm all in.

This class had a case study which was supposed to be solved through a role play. I spent some time reading the case and didn't do anything for the rest of the class :P I'm glad tho, cause the role play got really intense and things even got personal at some points. I feel like everyone were so busy trying to gain crowd points by delivering "savage" lines that they didn't realise when they crossed the line, offending the other person. You could literally feel the tension in the air.

The lecture got over by 3:45 PM and I came back to my room. It took some time for me to get into the shower but I finally did and spent a good 45 mins getting myself cleaned. And another 45 mins getting ready for the evening/night. Vera also helped in suggesting what outfit looks good.

It was 6 PM by the time we left college. By we I mean Steffani, me and 4 others who we had befriended in the first month of B school and had had a good equation with. We had gotten a little out of touch because of all the Placecom bullshit but I'm so glad that we could get back again and finally fulfill our plan of going out for dinner.

Oh just want to quickly state that Steffani and I got different set of glances from our Placement Head, a few of our juniors and a few of those toxic shitheads (yup, that's what I'm going to be referring to them from now on) when we crossed each other on our way out of campus. A part of me feels thrilled to have let them know that not being a part of them has not made us sad loners that they thought we'd be without them.

The six of us got into a cab and went to a mall in a different city. This was also nostalgic because I had been there two times before - the first time in the first month of B school (with another set of people) and second with just Steffani on 31st Dec 2022. We roamed around the mall, window shopped a bit and ate some turkish sweets before heading to the other side of the main road (via a really cool vehicle) which housed a large number of resto-bars/clubs/pubs. That place is a night life hub!

The 'clubstaurant' we chose had a really nice ambience! We spent a good 2 hours eating crispy corn, paneer 65, charcoal chicken dumplings, white sauce pasta, red sauce pasta and a veggie pizza. I liked everything that we ate. We spoke about the change in dynamics with 2 others that were once also a part of this group among other things.

Post dinner, we had a big photo shoot, clicking pictures with almost every possible combination. This was much needed as I realised I didn't have a lot of pictures with all of them.

Then we hit the dancefloor for a bit. This is something that had reduced considerably since the last couple of months and I missed it so I was glad to experience it now. Post that we played a couple rounds on the foosball table they had (I've become worse at this game now :/ but my friend was still very patient with me :) ). We left the place at around 11:30 PM and returned back to college within 45 mins.

We were just not ready to part ways yet so we decided to take a stroll around campus. That's where I lost my balance on a kaccha road and fell, scraping my knees and a hand. My phone's screen guard was majorly broken. My friends helped me clean up and since I wasn't hurt so bad, we decided to sit at one place and continue our conversation.

An interesting conversation at that. The others had a lot of questions about whether Steffani and I thought it was worth joining the Placement Committee and why do the members exhibit a certain kind of behaviour, creating an enemy out of a lot of people in the batch. Steffani and I tried to answer these to the best of our abilities.

First of all, it was important to point out that the three of us (including Vera) were not in favour of a lot of decisions taken by the Committee but there wasn't much that we could do because of majority's opposite opinions. Nor could we leave the Committee even if we felt trapped cause then we would be the first ones to be wronged and be left with zero visibility of the upcoming danger. We told a bit about how toxic most of the elements of the "JPC Training" were and what drives people to transform into being big time assholes.

Obviously they're not going to be convinced by everything - you won't understand unless you were ever part of the system - but hopefully they were able to get a different perspective on this entire thing, as we had never really opened up to them about it.

It started drizzling at some point and we took that as our cue to head back to our dorms. But Steffani and I had another agenda to complete today.

One of our friends from today was someone I had met on my first day and together with Steffani, we had spent a considerable amount of time together before getting separated by the Placement Committee. In fact, some people knew her as the one from the trio who couldn't get in.

We didn't talk to each other for months because of the Junior Placement Committee training. Yet we had an idea that the friendship that we shared hadn't broken during this time and she didn't see at least the two of us as selfish assholes of the Committee. But this gap had definitely created a dent. And it was majorly to do with the fact that my friend didn't have a good experience in her SIP processes.

Even though we didn't have a role to play in it, her thoughts became negative and she became more apprehensive for the Final Placements even before the first year got over. We had started talking to each other but the frequency was nothing close to what it was before, which I was okay with.

What did not sit well with me (apart from her way too constant bickering about the Committee) was that at times she deliberately ignored us. It was subtle in the beginning but became quite apparent as time went by. This happened mostly with Steffani than me but the two of us couldn't understand why.

Today we got the chance to clear the air. Once it was just the three of us, we decided to inquire about her change in behaviour. Turns out it was just a big misunderstanding on both ends amplified by my friend's deteriorating friendships with a lot more people. This friendship may still never become the way it was in the beginning but I'm so so glad that it got better than it was in the past few months.

As I said earlier, things are overall looking good now.