We all want to be understood, but for that, we need to understand first!

My journey at UPES started in June 2018 as a Business Analytics student. For the first time, I was leaving home for studies. I thought it would be a difficult phase of my life until I found a family away from my family.

Our session started with a two-week orientation session – MCUBE. The MBA batch was divided into four different houses which competed against each other in various contests, from sports to debates to talent showcasing. I was an active member of my house where I participated in debate competitions, basketball matches, volleyball matches, skits and talent hunts. I won some of them and lost too, but the most important thing was that I learnt everywhere! The best thing about MCUBE was that it helped all of us to interact with fellow students of different departments and this gave me my family in UPES. I made a lot of friends who used to eat together, play together and stay together. We were a group of 16 people celebrating birthdays and sharing meals – it all became a kind of tradition for us!

Then we started with our academic session where we were introduced to various basic concepts of analytics. Our class consisted of experienced as well as non- experienced students which, in a way, helped us all to grow with each other.

I have never been an overly studious person who focuses just on academics and this became apparent at UPES as well. With the passage of time I became the face of my class in various co-curricular activities such as Sanskriti Dance Crew, Wow Wednesdays, athletics and department-specific events. While participating in various co-curricular activities, I also managed to score good marks in class.

With learning of various academic concepts and other essentials of life, I learnt to work on various analytical software and some coding languages such as Weka, MySQL, Tableau, etc. It not only gave me immense knowledge about analytics, but about life too. I understood that my experience over here would catapult me to better opportunities in life. It also gave me some great insights on inter-personal relationships, something that I hope to put to good use when I start my corporate journey.

I was selected as a Market Research intern at Research Nester Pvt. Ltd., Noida, where I did my summer internship for two months and learnt about working in a corporate environment. On the basis of my learnings there, I prepared an internship report on ‘The Impact of Lower Crude Oil Prices on Indian Downstream Sector’ and presented the same in my college.

With the commencement of the second year came a feeling of nostalgia. On one hand there was more pressure of studies from parents and professors in order to land a good placement and, on the other hand, there was a tinge of sadness as it was going to be the last year of my student life. So I wanted to take full advantage of the remaining time I had in the campus. I organised the college Fresher’s 2k19 and participated in several other college events. Amidst all this, I got the best opportunity of my college life; I became the co-convener of UURJA-2K19 the annual cultural fest of UPES. I balanced my studies and co-curricular activities well and managed to be one of the tops performers in my class.

Before long, various companies started to visit the campus for placement drives. The first two companies to visit our campus for Business Analytics students were Accenture and Deloitte that preferred students with either a B. Tech background or those with some experience. It disheartened me as I was a BBA student. But then came Infosys Consultancy. I got through. It felt like the best day of my college life as I got placed with Infosys Consultancy as a Research Associate.

Currently, I’m in my 4^th semester and my college life is going to end soon. I’ll be joining Infosys from June 1, 2020. This journey in UPES has been a wonderful one. It made me add various feathers to my cap.

In this journey, I got opportunities to enhance my skills and knowledge, and learn new things at every step. I don’t think that I will be able to put my feelings into words about this institution, because it has given me much more than I ever asked for. I hope that in my career journey, I’ll be able to uphold the name of my institution gracefully.

(The writer is a student of MBA Business Analytics 2^nd year)

Also read: A Journey Worth Cherishing