Cricket fever has hit INSEAD! The Cricket World Cup is being played in India at the moment and students with Indian ethnicity make up the largest national group on campus (~10%) so it's a pretty hot topic at the water cooler these days. More people have probably come to appreciate (or at least understand!) cricket in the past few weeks than ever before. Tomorrow, India play Sri Lanka in the World Cup final in Mumbai and I know quite a few of my classmates are already on flights back to India as I'm typing this so as to catch the action live in the stadium. 1 particularly passionate cricket fan I know is paying almost SGD$4k for flights and tickets for him and his wife just for this weekend! I'm actually a little jealous (even though I only JUST got introduced to the game 2 weeks ago) but the chance to watch your country's team play in a World Cup Final of the nation's #1 sport in your home town can only be described as a once in a lifetime experience. If you don't pay the money now, is double that amount of money going to be able to "buy" you this experience some time in the future? Triple that amount? Probably not.
Catching the Semi-Final game on Wednesday at Krish with the Indian contingent was quite a spectacle. My classmates were jumping up and down, yelling triumphantly as the Pakistani wickets fell, and these were my normally mild-mannered classmates! I can't even begin to describe what the more rowdy ones were doing. ;)
In other news, the first "dings" of rejection bells were heard as applications were sent out for jobs and subsequently rejected. Apparently, it's a ritual that when you get a job rejection, you strike the bell in the bar to let out your frustration and disappointment. Your friends might also see you there and perhaps buy you a beer as you all commiserate and share the various rejection letters you all have received collectively.
Over the past 2 weeks, I have also been volunteering to give mock interviews for my peers preparing for case interviews (mainly for consulting but other industries are beginning to use them as well). You can definitely feel a bit of frenzy building up on campus with regards to interview prep. It almost feels like people are competing to see who can do the most mock interviews. There are a lot of resources out there that say you should do this or do that. I say you should just find a style that works for you and stick with it. You should not have to force yourself to fit some mould. If that's the case, then maybe that isn't the right style for you?
I don't believe in stressing out too much about it because when you are stressed, you sorta lose that natural touch which I think is important to bring to the table (other people may disagree). You want to present yourself for who you are and see if that fits with the company/people are you applying to work with. I take interviews very seriously and prepare for them in advance but at the same time I try to be as natural and calm as possible. I like to see them as conversations rather than interrogations!
Catching the Semi-Final game on Wednesday at Krish with the Indian contingent was quite a spectacle. My classmates were jumping up and down, yelling triumphantly as the Pakistani wickets fell, and these were my normally mild-mannered classmates! I can't even begin to describe what the more rowdy ones were doing. ;)
In other news, the first "dings" of rejection bells were heard as applications were sent out for jobs and subsequently rejected. Apparently, it's a ritual that when you get a job rejection, you strike the bell in the bar to let out your frustration and disappointment. Your friends might also see you there and perhaps buy you a beer as you all commiserate and share the various rejection letters you all have received collectively.
Over the past 2 weeks, I have also been volunteering to give mock interviews for my peers preparing for case interviews (mainly for consulting but other industries are beginning to use them as well). You can definitely feel a bit of frenzy building up on campus with regards to interview prep. It almost feels like people are competing to see who can do the most mock interviews. There are a lot of resources out there that say you should do this or do that. I say you should just find a style that works for you and stick with it. You should not have to force yourself to fit some mould. If that's the case, then maybe that isn't the right style for you?
I don't believe in stressing out too much about it because when you are stressed, you sorta lose that natural touch which I think is important to bring to the table (other people may disagree). You want to present yourself for who you are and see if that fits with the company/people are you applying to work with. I take interviews very seriously and prepare for them in advance but at the same time I try to be as natural and calm as possible. I like to see them as conversations rather than interrogations!
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