“Answer
this for me, if you can” said Mr Sumesh. (The manager interviewing me from a very well-known
company)
“What are
your personal achievements in life?”
Wow! – I thought.
Totally spaced out moment.
What am I good at? (See this was one of those wrong interpretations of the question, that led to the following answer) - "I’m good at
acting" - I babbled, but he was quick to correct me, that it was just a strength
and not an achievement.
Think think
think! (Stupid head wants to get blank now, the perfect meditation mind is
always available while you’re at an interview. So much for “inner peace”!)
What on
earth have I achieved personally in life?
Anything to
do with saving a dog or charity?
Nah . . . that
can’t be it.
So then nothing
at all. Oh my god!
What have I done?
From the corner of my thinking eyes, I can see the managers smiling Face! (Creepy!!!)
And then it
just happened…out of nowhere. . . I had just framed a sentence in my head. (Yeah
baby,
I’m rocking side by side, just like Joey’s style: D)
Not even
sure if I could win this man’s attention with the exceptional answer that I was
about to deliver.
And slowly,
in fact a little dramatically, I began -
“The fact
that I completed my engineering (which trust me, it was not an easy task for me)
and to have then pursued MBA, completed that as well with some really good
scores, I think, that has been the proudest moment of my life, an achievement
indeed” – and just like that, I had discovered what my personal achievement
was. (Ka-ching!)
Voila!
He had a
smile on his face . . . I had done it, he saw me through the answer, I knew he
believed what I said and was happy that he had got an answer.(Of course there was a little more to this answer, which I'd rather skip out from here, but mission accomplished)
Not sure if
it won any brownie points . . . oh who am I kidding?
It actually
did win me enough brownies to get me to the next round of interviews.
Ting!!! (3)
- That’s the happy gong tune in my head ;)
And
everything else was history. The important thing was, I had never realized what
I had achieved in my life so far. I’m still clueless if academics can be
counted under personal achievements. But let’s face it, not all are born
geniuses, and I for sure had a lot of helping hands and then some, to achieve
what I have achieved.
No idea if
you would count this as a personal achievement, but like my friend Sindhu who chants
this mantra all the time – “To each their own” ;) I would like to rest my case
with it, as well.(At least until I figure out something else.)
If you’ve
got something to add, feel free to leave a comment. I’ll be happy to hear from
you.
