It's the last day of the break between Term 5 and 6 of my MBA, and as I pack up and try to collect all the mess I have systematically spread all over the house, the myriad collection of chargers, cables, devices and accessories that our Lives have become intertwined in, I am at a loss to understand my emotions. Am I happy or sad? Happy to be heading back to what would be the last few months on campus, or sad to leave home again, this time with the rather scary feeling that I have no idea when I would call this place home again. Leaving home for the MBA was different, there was a time frame attached to that, there was a Fair Bit of certainty involved. As I leave for campus this time round, I am staring at a lot of uncertainty. Where would my job take me, how far would it from what I call home now? Should I be happy and excited at the change and look forward to another new beginning, welcome the differences and new things, and try to get a role which would take me to new places and destinations and let me carry forward the experiences I so loved during my summer internship, or should I try to come back to what is essentially mine; my city, my people, my friends? These are tough choices to make, especially after I've spent a fortnight at home, experiencing so many of this things that made my life nice before all this circus started. How much of change is good, and how much is too much? When would I get tired of things being different and crave for the things back home? Do I make new friends and move on, or do I come back to the ones I have here, who, although having understandably moved on a bit with their lives, are still more or the less the same old folks I remember from my engineering days? Sometimes I crave for the awesome experiences I had in Europe, the feeling of instant friendships and deep connects that I experienced in a matter of hours, at other times, after a party or two in Pune with the old gangs, I tend to forget that this is not reality, not my present, but a fast-receding past which I am still fortunate to visit once a while.

Should I try to make my past once again my present and future and wallow in the comforts of known vistas and horizons, or should I step out and leave it all behind and move ahead? As much as I loved my experiences at IIMK and in Europe over the last 18 odd months, I do believe that change is often over-rated, and the known and comfortable past too vilified and under-rated. Should one keep striving for change, for novelty, for new experiences all the time, or is it fine to come back to what one loved after experiencing a fair bit of it?

Its a matter of weeks before my time at IIMK ends, and before I (hopefully!) make a choice about my work and location after my MBA. How do I even begin to tackle these questions is beyond me, and what I will do and how I will react when it comes to crunch is something which pretty much scares the stuffing out of me!