How To Maintain Your Life Balance During The First Term?

You could describe the above sentences as the grieving period for any normal MBA newb starting his journey with a ‘baptism by fire’ of sorts. Whether it is any new subject(s), the pressure of Summers – which in itself brings the addition of POR selections, or maybe an aspiration for a good foreign exchange. Just the idea of dealing with so many equally capable/competitive people will bring even the most resilient person down sometimes. What tends to follow are teary breakdowns, nervous nellys, untimely outbursts and just a general reduction in your efficiency. The pressure is sky high and the clock is ticking. What can you do?

The weary looking ones (I’m looking at the Work ex & IPM peeps) know this all too well. This is part of the learning curve. A curve which would be very happy to see you derail off it someday. But MBA aspirants aren’t life gurus by any extent. We do need our fair share of help at times, though we may not feel like admitting it. It’s alright though, these reckless tendencies may not be our winning personality but it tends to teach us few of the most valuable lessons of our life.

A bad way, though I’m not judging, for students to cope with the pressure is to look for easy escapes. I, of course, mean to imply the intoxicant variety of said escapes. These substances require moderation and control of usage, which is something you might not bother with while you come back from a heartbreaking selection or Placement meet. The means here aren’t that bad, but what we don’t realize is the end that it does bring for a lot of us.... How does reading a book look now? (Badum Tss!)

What I can say is, a smart person learns from other’s experiences. But to reach that level, you need to have a lot of experiences of your own too. In other words, its basically a step-off point for you to reach a better version of yourself. Eventually, you will get to a place where you can sit down and think of all the lame things you thought about when under stress, probably have a good laugh about it too. But this pitch doesn’t have enough 'deliverables' for the impatient lot among us. (Who am I kidding? It’s all of us)

So, what is an easy-fix, if you may? Well, one thing you can do is to get used to putting yourself above everything you have to do. You may have work to do, you may have some potential POR possibility for your resume, or you may just want to put in that extra hour you think will push your grade above the rest. Put all of those thoughts in a nice little bag and keep it aside. Every once in a while, think about what you can do and then think about what you should do. The idea of sacrificing certain things for some ‘Rest & Recuperation’ shouldn’t bother you. Because if it does, then there was no need to open this article.

The best thing about this is that you know everything I just said about this issue. It’s there with you, but all of us do need a little legitimacy of our thoughts. Well, here is one for you. It’s on the house.