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The best Hole-in-One you will ever see; courtesy Vijay Singh

I can watch this over and over again.

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Tips For MBAs Who Want To Work At Startups

most of you are going about this startup thing completely ass backwards and no early stage startup that I know of is really dying to hire an MBA.  What they want is a ninja, and a hundred grand or so later, your diploma is not universally recognized as a “I haz ninja skillz” card. 
Instead of asking what opportunities there are for you, you should be telling me what opportunities you are going to create for the startups I know. (“Ask not what startups can do for you…”) 
startups assume that MBAs are going to look for too much money, have classroom knowledge that won’t likely transfer to the real world, and want things to be handed to them. You’ve got to counter that by providing immediate upfront value, differentiating yourself, and creating your own opportunities. From what I see, these aren’t necessarily skills most business schools are teaching well. 

Very interesting tips here. I agree with most of them. And if I may add, most of these points apply to *anyone* looking to work at startups, not just MBAs.

Ahem. Noted.

Click through here to read this insightful article by Charlie O’Donnell.

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Colors


“Don’t ever invite this girl to your wedding party!"

This is both hilarious and sad. But more hilarious.

via Andrew Wilkinson

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Post.ly test, featuring @jcherry543


Happy Lohdi!


Two and a Half Men: Commonly Asked Questions


I Have Failed Myself

The proverbial “American Dream” is over. Mumbai is getting its prodigal villain back.

I’ve had a few life-turned-upside-down kinda days lately. As of early this week, I am no longer in the MBA program at the Leeds School of Business at CU. My first semester GPA was not enough to continue in the program. I have failed. I am devastated.

Shocked. Disappointed. Embarrassed. Ashamed. Humiliated. And sad.
I am sad for many reasons. I knew I hadn’t performed well in my first semester. But did I see this coming? Never. I had made mistakes and learned from them. I knew what I had to change and I am sure I would have more than compensated for the fall semester. There was a lot at stake. But now I don’t have the opportunity to redeem myself. 

I am sad because I know I am a better student than this. I am far from the best but I promise you, I am not this bad.
I am sad because I know I was doing a lot of things right. Had the events of this past week not turned out like they did, this blog post would have had me announcing a dream internship — one that I was offered before anyone else I knew in my program. Now that internship means junk.

I am sad because I have made my parents sad. I have crushed my family’s hopes. I have betrayed their trust and confidence in me. I have failed them.
My career is as good as over. I am in debt from my student loan and I am broke. I don’t know if anyone will hire me knowing my truth, but I am not going to hide it.

Even for an eternal optimist like me, it is supremely difficult, if not impossible, to be positive right now. But I am trying. I am blessed that my family is by my side right now. They are being strong for me and I need their strength. Had I written this post 3 days ago, it may have conveyed suicidal tendencies. I am not being dramatic — it was a foolish thought, but it was a thought nonetheless. I am over that now.
But I am not over my failure. This is not the first time I have failed. I fail everyday. But this is only the second big failure that I can say has impacted my career. The first one inadvertently made me a success (sort of). I can only hope to be lucky a second time. I am hoping that this even will actually turn my life downside-up.

Right now, I am blank. Clueless about what to do next. Self confidence is the lowest I can ever remember it being. I only have my family. And hope.
I consider myself lucky to have been influenced by a person like Micah Baldwin. My interactions with him and what I have learned from reading his blog, gives me a sense of peace as I attempt to handle this failure. I have an interesting relationship with failure myself, but that’s a topic for another blog post.

I will not be stepping back in that MBA class anymore and that makes me very sad. I have made some really good friends here, friends that I hope to keep even after I return, friends that I have now disappointed. I have disappointed my friends back home. I have disappointed a lot of people. I am truly sorry.
I have been given three weeks to leave the country. Those three weeks end on 26th January. I am going to miss this place. I really believed that Boulder is where I am meant to be. Maybe there’s some place better.

I have kept this inside myself for too long now. The last few days have been tough. The next many days look bleak. It all comes down to hope now. So I just keep reading this quote to myself over and over again:
The night is darkest just before the dawn. And I promise you, the dawn is coming.

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First shots from my new Nikon D3000

I was in San Francisco for the past couple of weeks and with me was my fantastic new dSLR, a Nikon D3000. Yes, it is only an entry-level dSLR but hey, I’m just an entry level photographer myself. I can safely say that this camera has become one of my best friends. 

I also started experimenting a bit with post-processing my photos. I have no previous Photoshop experience so I’ve just been using basic processing features like saturation, brightness/contrast and crop. Oh, I’ve been doing this on Gimp and it works like a charm (for my use at least). I renewed my Flickr pro account last month and I hope to do it justice this year.

I am genuinely very happy with the way my photos turned out in the end. The D3000 is a great starter camera for anyone looking to get one. For now, here is a set of my favorite shots from my trip to the Bay Area. I’m new to this thing so any feedback at all will be greatly appreciated :) Thanks.
p.s. - I know I’ve been overdoing this a bit lately, so I promise this is the last time I talk about these photos :) I hope you enjoy them.

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The Opportunist

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To Tumblr, Love Metalab