I hope everyone is doing well. Burning boats? Should you do it or not? Is it better to burn boats or should you always keep the option of going back to the former state. Well, to be honest it depends on situations.
I have taken huge risks in my life. This is about the time when I went for my placement process. So, my college was in Modinagar(a town 40 km away from Delhi). Our placement process used to happen in Chennai, ie. we had to go to Chennai to get placed. It was June 2018. I had already decided to do MBA, yet I decided to take go to Chennai. I don’t know but for some reason, I felt that if I did not get a placement while other people did, I might not feel adequate. So, in July 2018, I went to Chennai only to realize that the accommodation where we had to stay was terrible. Well the hostel room was fine, but the bathrooms were bad. Now, I am in this place, not knowing how I will spend the next few months. I spent 2 months in Chennai in total.
I had made up my mind that I was going to give CAT the same year. I am trying to get placed for no reasons I am not even clear about. Perhaps, I wanted something to fall back on if I did not clear my CAT exam. Nevertheless, I got placed in TCS and I came back to Delhi. I did not go back to my parents place but I went to my hostel instead. I wanted to prepare for it all by myself with no one interfering in my preparation. It was in August end when I went back to Modinagar. Luckily, during the 4th year, we didn’t have any classes so I got sufficient time to prepare for CAT.
Now, I got my offer letter soon from TCS at that time. So, the thing is I went all the way to Chennai and spent 2 months over there just to get placed and when I came back to Modinagar, I decided to not accept the offer. I was somehow so motivated to get into a good management college that I decided to not even consider the possibility of going to TCS. I don’t know if it was a stupid decision to do so, but I felt like doing it anyhow. I was remembering the scenes from The Dark Knight Rises when Bruce finally decides to let go of the support. I was like lets try this in real life. Anyway, so I did not accept the offer and I decided to focus only on doing well in the CAT exam.
I don’t know if this decision was a big risk or not, but my friends definitely thought so. A lot of people thought I was a fool for taking this step. Maybe I was, I really don’t know. Well, it was not a very big risk considering the fact that I would have made it to some college anyhow which I did.
The thing here is that, if I would not have got a good college I might have joined TCS and perhaps my life would have taken a different path. I might not have undertaken the course of digital marketing which I did, which further led me to take up blogging and you would not have been reading this. So, now that I look back I think my decision to do so was quite right in a way. Well, I did make it through for good colleges and I would have joined them regardless, but had I accepted the offer, maybe I would have not given my all to the CAT exam. Perhaps, I would’ve decided to give CAT next year to improve my score. Who knows what would have happened? We can never say how things would have played otherwise.
In this case, as you can see the risk was not a big one. Some people might not consider this to be a risk while some people might think of it as a huge risk. Burning one’s boats is usually associated with war like situations when the commander orders his men to burn their boats so that they don’t ever think of retreating. I don’t know if I agree with that or not and I don’t know if I would ever do it if I were in a battlefield. But I feel that one does feel compelled to take such steps when the prize is something you are willing to die for.
These are just my thoughts on it. I don’t want people to take decisions based on what they have read which can later cause them huge losses. I think you need to see things for yourself. Weigh all the consequences you can when matters are serious. Don’t take risks just for the sake of taking them. That was my story of when I burnt my boats.
