Diplomacy

Twice, I've tried to complete this post. Twice, the Internet connection has failed. The frustration has grown exponentially, though.
I've learnt a lot of stuff in the past month, during my internship at IIT Bombay. One of the more enlightening discoveries being that the word 'learnt', while used extensively in British English, is considered colloquial in American English and is to be avoided like the plague on your University Application.

The other slightly insightful discoveries which forms the crux of my stay at IIT Bombay is that you cannot - I emphasize, cannot - survive life, no matter how skilled/rich/hardworking/determined/sincere/add-random-positive-adjective you are if you are a stranger to the art of diplomacy.

This is something I've learnt the hard way, or as it is commonly termed, from personal experience. You must develop the talent of sweet-talking people into getting your way and yet ending up satisfied with the outcome. If you cannot, you won't live long enough to know what hit you. It starts of as a small job; something rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things. You slip up, not giving it enough attention, assuming it's a very common occurrence or maybe it won't happen the next time. But there's always someone watching. And that someone is biding his time, waiting for the moment when he can catch you off guard and leave you lost in the blame that is bound to find its way to you.

I say this with utmost care. Learn to sweet-talk the boss. Don't be a suck up. That would be overdoing it and leads to problems of another kind, entirely. But keep the boss happy. Then use that happiness to get what you want. If you can't do that, I'm afraid you've already lost the battle. Yes, it's not work, it's war. Deal with it.

While I've been on the wrong side of diplomacy and experienced all that can go wrong, I've also seen the good side and how much you can achieve given that you know your way around people. The difference is mind-numbing. So that's going to be my goal for the next month. This internship at IIT will teach me diplomacy, if nothing else. I'm pretty sure it's the most important skill I could have learnt.