Having read many articles dealing with students’ failure in CAT exam, I decided to write this piece. Friends, I am no exception to CAT failure. I gave CAT 3 times and failed in every single attempt. My life entirely revolved around the CAT exam. Other than coming out trumps in this all important examination, there seemed no purpose to my life. FAILURE was the label to my life. Besides these academic failures, I saw many personal failures in my life. I understand the pain of failure but, friends, we are helpless. I am neither going to preach to you the same old adage “failures are the stepping stones to success” nor will I trumpet about how I resurrected my life from failures. The point I would like to drive home is how I understood the reasons behind my failure. Reason 1: Heavily dependent on certain alternatives. Reason 2 : Meager resources remained for other alternatives. Rather than complaining about failure let us understand why we are the victims to this failure – answered by reason 1 – and why we cannot come out of that quagmire and try out new opportunities – best answered by reason 2.

Coming back, somehow the road not taken has made me land in IIFT Delhi in 2013. Newton’s law of inertia holds true everywhere. I continued in the same state of dependency until an external force acted on me. I persisted in this state until my summer Internship. Then came the external force and tipping point of my life. I was introduced to entrepreneurship, though this subject was mundane; this provoked a certain thought process in me. I firmly believed that entrepreneurship would end my woes of dependency. I made it a point to put an end to this slavery. I only wanted to sit at the other side of the table and watch the movie of life. This is when I decided to start my venture. This venture may be a success or a failure but at least it gives me an opportunity to be independent for the next one and a half years. I can stop being interviewed because I can interview people. I can stop looking for jobs because I can provide jobs. I can stop worrying about meeting deadlines because I create deadlines for others. I can stop worrying about success because I can create success or failure. We made our lives tied down to circumstances and that is the reason we carp repeatedly when these go against us but when my path is self-determined, at least I will not complain if I am wrong. I can drive my destiny. I am not an eminent personality to write intellectually heavy quotes so I decided to borrow one from Einstein “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted”. A retrospective thought makes this quote hold true in every walk of your life.

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