The Personality Development Program at IMT Ghaziabad started at the odd hour of midnight after our first day of the orientation week. It was a program conducted by the senior batch for "our benefit" and was to continue for the entire orientation week. By now the euphemism i.e. PDP must be clear to everyone(meaning the idiot who typed in the wrong URL yet again). If it isn't, PDP=rag*ing (censored due to Supreme Court vigilance).
However, to be honest, ragging is too harsh a word to assign to what was cheap fun the seniors attempted to have at our expense. The schedule was crazy and we were thankful when we got two hours of sleep in a day but the PDP sessions were rather sad. Not to imply that the entire session was uninteresting. But being from an engg. college which was really serious about its ragging tradition, the small-time conversations here were most amusing.
I have always supported the cause called ragging and I believe it must be made compulsary under the law of the land, but thats just crazy me. Jokes apart, ragging essentially attempts to instill in its target extroversion, subordination and other such characteristics that hold real value in the real world. That is of course the claim of all seniors ( me having been one of them once upon a time). However some of us get so carried away by the excitement of the moment that the once sacrosanct tradition has now been forever tarred.
But this is not an essay titled Ragging : Pros and Cons. This is a case study on psychology. But keeping with the tradition of just increasing the size of the case with irrelevant bulls*it, I have provided the background for this interesting study.
We will begin with the bulk of the seniors who participated in PDP. To give you a picture of their mindset, the favorite PDP indulgence of seniors was to make us run around with our hands in the air and tie around the head saying nonsensical things like "My beard grows fast" or "I don't have socks" or to give us stupid scenarios to analyze and then abuse us to their heart's content at our answers. This is a pure indication of the fact that rather than interaction it was plain cheap fun that they were aspiring to achieve. However, one must not make any assumptions about the intellectual levels of our seniors based on their actions during PDP. I realized within a couple of days that even the most unimpressive of them had a keen logical and analytical mental faculty that they could bring into play at a moments notice. The sad part is that they seldom did.
However a learned psychologist-type person (like me :D) can use his immense intellect to coax out stimulating conversations from hell-bent-to-have-fun people. The sad part is "It isn't about canning". It must be noted that the behavior of some of the most strong personalities in our batch during PDP was amazingly docile and submissive. For they realized the true outcome of being an obedient junior during the PDP. These are people now who are on friendly terms with large numbers of our senior batch and are reaping the benefits of their superior experience at IMT.
Coming back to the PDP, there were a few seniors who were good-natured and while having fun themselves made sure that the juniors had fun as well. These are people who now say " Stop calling me sir you idiot." Nice friendly people. High on "A" characteristic in the NEOAC five point personality assessment.
There were however a few of the senior batch that commanded respect with their intellect alone during the PDP's. One of them was a senior called Prashant Aneja who with his logical arguments forced me to admit that I was a "16 year old fake attention-seeking boy who reads superficial books for entertainment". That was my first experience of oral sex for he without any doubt screwed me with his words. I was suitably impressed, and the critic that I am, that is a superlative compliment. However Mr. Aneja now categorically ignores me for reasons that I am not at liberty to discuss yet.
The PDP also had an unforeseen effect. It gave me an opportunity to realize the psychology of some of my batchmates. Who being a random set would justify by induction those conclusions being affixed to the entire PGDM 10-12 batch of IMT-G.
Everyone here is an above average student with above average personality traits. As such almost everyone is used to being a leader at some point in his life before coming to IMT. The PDP induced in my friends (as almost all my batchmates are by now) the desire to grasp early opportunities to establish their leadership and popularity. Equally quick was the response of my other friends to collectively denounce these attempts.
What we fail to realize is that although it may not be a bad thing to wish to be a leader, it is infinitely stupid to force oneself into a position of imminence without the sanction of ones peers. A true leadership potential also includes the capability to accept another as ones leader if his claim is stronger than ones own. It must be kept in mind that people do not become leaders on their own. Rather a situation chooses a leader of its own accord. One must learn when to back off when a better contender appears at the scene.
I am now bored of all this psycho stuff and decide to sign off. There was a lot more that I wished to say but I will have to squeeze all that somehow into my further notes. A review tells me that this is still dung but I am getting better, aren't I???
:D
