Monday, October 24, 2011

The Incredible Bulk prepares...

...To fail spectacularly.
It is 3:02 AM and I am about to throw in the towel. I am looking at this 'Quantitative Aptitude for the CAT Exam' by Arun Sharma with equal parts of horror and admiration. Apparent short cuts involve memorizing squares and cubes of numbers 1 thru 20 AND their bloody inverses. If showing an aptitude to a skill in management requires demonstration of brute force number crunching skills, what really is the point? That might be just me trying to rationalize my inability to play a game whose rules have changed. But I really do want to do well in this test (which is not the CAT, by the way) as am just a few leaps of faith away from burning some solid bridges.

For the better part of 3 years, I have been struggling with reconciling my expectations with my life. While I still do not have a clear idea of what I want. I have become an intuitive expert in what I don't. I have not been very good in how I went about with managing this gap. It began with denial ("It is a phase. You will get over it"), anger ("if this is the best there is, logic states that things can only get worse"), self pity/loathing ("Man up, loser! There are people who would give an arm and a leg to be where you are now") and general disinterest in my own well-being.

At some point a change had to be forced and status quo disturbed. This is the logical attempt. I have given a haphazard, half-assed interview to a panel of IIM-A professors where my star statement was - "I don't follow current affairs nearly as much or as well as I should." - 1 point for honesty and -100 for general stupidity. Now I am following up on that with an equally (or possibly, even worse) effort on a shot at the IRMA entrance exam on Nov 14th.

The worst part is that I have taken 10 weeks off including a month on loss of pay to ostensibly prepare for these interviews and exams. Going back to work would be the worst thing that can happen to me now. Even as I wait for my Bullet Thunderbird to be delivered, the temptation is rather great to just hop on and ride away into a sunset. With no destinations or routes in mind.

Escapism has always been my strong suite...