Graduated

A tiring day, a tiring year.

Our toils and efforts have brought us here.

Exams, assignments all-nighters galore,

Learning about things we've never seen before.

A few friends I did make

I learnt a lot here

But the memories I take

With me are so dear.

Today marked the end of my academic stint at ISB. I have graduated from this awesome school and I am now one of the elite class called 'alumni'. We are now expected to uphold ISB values and make us, our school and our country proud. We have had one helluva power-packed year, learning all of 32 subjects, not to mention all their associated exams, assignments and projects. Along the way we learnt a bit, goofed around a bit and collected memories by the ton.

Our chief guest today was Kapil Sibal, fresh from having had the Right to Education bill passed. He stressed on the importance of education and how we, the supposed cream of Indian intellect should feel proud of our privilege and not squander the same. He spoke of the numerous opportunities that would present themselves here on further as education is to be made available to one and all. At the same time, he told us about the need to be responsible, ethical and work towards a better, stronger society.

Our chairman Mr. Rajat Gupta took the stage to tell us his words of wisdom and a few things he said found a place in my head. He told us to work towards becoming the best professional in any line of business we may choose. This appealed to me, since keeping goals like wanting to be rich or powerful, are nonetheless temporal. Wanting to excel in anything brings in its wake success and incidentally money as well. Case in point - Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar! Secondly, he told us to not just work towards making ourselves successful, but towards pushing others to success. This makes sense, since the minute you try to make others successful, you will in a way end up with a circle of successful people who perhaps owe their success to you and so, this circle automatically becomes a trustworthy circle of friends. Another thing he said was that the minute we found ourselves in a comfort zone, we should change our milieu to something else, since comfort zones are not conducive to learning.

But the one thing that almost everyone said today that I will hold dear forever is - never let your education turn you towards arrogance. The more you learn, the more you realize you have more to learn. In other words - stay hungry, stay humble.

With that I end this small post commemorating a momentous occasion in my life as well as in the lives of 567 of my classmates here at ISB. Yes! we have graduated....