My placement diary: Chapter I

It was the 4^th of July when I was travelling from Patna to Bhubaneswar after my vacations got over. Beep beep!! Lying on the middle seat of my compartment, I checked my cell with my eyes half closed. “Dates out: Deloitte is scheduled on 10^th July, confirmed NEWS, following that is MuSigma, SAP and Aricent”, within seconds I got up, hit my head to the upper berth. WHAT!?!? Are you kidding me, just six days to go? Just reading the text gave me heebie-jeebies. Deloitte was my dream company, what if I don’t get it? I’ve been living this dream since SO long. All these thoughts kept me up the whole night and I was panic-stricken. The next morning when I reached my college, we had to shift our hostel. Gosh it was so tiring. All over the hostel, there was this air of ‘placement drive has come, tie your boots’. Everyone was busy assembling their resumes, certificates, formals, bellies and what not. Since our first company was Deloitte, the one who looks good, speaks well, carries the maximum number of certificates, were more likely to get it; was a parti pris idea. Everyone was making wild guesses as to who’s getting it “FOR SURE”. Sounded absurd to me, so I kept myself away from it, I don’t really like the guessing game. Anyway, after solving so many aptitude problems, taking mock tests and doing every bit from my side, came my big day, the written test for Deloitte, the 10^th of July. The test went well and since it was AMCAT so we had no clue how to compare with others for our chances. But inside I had a feeling that I did well and I was surmising that I’d be getting it. Then came the results! 


Geetika, a friend of mine, comes and says, “Ishita, did you check the results? They’re out on the portal.” I started getting butterflies in my stomach. I opened the PDF file, CTRL+F, I-S-H, was all I typed and the sound, that vexatious, galling, and for that moment crushing sound of “not found”, gosh, it still hits my head. “I am not selected.” I repeated that twice, thrice, and I don’t know, like a multitudinous times, scrolled and read all the names to find that I did not get selected. Meanwhile, I had people shouting and screaming with joy, of course the ones who’d made it. I rang my sister, “Hey! Guess what? I’m not shortlisted for Deloitte..” and then silence.. I literally whined and let all my dreams crush in a moment. What felt distressing was how am I going to tell this to my parents. Called home and let them know the same. They were all like, “Come on, we know you, you have something better ahead.” But who doesn’t know these are words only a loser gets to listen. I had lost it. What felt more bad was they were sad, not because I didn’t get it but because I was upset and sad. Weird equation!!  And that’s when I tasted my first dose of the placement season.

The next thing I did was swore to God that I’m not letting my parents know about the next expected companies visiting our campus. They cling their hopes much more than I do and crushing that was something I couldn’t do anymore. So, the next day was FCS, Tech Systems day! I wouldn’t write much about that company as I wasn’t really interested in it, ‘after Deloitte blew me off’. Well I wasn’t shortlisted for that either and it felt nothing to me. That company took four from our college. It was the first company to have recruited this season, but it felt nothing like that. No one celebrated in the hostel, probably because only one girl got an offer or maybe there were ‘OTHER REASONS’ as they say. Anyway, after that I had people coming over to me giving all their EXPERT lectures (I don’t know from where did they acquire that) of the dos and don’ts during placement.

Then came 14^th of July, when Deloitte conducted its recruitment drive and about 50 students were selected. It was a celebration time in our hostel, every single person whether she was selected or not was so happy! It felt like some festive season. We literally were standing near the stairs and kept welcoming the ones who got an offer, with bashings, hugs and kisses. The best thing about that day was my best friend got placed and I was beaming a beatific smile but at the same time a dismal one as we had not been talking for quite a while and I just felt sad that I couldn’t be the first one to congratulate him.

If he’s reading this, this one’s for him:

“For those who use a smile to zip every torment, heartbreak, affliction inside that heart, there comes a day when God pays you back for all that you kept inside. I am so happy for you, it’d be too bad to put my feelings into words, but I’d just say that, of all the past few months’ days, this day was probably one where I was genuinely having a content smile.”

Completely took myself to other track, I can write a whole another blogpost for him. So, after that came flooding status updates and cover picture uploads for Deloitte. To me it felt like, every next person I was seeing was placed at Deloitte, except for me.

I guess that’d be all for now. Stay tuned ‘cause I have so much more to write and share. This was one hell of a roller coaster ride. Keep reading!!