It was the middle of december, when Pranita, Nakul and I set out for the Coffee with SIBM event.
We boarded a bus (thats a long story in itself! will share it some othr time) for Nagpur on friday night.
The event was to be held on saturday in Nagpur, and, on Sunday in Indore by our team. Well, the overnight
bus journey was taxing and exhausting. But, the new city, the roads, the markets all were intriguing, as I had been there for the first time.
Anyway, after freshening up and having a nice lunch, we headed to the venue, and set up all the posters and the laptops with the ppt and stuff.
The coffee was arranged, so was the parking for the incoming aspirants.
In came the crowd, bit by bit, braving the heat, afterall, it is SIBM Pune, they were looking up to!
It was a different experience having so many faces staring anxiously at you, hoping for us to spill some special beans which would by itself take them to the coveted B-school. Well, I could not blame them, it brought back to mind, my days of preparation at the coaching centre I went to.
Anyways, we went ahead with the presentations, videos, which surely had a great impact on the audience, and made them determined to crack SNAP and somehow just be a part of the beautiful campus (institute!).
There were many questions on SNAP, the cutoffs, the fees, the different quotas, the campus life, the study load, the placements and so on. After this they were given mock SNAPs and a parting gift, which would help them with their preparations. Our team stayed back to handle any personal queries with any member of the audience which he/she was unable to bring up during the session.
Soon after we packed and rushed so as to not miss the evening bus to Indore, thankfully, this time it was a sleeper. The journey was relatively less consuming, although, much longer than promised by the driver! We reached Indore in the morning and looked for a decent hotel (DO not mistake it for Hotel Decent-as in Jab we met!). There we relaxed a bit and got the dirt picked up enroute off our skins. After this we started for our search of the legendarrrrry poha-jalebi, which we devoured plate after plate, and returned for more the next day too!
After lunch, we got going for the job, reached the venue and went through the same preparations. Only, this time we also had to run around in search of a place which could supply coffee for the event. Well, it was again taken care of, and aspirants again flocked at the venue. But, this time was different for me personally. I had been a bit unsure of how to handle the audience at Nagpur, but, here at Indore, I became really comfortable and along with awesome partnering with Pranita, got the audience to literally open up and clear each and every doubt in their head.
In the other room, Nakul was weaving his magic and many a girl did seem to have fallen prey to his charm too... The graffiti sheet said it all after the event!
We gathered all the info on the places to be at Indore from the audience, and hit many of those at the night, right after the event. The next afternoon we hopped on a train to dear ol' Pune, where we had an amazing group of typical aunties who had loads to talk about and loads of energy to shout it out to each other..... NON-STOP. Anyways, somehow we managed to survive it all and reach Pune the next morning.
Morning meant breakfast, so our fun continued in Pune too, as me and Pranita hit Vaishali, where we even brushed our teeth and then enjoyed a sumptuous breakfast. Thereafter we headed to the campus and hit the sack to have some dreams about the amazing 2-3 days we had, the places we went to, the food and drinks we enjoyed, the lot of things we learnt along the way which still remains fresh even after 4 months gone by!
Ashish Chhabra
MBA 1, SIBM Pune
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