End of a decade

This indeed is the last day of a decade! Wow! And what a decade it has been, well I'm talking about myself here. I guess this probably was the most important decade of my life. I gave two of the most important exams of my life Class X and XII, got a sense of what fun in school is like when I got admitted in Kendriya Vidyalaya, and of course then came the entrance exams. I had always wanted to be an engineer. I had even enrolled for a preparatory course for IIT JEE. But things changed after I passed the Class X ICSE exams. My interest in Biology (which I had always considered to be a mindless-mugging-up subject) sky-rocketed and one fine day I figured out maybe medicine was my true calling. Add to that an awesome Biology teacher in school, Mr. Saha and the great 'Biology Sir' (whose name I absolutely cant remember as he was immensely popular by that name), and what I had was a paradigm change in my outlook towards the subject. Within a year I had come to the conclusion that medicine indeed was my true calling. What followed that realisation was hard work, burning the midnight oil and stuff, and by the time everything ended, I was really really really lucky enough to have gotten accepted in med school (or else let me put it this way, I bagged a seat in med school). I was finally gonna become a doctor! Tell you what, thats a crazy crazy feeling!

Well I guess life changed after that. Dunno why, but once you're a med student there's obviously loads of people who sort of want to become potential 'contributors', if you know what I mean. As Mr. Saha once most eloquently put it 'Success has many fathers, failures have none'. How very true it was!

Anyway, the years that followed were some of the most enjoyable days of my life. Med school is truly truly an awesome place no matter where you might be studying. The dissections, the 'trips' to the wards etc etc. Okay there are drab lectures, books which can only be used for weight-lifting and nothing else and screwy professors. But overall its in all senses of the word an 'experience' (Do check out my other blog post about those days here). And the fact that some day I will indeed get that hallowed 'Dr.' before my name is lets say, satisfying to say the least.

I guess I'm leaving behind an eventful decade. A decade which truly changed my life...forever.

The mess that was CAT 2009

Image by Extra Ketchup via FlickrI think I'm not exaggerating one bit when I say that this year's CAT was a mess! The most awaited exam went online this year with the examinees having the option to choose the exact date and time for appearing. Alas!

Thousands of candidates have been asked to reappear for their exams for some unknown reason, apparently a 'virus'. At least so says Prometric (the tech giant which is behind conducting the exam). You know the story! (If not check out this link from The Times Of India)

But here's the thing. India's most 'popular' exam (in all senses of the word) goes online and there's a 'virus' which repeatedly affects the system? A 'virus'? Erm...sorry, but just seems a bit too incredible to me this one. Most industry experts say that such a glitch should not have taken more than a day to fix! The real cause seems to be server problems. Or more specifically incapacity of servers at the exam centers. I mean, there's this huge exam and everyone knows how important it is, and there's this screw up of magnanimous proportions! I expect these to happen in local exams but in CAT? Most certainly not!

And now there's this 'fairness' argument which is being put forward. People who were able to take the CAT at the first go, might be at an advantage compared to candidates who could not. This could be a valid argument. And frankly it puts a real question mark on the entire exam really. Imagine the stress the candidates might be going through!

And the saddest part? The IIMs are thinking of going back to the pen and paper format. Although I'm more familiar with the pen and paper exam, online exams are much more 'neutral' or lets say, 'leak-proof'. Just because Prometric messed up their job doesnt really mean that online exams are a failure. After all, most major exams around the world are held online.

Hope the right lessons are learnt this time around and the rest of CAT this year and the next turns out to be error free and 'virus' free. And of course, to all those hard working folks appearing for CAT, all the very best!