End Terms Knocking at the door

What happens when the exams are right in front of you? Does one tend to behave erratically and start blogging? May be or may not be but I did end up writing this meaningless worth in last five minutes.

A lame man and a blind man were friends and wanted to cross a busy road one late evening. The blind couldn’t see and lame walked slowly, so they stood waiting for the traffic to reduce. One old man wanted to catch a bus. He could see the bus-stop at a distance but still comforted himself with the idea of walking less and stood behind them, believing the bus ‘should’ stop for the lame and the blind. There started the queue and soon a sixty five other people were standing at a place where the bus never stopped.

As usual, the bus reached the bus-stop at the right time and the old conductor gave a call or two. But since no one responded he asked the driver to move ahead. When the bus passed the crowd, some wise men in the crowd waved their hands asking the bus to stop. The driver didn’t care to stop. He had this long standing grudge against the crowd that why the hell do they always stand behind the lame and the blind when the bus-stop is right in their sight.

Sadly that was the last bus of the day and the crowd started cursing the inefficiency of the Government Transport System. Realizing that some thing was wrong, the blind and the lame friends vanished from the spot. After another half an hour, a Tempo stopped at the place where the crowd was waiting for the public transport. As usual some people in the crowd pushed themselves in the vehicle realizing that that was the last option, if they had to reach their destination. The tempo happily moved ahead leaving a few others bewildered.

Moral of the story is that think twice before you stand behind the lame and the blind even if in your heart they evoke a lot of pity or standing in a crowd gives you a sense of security, for you never know where you might end up.

The First Test.

Our first Midterm examinations are over. They were a mixed bag for some. For some others, they were just what they would have wished them to be while a few of us found them rather tricky. Some of my friends were obviously tensed as the stakes are too high. So I was giving 'gyan' to one of my friend (OK, I take that liberty owing to my work-ex in the Administration and handling bigger pressure situations) that management is not all about cracking good grades. It is also a bit about handling pressure situations and unexpected disappointments and still coming out winner.

Australian Cricket team is the best example of management, I could quote. From their finding and grooming the right talent, to their determination, hard work, discipline and aggression, every thing has some management discipline deployed to its full potential. Call it JIT, six-sigma, it is all there and the result is that they are almost running a monopoly now. The Australian Cricket team never seems to be perturbed even after a few hiccups and still manages to win. While most other teams continue to be ‘a house of cards’.

And for those who want to know about the MBA in general- I can say (after having spent last one year in IIM Ahmedabad as a Fellow Programme student and now with my ISB exposure) that the study for an MBA degree is not a cake walk. To say the least, what has now become almost a proverb; it is more about handling the “pressure cooker” like situation. And these courses are designed as such so as to prepare the young managers for the future pressure of the Corporate world.

Somehow I feel that I have an advantage over most of the people here, and that is due to my grooming in Administration for handling the pressure situations. The pressure that I handled as a Sub Divisional Officer when I went ahead for the closure of a sick Public Sector Unit, against all resistance, was brutally painful. Then I passed sleepless nights for months when I had deleted about 2 lakhs voters from the 4 constituencies after the special revision of the electoral roll. My job was at stake, if I were proved wrong.

So when you risk your most prized possession - your job as an IAS officer- for the hard work of your team, those hundreds of enumerators who did that house to house enumeration, you learn to trust your team and also to handle the pressure. It is another thing that you end up becoming the Joint Chief Electoral Officer of the State for the conduct of the Assembly Election in flat less than four years after that. And that someone in those corridors of power tells you that ‘Bloody, you have been picked to do this job’.

Examinations can be tricky, for instance a question may tell you only that the costs are sunk costs, and not whether those sunk costs are avoidable or unavoidable. Of those two only one will give the correct answer- implies that only half the group would presumable get the answer right. So even if someone ends up loosing some marks, that is SUNK COST. What is more important is to feel inspired for the next battle, in the Aussie way of playing cricket.

Different people have different ways of preparing themselves for the next day, so some are partying again. But many are silently preparing for the marketing assignment and a few were solving the Accounting Assignment in the library. Parties help in networking for some and building ‘brand recognition’ which might be useful in days to come. There are others who are working hard for getting into the Dean’s List based on their Academic performance, for that is ‘their’ forte. Then there are many people in the party because they just want to dance in a big crowd and loud music.

But if it comes to my belief, I believe that there are rewards for everyone, especially for those who missed a lively evening and instead spent a dull evening in the library.

It is Examination Fever

It is one month since we arrived in ISB, which means one of the twelve months of our stay at ISB is already over. The time is running really fast and many of us could not believe that they have been here for one month already. It appears that we had arrived here yesterday only.

But that we are here for one month can be realized from the fact that we have our midterm examination on this Friday. The examination fever is getting higher with every passing day. After all this is the first mid term. Just now while I was coming back from the learning resource centre, I saw someone who reminded me of my school days when teacher used to scold us and we used to come back to home dragging our feet. The same old rosy cheeks, turned pale due to fear and punishment. It’s cute that examination still continues to be a terror.

And three of our instructors have finished their portion of the course i.e. the pre-midterm portion of the course. So from Wednesday, we will have three new faculty members taking our classes. Two of them are from Wharton, for Economics and Statistics, while in Marketing we will have a faculty coming from Terry College of Business, University of Georgia.

Right now when most of my friends are busy mugging, I just managed to find a few minutes to keep the blog updated. One more thing is that today I removed the crepe bandage from my knee and have already been scolded by a few friends for doing that. Any way I feel I am more comfortable without that bandage.

I will try to write about midterm or some thing else on the weekend. Right now it’s Examination fever.

Sailing with the wind

One and a half week into the first term and the term is 25 % complete.
How come?
It’s so because each of the eight terms at ISB is of 6 weeks, so the course is going very fast and there is Mid term on week end after this one.

After the first weekend people were longing for the classes to begin. Why? Is there any problem with them?
No. It’s so because there are problems with the weekend- Marketing Assignment, Microeconomics Assignment and FADM (Accounting) Quiz to name a few of them. So the consensus is that the regular classes are much better.

And when we are meticulously being taught journal entries, my disbelief that an accounting course as wide as ours can be completed in 20 contact hours is fading away. And that’s Professor Mark Finn for us- with all the delight he gets in teaching his class (you have to be in the class to feel it).

Then in the Class of 2008 when there are 8 Amits, 7 Nehas, 6 Nitins, 6 Gauravs, 6 Abhisheks, 5 Saurabh/Souravs, 5 Satishs, 5 Rohits, 5, Ashishs, 4 Sachins, Viveks, Vijays, Puneets, Prashants, Pankajs, Kartiks, Ankits and Abhijits each, no wonder to distinguish amongst three Puneets in our section, our Micro Economics Professor had to call me the ‘Quieter Puneet’.
It’s true Amit, most of us have few doubts by the end of the class so it’s more to learn than raising questions.

Any MBA course would be incomplete without a course in Marketing. Any marketing course will be incomplete without CP. (‘Class Participation’ for the uninitiated). And when there are 20% marks at stake for the class participation, the class is bound to look like a stock exchange. But this time our Professor stumped us by randomly selecting all the groups for the CP. People had to orient their thoughts at the shortest notice and even an eternal CP master Sourya Da was caught off guard.

So all of those who are listening and want to know about an ISB MBA, I can say that it is like a cool wind and you have to be really fast and alert to keep pace with it. And that is the real fun which our batch is enjoying at the moment.

Bye for now and C u soon with the next post.