Aditya Birla Group: one that caters to all your needs | IMT Ghaziabad

I am a boy from a town on the southern part of Odisha, Rayagada. Some of you might have heard this place. Ritesh Agarwal, CEO of OYO Rooms, is from this town. I was never studious in my life (I am still not). After my 10^th class, I moved to Bhubaneswar for further studies. Then after not being able to join any IIT/NIT/BITS, I decided to join a private engineering college at Bhubaneswar. At this point, I had grown complacent. When I was in my 2^nd year, I came to know about CAT and IIM. I used to see a lot of seniors cracking CAT and joining the top B-Schools. I was very fascinated by this. I joined a coaching institute to prepare for CAT. I didn’t prepare hard enough because I was very complacent at that time. I was fascinated and not motivated enough to prepare for CAT. The college’s placements started by August 2015, and I was placed on the very first company. I grew even more complacent. I stopped preparing for CAT. I scored very terribly in CAT 2015.

I started my career at an IT company. Initially, I was posted at Kolkata. Most of my friends were at Pune. So, I requested a transfer to Pune. After shifting to Pune, partying and traveling was on full-fledged mode. This lifestyle and salary made me even more complacent. One of my friends, DJ, was preparing for CAT 2017. So just three months before CAT 2017, he stopped going out to focus more. It was at that point, after seeing his hard work, I realized that I have grown too much complacent. Moreover, the place where I used to work was full of politics. Even that helped me to realize my complacency level.

After realizing, I asked DJ to share his materials so that I can start preparing. But the main problem was that it was tough to get out of my comfort zone. I used to work on shifts (Morning, Afternoon, and Night). Initially, I was not able to manage time, and the rotational shift made it even harder. To wake up, I started watching the motivational video right after getting up. I was very weak in English section. I was never able to understand the questions and the passages. I took up a habit of reading books, newspaper every day. I finished at least one book in 15 days.

On my Birth Day, my friends gifted my study materials. One of them, Bobby, said: “We trust in you.” This boosted my confidence. I used to call my mother after scoring terribly in mocks. She always said not to lose hope. DJ always said, “Trust the process.” This line has stuck with me till this moment. My friends, Mukesh (preparing for UPSC), Sovan (preparing for State Govt. exams), Bobby (studying IoT and Machine Learning rigorously), Soumya (learning new technologies every time) and DJ (cracked CAT and joined IIM) helped me to destroy my complacency.

This is my story about how I overcame my biggest challenge: complacency.