Getting over BS

Often time I have found that family and friends are afraid to say the truth when I ask for their opinion. They either do not want to hurt our feelings or simply too lazy to go through the material we have asked their opinion on. When a sugar coated lie is told instead of a hurting truth, it leads to a lose-lose situation. Most often we fail at what we are doing and when we eventually realize that we were told a sugar coated lie, we lose trust. Both sugar coated lies and harsh truth have happened with me.

In the first year of the graduate school in US, I was keen to get admission to a better ranking school. Therefore, I applied to many IVY league universities in US. In preparation for the application material, I asked opinion on my 'Statement of Purpose' from two people and made many mistakes doing so. First, both of them were lazy losers in their own lives and second, they are not a bit interested to hurt my feeling telling the truth. Result was that they returned the material without many comment saying that it looks good to them. I applied 13 schools spending $1000 and did not get admission in even one of them.... Not a single one of them..... I lost 5 years in somewhat mediocre institute with mediocre people. Yes, there were many aspect of it that benefitted development of my personality more than if I would have been in a high ranking school, but career wise it stamped me mediocre. I learned two things: first ask opinion from capable people and second ask in a way that they feel confortable to give a true evaluation.

Recently, I applied to a single MBA school ranked in world's top 5 and got in. Learning from my earlier experience and a bit of luck were instrumental to this achievement. Early in the application, I asked the opinion of a alumni of the said school. He dispatched a scathing critique of my essays. It was likes somebody slapped me to reality. It was very harsh on my ego. But I consider myself lucky that it was not a sugar coated lie. I thanked him for his frank opinion, collected myself and then worked on my essays extra hard to get them to the level for an interview call. An encouragement for frank opinion helped me build trust. Again his tips on the interview helped me impress interviewers and despite an average GMAT and above average age, I got in with flying colors. This achievement and the journey to this achievement will always be a guiding light to me.

At home, my wife likes to get sugar coated lies instead of harsh truth. House is very dirty because she does not act like a owner of the house and be lazy about things. Dirty diapers are everywhere, there is food on the floor that our son picks up and eat and gets sick, there is no surface in the house where a laptop can be put and worked on, her desk has everything from comb to dirty plate etc. I admit that I am not great either but the difference between her and me is that I give a fight before things go out of control. Usually, things go in following order - I get helpless and angry when things get out of control, resulting in some action from my wife. But these actions never sustain, leading to a cycle of long disorganized mess followed by a few days of cleanliness. When I get angry, my wife responds in two extremes - first she remains quite for extended periods of time with sullen face, leading to increase my pitch because I get the signal that my point is not getting across. But as soon as I increase my volume she either gets angry or starts crying, forcing me to step back. I have made her see extremities of these responses and how lack of communication is not helping us find solution together and also, coming to our original discussion, how sugar coated lies are not helping improve ourselves. Today we had one of those cleanliness days after prolonged disorganized mess that got our son sick. We have made a pact to do things differently but not the same way we made pacts before. I am hopeful it would work :)

judge and discrimination

I judge and discriminate. I would rather say that I have learned to do so. I cannot simply waste time and emotions on all of those who come and make contact. It is too risky. Judging and discriminating is my defense to avoid wasted opportunity with those I want to be with.

With time, I have realized that it is just a waste to spend time with people you do not share common interests or visions. It is true that sometime a little diversity or others point of view adds life and generates new ideas. But too much of it just leads to confusion and chaos. As it is said, the people and environment affect us - structure defines conduct, it is important that we surround ourselves to likeminded people and find time to spend on our passion. This is why I judge and discriminate to filter out those who would distract me from following my dream.

There is some discussion on this topic, views are worth mentioning here

Q. I've never understood this. It is a nice phrase, ideally it would be pleasant if there was no need to judge and everyone could live in peace and harmony. But this is not reality. In reality there is conflict, and these conflicts must be resolved. How could this be done without handing out judgments? One must judge what is right and wrong, what is acceptable and unacceptable, just and unjust. Tell me, how can problems be solved in any other way? 

Telling someone to not judge others makes no sense. It is true that we should not judge too quickly, irrationally, or in various other flawed ways. But to say we should not judge at all? How else do you intend to approach life? When one speaks of a supposed problem and a party responds that you should not judge, that is a poor defense. People only say such things because in the end they do not want to themselves to be judged. They do not want to acknowledge the flaws in their own ways.

If you have an opposing view please, let me know.
A. I think you're taking the statement too literally.
What the statement really is trying to say is to make sure you have taken into account all relevant issues and evidence, reach a calm logical conclusion and state your conclusion with a certain level of empathy.

Basically, make sure you tick all the boxes and be nice about it.

But of course there are cases (mass murderers) where no one would dare say "you shouldn't judge others".

The challenge ahead!

The year ahead will be challenging for both my wife and me. It will be challenging for me since I will away from the family for a long time in a new country involved in a rigorous curriculum. But I will miss my son the most. I look forward to time when I go to his daycare in the evening to pick him up. When he sees me, he comes running to me with a smiling face. I will miss this when I will be away. He will miss that too.

It will be hard for my wife because it will be the first time she will be taking care of our son alone. Nobody to help her out. Taking care of oneself is one thing, taking care of a kid while father is away is another. I do not think she realize it yet. I am trying to make her realize it so that we are somewhat prepared when the time to part come. But I guess some things can not be realized until they happen.

I truly believe that this experience will test us out. Not that we did not have similar experience before.  We had. But none of this intensity. It will intense for both of us. I also hope that this experience will change us for the better as other experiences did.

Got in!

11:00 EST was the time when I lost hope. For without it, probably, i would have not got the sweetest, the most terrifying and thrilling surprise of my life. I got in.. I made it to INSEAD. INSEAD is the only school I applied to and I got in. When I got the call from +33 number, I was coming from the blood donation to Red Cross. In back of my mind, I knew that INSEAD only sends rejects on the last day. Friday was the last day. As 11 am EST is 5 pm in Fontainbleau, France, my calculation said that 11 am on Thursday is the end of my MBA dream. I was so depressed with my mind in constant turmoil on what went wrong in my application. I did very best on essays, my interviews were good, maybe GMAT was not that good or my experience was not enough. All sorts of reasons were making me tired. When the call from INSEAD came at 11:13, I did not know what to talk about. I went blank. In fact I was so much in daze that at the end of the call, I asked if I got admitted and who am I talking to. When I called my wife to tell about my admit, I failed to recall even one sentence of the conversation. So much so that after talking to my wife, we were not sure if I got in or was waitlisted or simply rejected (this option was logically eliminated). I waited whole night to get the email from the admin office (3:45 am) that confirmed that I got in. For the whole next day, i was pinching myself to believe the news. INSEAD MBA has been a dream for four years.