Have you ever felt like a hamster? In a cage, running in those circular wheels, feeling like the entire world was watching what cute antic you were upto next? Would you take solace in the fact that across the laboratory that stretched from infinity to beyond, there were countless other hamsters, guinepigs, sweet little white mice in their wire cages doing the very same thing as if on automation? Looking over their rodent shoulders (metaphorically, of course) and wondering if someone, anyone, was going to overtake them into the distant horizon they believed was lurking somewhere.
Welcome to the world of overachieving IIM students.
To my juniors and other 'aspirants', let me quote an oft-recited aphorism on .:Arbit:. (which you'd know if you used BRacket as much as my batch did!), TIN_Rat Race_OTM. Or There is no rat race outside the mind.
I am serious! All that pressure that you build up... ("My grades are low", "I need a spike in my resume", "THAT Day-0 job") is all in your friggin' noggins! The day you come in and start thinking, "Ah, the rat race", you start running against some unknown opponent. Such a vicious cycle (pun intended?). Sad thing is, everyone is doing the same thing!
Now, I don't know how to get out of this mindset anymore than most of you do. I presume the profs know what they are doing when they give admissions to this kind of "cookie cutter diverse" people at our institute. But you'll need to know this very important thing. Hammer it into your collective consciousness.

At IIM Bangalore, noone is judging you for being who you are. Cherish it. It's the warmest, most fuzziest and best feeling in the world.

Keeping living. And to my batch, miss you all dreadfully.