Gyaan, Gyaan and More Gyaan
As you become accustomed to all things MBA and CAT, there are a few things that become routine. Like saying just ‘A’, ‘B’, or ‘C’ and expecting the others to understand that you are referring to that IIM. You often forget that this confuses other people. Someone even (rightly so) thought that ‘K’ meant Kolkata and was quite unsure what ‘C’ was. (Cochin? he asked meekly.)
Another such thing is what is termed loosely as ‘Gyaan’. This is the free, abundant and effusive advice that flows in from all those who are supposed to know better. As you go along the journey of “prepping”, Gyaan often becomes a pejorative – used in statements like
“What was the senior saying? Did he say something useful or was he just putting Gyaan?”
So when the time comes for you to supposedly know better, and give out such doses of advice to others one wonders if we are falling into the same traps. It becomes very difficult often for me to separate the real advice from the mundane/obvious and a lot of this is due to the fact that I myself don’t remember the mistakes other people made while advising me.
This whole issue of giving “useful advice” came to a head recently, when I and 3 others who were supposedly “achievers” were asked to speak to an auditorium filled with folks hoping to do the same the next year. So I made a quick mental note of things that I would follow while giving out (often unsolicited ;) ) advice :
- Be as specific as possible. Don’t say stuff like “read a lot”. In stead tell people exactly what to read (economist.com or The New Yorker)
- Give out figures and facts as far as possible. I remember being frustrated with things like “is xx percentile good enough” or “how much exactly do you need per section?”. Eventually I should have known that the sectional cut-off for IIMA for the year 2007 was 95.4% and that it was likely to go up.
- Explain from the ground up. Often people do not know the basics and explanations are given assuming a that they know a bunch of things that they might not.
I think, I was making these points as the session went along, so I dont think I was able to execute them as well as I should have. Sorry, if you are reading this, and were there that day and got bored!
Apart from that, I am really stunned by guys I meet who claim to have really put-fight in order to get in. True, luck is quite important, and so is decent level of hard work. But if this was the “hardest exam in the world”, then it certainly did not feel that way. I had a really horrible day in the English section and still ended up with a 95+ percentile. I’m still surprised by that fact.
Apart from that, while I still have to start seriously packing or anything (I think “incorrigible procrastinator” should go right at the top of my weakness table!), the trip I was hoping to make seems more and more unlikely. It would require the thing I most lack – initiative as my friends seem to have let me down in this regard.
Stay tuned for more. I hope to make a few useful blogposts for people taking the CAT this time. It’s for you guys to tell me if it was useful “gyaan” or not!
08:57 PM | 1 CommentComments
- Guhan on June 1, 2008, at 09:50 PM