Saturday, August 23, 2008

Un Dino

A friend of mine talked me into this paper writing competition for a Project Management conference at work. As with everything at the start, I got into it very enthusiastically and chalked out an impressive plan for this paper writing. I checked out some of the relevant books from the library, planned out what all I would do to make this paper almost Nobel-prize worthy if nothing more! After all that initial hype, I got myself busy with work, play and all the other regular stuff and the paper writing didn’t figure in my list of things to do till the very last day! On the day of submission, I realized all I had really done towards the paper writing was repeatedly renew the library books which I had checked out without even reading one page of it! In the guilt and shame, I decided to not even attempt to write the paper. But then when my colleague said ‘Hey…your abstract got selected…how can you not attempt to submit something’ I just couldn’t give up the challenge.

I started writing the paper in the n+1th hour! Once I got into the mission critical task, there was no time for anything. There was no time for cooking, working, gym, phone calls, TV, friends…nothing! That one day, was solely dedicated to paper writing…and I decided to do a ‘night-out’ for the sake of the paper. I sat up till 4am trying to make progress. My brain was working at 25% capacity so was dead slow (if it hadn’t stopped altogether)! I don’t know why I thought I could listen to music and work at the same time! I enjoyed the music looked up the lyrics, kinda even learnt some of them up! As expected, a 25% multitasking brain, couldn’t have been very efficient! At 4am, I had 1 page written of the 6 pages I intended writing for the paper! And the content didn’t impress me. I was too bored to even review what I myself had written!

Anyway, all of this self-inflicted torture, reminded me of Un Dino...days at school and college. At school, I was reasonably ok. More or less was prepared for tests and exams. But still there were times, the evening before the exam, I would realize that I was totally unprepared. Then in all the panic, and for lack of a better strategy, I would take a decision of going off to bed at 8pm so that I could wake up at 2 or 3am to study. Waking up that early had some incentives! Mom would make me some steaming hot coffee and even get me some goodies to eat. (It is incredible that 20 years later, I remember, so vividly, the food aspect of the early morning study sessions!) After getting me all that, she would sit next to me awhile, to make sure I wasn’t dropping off to sleep and then she would herself nod off. More often than not, when she woke up at 6 or so, I would be panicking and crying about failing in the exam…because I would feel just as blank as I was the evening before! This happened a good number of times at school…even though I would keep promising myself that the next time around, I would be better prepared. Luckily, got out of school without any major fiascos!

After all the struggle in school, high school and the entrance exams, once I entered engineering college, I think I must have told myself ‘Yep, you have arrived. Now you can stop caring about marks and exams…just make it through these 4 years somehow, and life’s set’. All through the 4 years, I don’t remember studying AT ALL. The fretting before the exams happened…there was no change in that. All of us roomies would be up late in the night, trying to look up previous years question papers and prepare some 4 or 5 questions and leaving the rest to the all knowing benevolent almighty! During the exam month, the hostel used to be alive at 2am. Am sure, Un Dino, the canteen within the hostel increased the supply of Maggi to meet the increased demands of the nocturnal beings. In spite of the casual attitude got out of college with a degree and a job!

The situation in post graduation wasn’t very different. Well, how could it be! It was the same me...adding up a few years to my age didn’t necessarily mean adding up more goodness into me! The same struggle continued in the mornings of the exams during MBA. At times, all the studying for the exam happened in the 20 minute rickety auto ride to the institute! Seriously, isn’t it astounding, that I couldn’t find 20 calm minutes the evening before? Well, I never found it all my life, so I don’t expect today or tomorrow to be any different.

The irony of it all is the fact that, today, my primary responsibility at work as a project analyst is planning and scheduling for programs and products spanning across 2-4 years!