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My Crucible Experiences - 1

Inspired by Rajesh Jain's new series of articles: Crucible Experiences

Before Proceeding read the following
#1 Crucible Experiences: Life’s Tests
#2 Crucible Experiences: Leaders Learn
#3 Crucible Experiences: Four Types

Ok now after you read them you are all set to read my crucible experiences. I have lots of crucible experiences through out my life that happened to come due to various situations that I forced myself into voluntarily or I was forced into involuntarily. Until now I had a very very fluid life which kind of vascilated among extreme experiences and behaviours which feels like north south poles. But one thing is sure, everything I accomplished came the real hard way.

I would say my crucibles started immediately after I was sent to borading in 1988 @ Guntur, then next boarding @ APRJC where I got first exposure to real society filled with hatred, discrimination, hope, opportunity, etc. then next boarding @ JNTU, Anantapur, throwed some mind blowing challenges before me and brought out the vibrant leader in me, lifes experiences that my dad made me go through helped me to believe in hard work, the dream of breaking into mystical new world of urban culture ended up as a miserable failure, rejuvenation with the help of DILT made me embark on ambitious future journey, experiences/accomplishments in strange new land Singapore set me on the road towards a hopeful future, horrible pressure that I have to go through in USA in 2001 and 2002 during the deep recision time brought out the fighter in me, accidental acquiantance with Rajesh Jains blog revolutinalized my thinking process and currently set me the new odysseys.

I want to publish the crucibles that I went through in a series of posts. So today lets start with my first crucible as a boarding student.

I was joined into boarding school @ Ravi College, Guntur. My parents wanted me to get a better education, so that I can scale heights in my career. There were lots of expectations from me, this expectation thing was always there from my childhood, I was suppossed to be class 1st and anything less than that is not acceptable. So, i was all set for that at this school, but something else was also there to be experienced here. Suddenly I am required to be on my own and there was absolute freedom. I started perceiving this freedom with a month of joining the boarding, one day i was sleeping and a friend of mine came and woke me up and asked me if I am interested in joining them for a movie, which they are going in the nights without permission. First I was terrified and refused to go telling them that its a bad thing to do , but I could not refuse next day, I went along with them and the first movie was Bobby, hindi movie in which I throughly slept as I don't understand a single word. But this is just the begining of experiencing the joy of flying with wings of freedom and believe me in the two years time that I stayed there, I ended up watching almost 500 movies and more than 99% of them are watched stealthly.

As this exploration of freedom was going on, something interesting started going on with my studies, I alwyas started standing first in the class for a reason. There they had a policy of who ever comes first in the class in the monthly exams they will be the class leader for the next month. I was the class leader during the whole 9th and 10th classes, except for the first month in 10th class where I had competition from a new guy who joined, but he got that chance only for one month, he was crushed after that by both brains and brawns. Well there is actually a reason why I was always class first, its not b'cos I love studying, but b'cos class leader has the power of collecting fines from students for various reasons. So, I used to fine students and the fines were usually very very high used to run upto a hundred rupees sometimes. Then I used to lobby with the students to fund my movie addiction and they could get some concession from my side in the amount of fine they have to pay or sometimes the issue of fine completely gets unreported. Thus I emerged as a perfect leader in the eyes of the students as they feel that I favor them with less fines and also by helping them in cheating in exams as I used to be upto date with all my subjects. You the power of money and leadership right, I never wanted to give that up and ended up being class first all the time. Note: Personally I myself never cheated in exams.

One more thing that has a huge impact on me was, once when I got fined for Rs.300/- for breaking a glass window, some students who got my favors contributed to pay that fine, what a deal right.

This boarding experience is my first major crucible, where I started experiencing the wings of freedom, power of leadership, power of controlling the things, indulging in myslef, perceiving the fighter and strategist in me to accomplish the things I want.

Next: Boarding @ APRJC