Jumping Through Hoops

I recently stumbled upon this comic strip from Grant Snider’s The Shape of Ideas. 

It’s simple, whimsical, almost childlike, yet it captures something profoundly true about education, ambition, and the strange obstacle course we, somehow, voluntarily sign up for.

And reading it now, during my whirlwind year at IIM Ahmedabad, feels uncannily personal.

Hoops of All Shapes and Sizes

The strip starts by saying:

“To get an education, you must jump through many hoops.”

At IIM A, those hoops come fast and furious. Some require ultra-competitiveness: bidding wars, CP battles, cold calls that make your pulse spike. Some require perfect timing: case prep deadlines, placement prep windows, managing academic peaks with personal troughs.

Many seem unreachable at first. I still remember the first few weeks: the pace, the people, the perpetual sense of being a step behind. Yet, like in the comic, you take a deep breath and keep running. And somehow, the hoops get closer.

The Burn, the Boredom, and Everything In Between

The comic talks about moments of boredom and moments of being burned. At IIM A, you experience both, sometimes in the same day.

There are days of relentless burn:

• 5-6 classes a day

• Three assignments back-to-back

• Case prep bleeding into placement prep

• Syndicate meetings stretching past midnight

• A feedback-filled classroom session that feels like a hoop set on fire

And then there are quieter days: rare but real, where the pace dips and you almost don’t know what to do with the silence. The comic reminds us that these phases are part of the same journey. You don’t grow without the burn, but you also can’t grow without the pause.

Embarrassment, Imagination, and the Unexpected Spark

One of my favorite frames in the strip shows the student awkwardly attempting hoops, stumbling, feeling embarrassed, before suddenly discovering imagination.

That has been my story too.

This place pushes you in uncomfortable ways. You present half-cooked ideas. You stumble through cold calls. You get something wrong in front of 100 sharp minds. You stretch into new domains: finance, ops, strategy, where you previously had zero footing.

But somewhere in that awkwardness, imagination sparks. New career paths open. New interests form. New confidence grows. And occasionally, you surprise yourself: like realizing you can decode a macro policy shift, crack a supply chain case, or build a solutioning deck overnight.

The Case of the Disappearing Hoops

One frame shows the student graduating, expecting more hoops, only to realize there aren’t many left. That’s what transitioning toward the placement season felt like.

For years, education gives you hoops on a conveyor belt: exams, grades, projects, certificates, predictable milestones.

At IIM A, that conveyor belt suddenly slows. You get to the “final hoop,” and the world becomes far more open-ended.

More ambiguous. More self-directed.

The question changes from:

“What’s the next hoop?” to “What hoops do I want to build?”

And that is both liberating and terrifying in a way.

Now, Create Your Own Hoops?

The comic ends with my favourite line:

“Should you stop jumping? No! Now you must create your own hoops.”

This hits especially hard now. Because the real education here isn’t just in case discussions, frameworks, or grades. It’s in learning to design the life you want next. To choose the problems you want to solve. To define your own measures of success. To create hoops that excite rather than exhaust you.

The best part? Unlike the hoops of school, college, or even B-school, the next ones are mine to design.