Counting the Days

Back in first term, when I was being driven like a mule whose master knows it is insomniac and therefore feels it can work through the night as well as not, I never thought I would be sorry about having to leave IIMA. The departure, when I imagined it, was accompanied by a gleeful whoop and one of the joyous jigs that can only be executed when you are too drunk with happiness to care what the world thinks.
First year is one of those things that you can laugh over only in hindsight. When you're being cold called on a Monday morning by a Finance professor who is under the misapprehension that you know eight different methods to calculated Weighted Average Cost of Capital, it is very difficult to keep your sense of humour. It was at moments like that that my classmates and I, knowing that admission interviews were in progress on campus and feeling that it would be a violation of Human Rights not to tell the unfortunate people attending them exactly what they were letting themselves in for, were overcome by the strong urge to stand by the gate brandishing banners with messages like, "Run, if you value your life," or, "If you come here, you will never sleep again."
Then along came second year. The sheer bliss of a well structured second year at IIMA can only be experienced, never described. Suffice it to say that people who, only a few months ago, could function on a cumulative total of ten hours' sleep in four days and knew holidays as things that only happened to other people now feel hard done by if they have classes more than three days a week and feel peevish and irritable if they are woken up before they have had their full ten hours. The spirit of second year is best epitomized by the tricolour cat watching me type even now, and demanding why I am occupying myself with such trivialities when I could be usefully engaged refilling her bowl.
And since there is no better way to end this without sounding depressed, this is where I shall stop.