Meet generic Ram, a student who graduated from an Engineering college in Andhra Pradesh and got placed with TCS in 2016. He took CAT in 2016 without much preparation and scored a middling 85th percentile. He realized that he was getting lost in the behemoth that was TCS and put his head down and slogged his backside off for CAT 2017. His score improved dramatically and reached 98th percentile. He had 85 % in tenth, 84% in 12th and 78% in Engineering. Since this is a middling profile, he did not get calls from the big few and so ended with IIM Trichy. He told himself he would take value from the 2 years at IIM Trichy and is currently diligently pursuing his course there.

There you go, a fabulously non-dramatic story of the CAT. But I want to make a serious point about the middle here. I read this article - We’re not all superhumans that made some fabulous points about “the lack of a middle ground, a kind of regularity.”

We are getting conditioned to a point where our mind seeks out extremes. We see so many presentations of success against the odds presented to us that we lose sense of the regular. A General Category Engineering Male working in the tech sector carving out some time and taking a chance at this exam is a good thing. It does not have the vibe of a cobbler’s son cracking CAT after months of struggle. But it is undeiably a thing to feel good about.

If you are preparing for this exam, you need to have a certain amount of discipline, be able to sacrifice some things and execute your plan really well. At the end of the day, you need to feel good that you did have the heart to throw everything at an exam with uncertain outcomes.

I worry that by hearing more and more motivational stories, we lose the ability to feel really good about the regular day-to-day things that we do.

If we hear of middle-class Berta who is a successful employee at Infosys, we instinctively feel “She is no Rekha who started poor, was abused as a child and is successfully employed at Wipro”. The Rekhas of the world are inspiring, they tug at our heartstrings and make us root for them. But it is no crime being a Berta.

If you are born Berta, be the best Berta you can and throw a lot into CAT prep.