Disgust

Who will people who are devious to the hilt at 22 be when I meet them a few years later? These are the budding leaders of tomorrow? I hate to go down this road again, but the sheer frustration of being in a place where I trust the intentions of nobody is beginning to get to me. I'm tired of holding back, of trying to second guess them. I don't want to be a part of a movement this messed up and hold its coat-tails everywhere I go in the future. They are the people I'm going to be dealing with in some god-forsaken corporation, aren't they? What am I to do... aside from... ignoring it as always, hearing one side and then another and turning away in disgust. Why do I let myself get drawn into political burlesques of people who care for little more than their pride? I don't fault them for self-interest - but I do despair, nine out of ten times in vain, at the amount of self-righteousness that can be mustered in the pursuit of a very obvious advantage over 'opposing' parties. I do not have the stomach to confront these people with what is a truth as clear as daylight to me, but an abstraction to them. It cannot be rooted out of the characters of a hundred students by merely talking to them. Or at least, I do not have the generosity of heart to take what will come to me in the event that I do so. I see taking on what I find wrong with this world an exercise of negiligible consequence to them, and of significant trauma to me. The exercise, as a planned move, is simple not worth the return on investment. It is probably not even fair to expect that I do, because the people I consider to be the 'practical, wordly-wise' ones tell me that this is how things are everywhere. This is how the business world functions, and hence it is only right that the art of deception is practiced in business school too. Will I have to be one of them to survive? How long will it it be before I will have to get out?

Guest speakers come and tell us - 'Trust me, don't ever think of entering the government sector. Get into private companies, make a truckload of money while you can, be appreciated by one and all, and get out when you're rich enough and satisfied enough with all that you have achieved for yourself.' Sage advice from a millionaire to a group whose collective wisdom equals 2200 years of neanderthal existence. I always knew that it was a dirty game, I still don't claim to know as much as some others as to just how dirty it can get - I just didn't see myself playing it. I still don't because I know myself too well, but I wish I could do something from the inside. But this is the first time that I have almost started to fear the people who do this on a daily basis - almost like I don't want to put myself in a position where I leave myself open to assault, so to speak. I don't want to create more fault lines within the student community which is already extremely fragmented. I have nothing against ambition - and that is why I find it hard to get away from all of this, because every day I am confronted with the fact that where there is ambition, there is also vindictiveness. My friends in other B-schools laugh and wonder how someone can take what is so prevalent and taken for granted everywhere else so seriously! Anyway, if other people aren't open to discussion, I do believe even thinking about it a little could open up crevices which could be explored further to make things better, somehow.

Someone with a lot more experience than me said - "One way to change how to educate people is find a few likeminded people and start an institute that teaches what you think is right way to proceed, and would be acceptable to most." But therein lies the catch - what I is think is the right way, I'm quite sure, is not what is acceptable to most. Not even close, in fact. Perhaps in a wholly academic-oriented institution things might be different - I don't know, I can only guess. But about the corporate world I have heard enough versions to convince me that it is I who will have to figure out ways to negotiate this labyrinth, and find some way to use their mindset as a logical weapon against hypocrisy.