Every individual has some instance or happening in their student life which they cherish for all their life and boast about it whenever possible. If there has been one such thing in my student life, it without any second thought has to be Abhyudaya.
Getting admission into a premier bschool is a dream of thousands of youngsters like me. But after crossing all the hurdles and getting into the bschool the next challenge is to find yourself in that over hyped crowd, people with white hair (work experience), people with gold medals & national ranking ( in academics, sports & what not!), people with different ambitions and attitudes, one seems to be lost. There is this feeling of doing something by which you could stand out, make a name for yourself and be recognized!! No one’s out there to help you, no one to tell you what to do and how, one needs to get there and do it by one self.
September 2007, I was wondering sitting in an Abhyudaya meeting listening to the Coordinators, I am here without any work experience, without any gold medal or national ranking to flaunt, not even an attitude to show! What do I do? How do I make myself known? When’ll people start recognizing me? I am not even a club/ committee coordinator here. And that’s how and when I started getting involved in the organizing of, one of the finest Bschool fest of the country. And since then I was convinced to exert all my skills and energy to make this event the best.
It was just the 3rd edition of the event, but the previous batches had set such a nice platform for us that it never felt like it was still in its early years. Abhyudaya was already an established brand across bschools in the country, all we had to do is keep up the expectations of the world. Must sound easy, but for the kind of standards in place, it required real effort and time. Being in a Bschool one is expected to be in class most time of the week or doing assignments or solving cases written by the best nerds of the world sitting there at Harvard. To which I thought this is something that every other batch mate of mine is doing, so I decided to differ from at least a huge number of them and chose to simultaneously work with the team that was working towards the success of Abhyudaya.
Not knowing even a bit about how events are organized, what all goes in the backdrop behind a successful event, I was quite eager to learn it all myself and that sure did take all the time after classes and in fact lot of time during classes as well (multitasking my friend!!). Grades and sleep both started going south, meetings and tense situations started moving north, friends and family started moving east and west randomly. But all that was well worth it. Learned a lot of skills and lessons that a lot of other friends dint quite get a chance to learn, even though they secured outstanding grades and long horns.
People management, funding, planning, compeering, politics, soft skills, execution and last but not the least calling for/attending a zillion meetings are all things which others would have started getting used to only after they started working in organizations, but I can proudly say I have done all that while doing my MBA itself. And my concerns with regard to being recognized and standing out in the crowd got addressed just because of Abhyudaya. If today I have an identity w.r.t IFMR and people connected with it, its precisely because of Abhyudaya. I am sure all my batch mates, seniors, juniors and IFMR staff would agree with me on this.
Enough said about my own experience of Abhyudaya, I have seen it growing year on year for 3 years now, both as an insider and outsider. This year it looks and is much bigger than ever. Astounding participation and sponsorship, interesting set of events, the number of people behind the show during my batch was just 1/3rd of the number now and so is the level of the event (multifold bigger).
I just wish the event reaches greater heights and goes on to become the best management fest of the country in the years to come.
Here’s wishing the team and all the participants’ good luck!!
A new dawn has begun – Abhyudaya!!
P.S - This post is coming now cos Abhyudaya is happening this year on Feb 20 & 21 and the same write was also posted on Abhyudaya's official blog.
Today's Favorite Line - There is this thing about people who mean everything they say, they think everyone else does too...!
Today's Favorite Song - From this moment (Shaina Twain)
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