What if I fail??

It was 17^th Nov, around 11 PM, I was planning to hit the bed a little early than usual because next day I had to give the biggest exam of my life (read as: CAT), biggest not in terms of number of applicants but because this is one exam for which I have put in the kind of effort that even I didn’t know I was capable of, I gave everything that was humanly possible to my CAT prep , studied more than what I did during IIT prep days, sacrificed lot of my sleep, missed out on the latest movies, reduced the normal “bakar” sessions in colleges and what not. Getting back to where I was … it was around 11PM and one of my friends called me up to wish me luck for next day and she said “tension mat le, tera to hona hi hai”, and for a moment I started thinking why do people expect so much from me, there is nothing special that differentiates me from rest of the people around then why have this belief that I will definitely bell the CAT. And that wasn’t the first time that someone said that, it has happened a lot. Lets start from home , my parents believe that in case I am not able to get into an IIM I will definitely get into XLRI or FMS , then my college friends who said that I was wasting my money when I was filling up the forms of other B-schools .

People please stop it!!

Its not that people are wrong on your part but please understand that these expectations add to the already built enormous pressure to perform on the D-day. Although I am thankful that I have people around me who trust me and really want me to crack these exams but these expectations are what scare me the most, what if I fail.

Now CAT is over, although the end wasn’t as good as I expected but I have learned a lot during the past 8 months, primarily I realized that I am capable of doing much more than I thought I was. I just wish that this is not the end of this journey and I am really looking forward to the next bigger and better innings called as GD/PI.