You started as a small fish with dreams of being a biggie. You routinely practiced your moves. You tried to learn new tricks to please those who held power to hand out generous changes in S&B (Salary and Bonus). You regularly preened yourself as you passed the mirror, admiring the lean mean fighting machine that you continued to be ... at least for the initial few years. When you met the other alum from your college or B School, you traded notes to see if anyone had learnt a trick that you had no clue about. There were usually a few who always had something clever to share. You read professional journals. The names were all familiar. The Professors would keep egging you on to read more and more and yet would sneer at your term paper before labeling it a B+. That just built in you the grim determination to keep slaving away at sharpening your skills until you could extract an A+ from the hard-to-please faculty. That was then.