Life as a professional and why I miss my college days! -By Mauli Kundlia from IIM Indore

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You know not how to appreciate a moment until you are past it. Who would know the feeling of wanting to go back to college better than someone who has already graduated from that life? I left IIM Indore this year in March and thereafter started my life as a corporate professional. Having no prior experience and being suddenly tossed into corporate life was a huge change for me. I have always been one of the top performers in my school days. Suddenly, I feel like just another person in the crowd. What caused such a sudden change?

Retrospecting our college days, we realize that our ‘learning phase’ is quite different from our ‘working phase’. We can classify those differences on the basis of the following. Responsibility (What is expected of us), Accountability (Who answers and pays), and Environment (The atmosphere we live in) are a few.

1. Responsibility

You are loaded with different assignments and deadlines. You are expected to submit the same without plagiarism. At the same time, you are expected to attend your classes and prepare for your exams and final placements. Sounds hectic, doesn’t it? Now let us look at it from the corporate lens. Your job requires you to be responsible for your role, handle people, submit reviews, achieve targets and answer to your boss.

It might sound relatively more focused and detailed compared to college life where you are forced to learn things you aren’t interested in at all however what we fail to recognize is that our college offers us a ‘learning’ environment, we are on the receiving side, where we just need to listen to what is being said and ask questions. It is like a simulation. You make mistakes, you learn and hope to not repeat them. But at your job, you are answerable for every mistake you make. You are on the ‘delivery’ side and the one answering the questions. This brings us to the next point of Accountability.

2. Accountability

College is mostly paid for by your parents or through an education loan. You know not the origin of the money, that is, the level of effort that goes into earning the same. Hence, you do not feel hesitant to spend that. This reminds me that every time I go to the washroom these days, I make sure to switch off the fan. Why is that? Because I am the one paying for that electricity now. I do not want my hard earned money to be wasted in any manner (a professional life promotes environmental consciousness!). Accountability also entails the question “Who will be answerable for any mistakes committed?”

I had a course on simulation in my 5^th semester. We had to run a company for 8 quarters. By the 5^th quarter, our company went bankrupt. We owed a huge amount of money to the loan sharks. Now imagine such a situation in the real world. How many people will you be answerable to, and how many others might be running after your life? At that time, we took it as a learning experience. We could laugh it off but things get real in job life. While many companies can still give you some space to make mistakes and learn, the opportunity that you receive in college to do the same is huge, because the only life getting affected by it is yours.

3. Environment

No matter if your company has the best organizational culture, I believe college life is unarguably the best environment one has ever received in their life. 75-80% attendance required, several subjects to choose from, friends around to talk to and play with, ready food options and no trouble of bill or taxes payments. While your life as a corporate professional comes with its own perks (no dependence for money, no more asking for permissions, an opportunity for growth!), the stress it brings along might not always be able to account for it.

Every one of us craves the independence and freedom that comes along with our job. But sometimes the idea of living in a dependent environment isn’t bad either. You have no responsibilities, no one to answer to and loads of fun without the worry of where the money comes from.

You can skip up to 20-25% of classes and wake up late on days when you have no classes. Sometimes you can even free ride on group projects, go for a swim or a football match with friends in the evening. You can ask as difficult a question as possible to your professors, have a group study with your friends one night before the exam, sleep or text in between lectures. Watching late-night favorite shows on laptop or playing mafia with your friends and celebrating birthdays at midnight or just walking around the campus with your friends late at night, are a few other things. Such is a protected environment offered in the college by our mentors, friends, and parents and we must enjoy it to the fullest while we have the time to.

This article was submitted as an entry to Become an Author with Dare2Compete.