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My Maiden Experience with NITIE
- Sandeep Srivastava
It was a much-awaited dawn when I reached the haadson ka sehar Mumbai at Borivali station and forged ahead towards my dream destination – National Institute of Industrial Engineering popularly known as NITIE, a top-notch B-school that has molded thousands of engineers into corporate leaders and thinkers. Even the clouds were crying heavily extending their wet welcome to me and I still need to discover whether those tears were that of delight or despair. Nevertheless, my two-year stint at NITIE began with a dicey lottery-system for room-allotment, which is undeniably more crucial than real-world gamble as its going to decide your fate for your ‘pseudo-home’ in one of the five hostels for another two years. But I guess, destiny favored me and I was blessed with a suite just facing the NITIE Lake, indeed a fancy location in a jam-packed city like Mumbai. But the real struggle began when I started introducing myself to hundred new faces and mostly forgets the other’s profile and in this course of action, the introduction formality keeps on repeating as a vicious cycle.
Well, the session took a flying start with the registration process but it was not that much trivial because of the famous 96 steps of NITIE that one has to take to reach the administrative building or the classes, which reminds you of the holy visit that one has made to those hilly temples like Vaishnav Devi with the only difference of being executed almost everyday now. But to my utter dismay, there was a break of four days before the actual commencement of classes. And here comes the grand entry of the indispensable part of our campus life – our beloved seniors, who were back from their summer projects with an exciting schedule for us. The first mission undertaken by them was to make us familiar with the campus and it was put into action by management pedagogy through the game of ‘Treasure Hunt’. The entire junta ran crazily as if some real wealth is just waiting for them with the ambiguous clues like ‘Study Hard, Play Harder’, ‘Launching Pad of Fiat Palio’ and what not? Moreover, the spectators, especially the children, were unable to predict the cause of the prevailing chaos. And finally everyone emerged as a winner, being blessed with loss of at least few pounds of fat!
But, the one thing that always got the attention of the fresh crowd, whether its through senior’s experience or through professor’s narration, is the location advantage of NITIE where a bright probability for you to enact as a Tarzan always exists, in case you are fortunate enough to have a rendezvous with the ‘leopards’ of neighborhood. Such leopard visits are not very rare in NITIE as evident from its lush greenery and proximity to Sanjay Gandhi National Park. So, there is indeed an excitement of having an encounter with leopard but simultaneously a pray also succeeds it that I should not be the first one to be blessed with such a date. But how come things can be just funny and exciting once you are in the one of the best B-schools of India and hence to make us realize the same, the seniors threw a case study to us at one in the midnight – the time when life actually starts at NITIE hostels! And to complement to our agony, a statistics test was also conducted to warn poor chaps like me that life at NITIE also demands burning the midnight oil for tests, assignments and presentations.
Well, all said and done, this is just a prelude of the thrilling and miraculous life that I am looking forward and will cherish life-long. I know, there will be a sea of a difference between this engineer that has been inputted and the well-molded NITIEan that will emerge out of this campus two years down the line, equipped with the arms and ammunitions to prove his worth in the corporate world. For me, it’s just the beginning and miles to go before I sleep!