failure turns into opportunities

I was rejected in the final interview rounds at McKinsey and Bain in 2017 before getting left by BCG for the summer internship final interview round in 2018.

Sitting at home one week before I enter the next phase in life, I realize that I am in a distinctly self-reflective mood. I am optimistic, albeit a bit nervous, about the possibilities that might exist in the future. So in a pensive attempt at self-catharsis, I have tried to pen down my key takeaways from ''failure''.

Surviving, let alone striving, through the funnels of the Indian Education system is not easy. It is a highly competitive, toxic environment for someone wanting to make it big through the conventional route, mainly if one aims to achieve ''success'' in Govt. institutes. At every stage, one can look around and find thousand-odd others in the same situation, wanting the same thing and feeling the exact way. And it is through these times that a tiny deviation from the desired result can be taken as a heartfelt failure.

On a personal note, I must admit that I have never been a gracious loser. Whether it be sports, video games, or just simple card games with family at home, I've always taken defeat to heart and treated all the outcomes other than the ones I desire as ''failure''. Until recently, I realized I've always blamed the result on external factors. Deflecting the responsibility for things not working out on aspects out of my control gave me a sense of emotional consolation and relief. It felt like getting closure after a rough breakup. But in the last two years at B-school, I realized this was not the best way to go about it. This realization didn't dawn on me in a single day or moment but through a gradual process spanning months.

I still vividly remember returning home utterly disgusted after my final interview at Bain for an Analyst position in my last year of undergraduate studies in July 2017. I wasn't sad or sorry; I was just plain angry. I didn't think my case interview could have gone any better, nor did I recall making glaring errors in answering all the HR questions. But somehow, I didn't cut. I blamed it on everything and anything I could lay my thoughts on. I even hypothesized the interviewer was not having a good day and channeling her frustration by rejecting my application. A month later, I sat in McKinsey's final case interview round for their Analyst position. And the same thing happened. The only difference was my hypothesis for rejection. ''Ah, they probably only seriously considered people with core coding technical skills, even though it doesn't make sense."I ranted out to my friend over a beer that night.

A year passed, and as I sat for the MBA Summer Internship final interview rounds at BCG in 2018, I felt that the universe would finally serve justice and help me get through this one. I'd even imagined working as a Summer Associate at the green behemoth in all its glitz and glory. Alas, it didn't.

Later that month, our MBA Term 1 results came out, and I saw myself ranked 90th in the entire batch. (In hindsight, I took it too seriously.) I had underperformed and could have done much better. But something had changed. I looked around at these brilliant, innovative minds all around me. I saw people ace exams AND crack insane internship opportunities simultaneously. Somehow (I still don't know how or why), this time, I could not come up with external factors to pour the blame/guilt (whatever you may call it) on. That air of self-righteousness had evaporated fast. Looking around, I realized I was not some unique flower shining in a desert. Nope, not at all. I was a shrub in a forest full of tall, gigantic, beautiful trees. That feeling was humbling, and I'll never forget it.

In the following months, I set myself a target to start from scratch and learn and grasp as much as possible. Whether through lectures, peer discussions, or just rummaging through cases and course pre-reads. I had internalized the feeling of that subjective ''failure''. I let it absorb me and then drive me on, always being mindful that there were probably 500-odd people on campus at that moment in time who were better than me at handling these things. It opened me to an entirely new perspective. One can only make foolish speculations and never observe and learn well, sitting atop an imaginary hilltop.

And I've continued with this ever since. I realized that I'm not even a quarter of a century old and need to learn about how the world and its people operate. There's so much to learn and minimal time to do it all.

This is not to say that I have somehow become gracious in defeat. I still am super-competitive and am a sore loser. Still, I know that internalizing that energy to work on oneself is a much calmer, more effective, and more efficient way to go about it than finding solace in deflecting blame.