Zindagi ne Zindagi bhar gam diye .... :( :(

The so called “Oscars” of “Summers of 2007” are over and again there was a range of emotions on display .... and though the “most visible” emotions during the awards ceremony were – happiness, relief n euphoria ......... post it have noticed something else 2.... d atmosphere is not really 100% normal ne more ... agreed there are still around 100 odd people to be placed but still ....

So with no offence to the feelings/sentiments of ne1, I would like to take the liberty to summarise the mood of some “dukhi aatmaas” on campus right now!! :)
... here it goes ....

Logon ko dukh hai .....

K unko ek “FokatKa-Chhola” company chhodnee padee “Treat-aania” k liye (seriously no offence intended here)

K unki ek company main waitlist clear nahin hui (confirmed offer bas nahin hai kyaa ;) )

K unko “Fin” ki jagah “Marketing” profile mil gayee (and vice versa too :) )

K unko “Treasury profile” ki jagah “Analytics profile” mil gayee (in this case I guess no1 vice versa ;) )

K unko kaaash “Fin” company main “Treasury profile” mil jaatee (Laalach booree balaa hai!! :) )

K unko kaaash “FundooBank” ki “JhatakMatak-pore” waali profile mil jaatee (Duniyaas envy “Baba”s Pride ;) )

N in sab k beech kuchh log aise bhi hain jinko dukh hai ...

K kaash woh ek GD to clear kar lete

K kaash woh ek interview to crack maar lete

K kaash woh summers k liye thoda prepare kar lete

K kaash woh thode decent acads le aate

K kaash woh 2-3 saal pehle hi CAT crack maar lete

K kaash woh bhi auron ki tarah har jagah apply kar dete to shaayad unka bhi kahin tukkaa lag jaata

And lastly there definitely are some people (who probably are the only people jinka dukh justified hai accrdng to me)
.. and woh hain jinko dukh hai ...

K unko ek company shortlist karne laayak to samajh leti!!! :( :( (yesss even such people do exist on this very campus)

Newyz ... yeh saalaa summers ne yaato kaafi logon ko badal diyaa hai .... yaa shaayad haalaat badal gaye hain log to vahi hain!! (super-philosophical line ;) )

I hope and pray k all the “dukhi aatmaas” on campus will reflect on not just “their” dukh but also on “their batchmates” dukhs and ..... jaldi hi sab log saare dukhon ko bhoool k phhir se normalise ho jaayenge n we will have the same campus atmosphere which prevailed pre “Summers n Oscars of 2007”!!! :) :)

Big Cheers to all the “sukhi aatmaas”!! :)

newyz .. moi as of now Interning at: Vela-bhai & Vela-das Brothers & Sons & Co.
Punch Line: As Vela as ever .... even though “You’re NOT worth it” :P

n my take on life is summarised as ....

Forrest Gumps Momma: “Life’s like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.”
Moi: Chocolates - you eat em ... else flush whatever u get down the toilet

My take on "Summers of 2007"!!

Since the past 3 days our mess has a transformed look ..... instead of the usually chilled out people strolling in and out for breakfast/lunch/dinner ... now I see people with varied emotions - ecstasy, agony, despair, excitement, dejection, anticipation, disappointment, frustration ..... one can sense the mess is no longer a “chilled out place” :( ... lot of people on the edge ... some feeling the heat ... some pretending that they r unaffected by the surroundings (while very few actually seem to be unaffected :)) .. doesn’t matter whether they are dressed up in a suit or in their usual shorts ;) ) .... many stuck between or waiting for their “processes”!! :)

Some confused ... some trying to demystify the selection criteria of the companies ... various rational and irrational models being proposed on the basis of one shortlist ... which is totally failed by some other shortlist ;) ...

.. some tired due to all the shortlists they feature in ... and the subsequent running around between acad block-lakshya-nalanda (these r the various buildings on campus).... and many tired of waiting in hope that probably the next shortlist will feature them!!!

...some thinking ... k “$#%!$!$% engineering main thodaa padhh liyaa hotaa, achhaa CG laaya hotaa to aaj ye haal naa hotaa” .... some even going to the extent of questioning whether engineering was the right thing to do n should they have opted for English/Eco honors instead!! ;) :P .... some tryng to understand k “saalaa MBA k pehle 3 saal kaaam karke kyaa paaap kar diyaa!!” ;) :P

Newayz .... this is 1 of the biggest event of our b-school lives .... the “Summers of 2007”!! :)) ....n for someone like me who tries to looks at the moments and the people’s reactions ... it is a godsend opportunity :)

.... in any case I feel summers in “FundooBank@JhatakMatak-pore” or “AaandooPaandooGroup@Fateechar Nagar” would be a minor blip on the radars of lives of most of us ... ;) :P

... eventually in 2009 we will all move out with dream jobs and fat pay checks .....and then 10-15 yrs down the line ... we won’t remember what we felt like when we checked each shortlist .. or where half of our batchmates were placed (except for some1 like Samyak Baba ;) ) ... but we would surely remember that there was one day when more than half the college was scurrying around between “PROCESSES” all dressed up ..... while you had a sound sleep for most part of that very day or you casually strolled around sipping coffee!! ;)

So shortlist or no shortlist, process or no process ..... my two cents worth of advice is .... dil pe mat lo yaaar ..... look at the lighter side of the entire “process”.... theres a lot to look forward to in life!!

Chalo ... lemme go and check the latest shortlist ... and devise some new theory ... or a rational mathematical model which explains why I wasn’t shortlisted .... never mind the fact that I haven’t even applied for it!! ;) :P :D

Stautory Warning to all those who are taking it all very seriously:
..... after all the emotional drama .... many of us may eventually end up with the below depicted emotions in our respective “Summers” ;) :P

What m I doing with this blog???

I have been proscritanting for long about becoming a regular blogger .... but somehow the inertia has proved too strong to be countered by my weak spirit!!

for the past very many days haven't been feeling good mentally n physically ...... physically is mostly due to cold n fever .... the infamous "delhi ki sardee" has started approachng!! First round I ve been knocked down fair n square ... but m lookin fwd to the next few mnths even more eagerly now!! :) Is this false bravado ... time will tell!! :)

n mentally ... dunno the exact reasons ... due to the surroundings .... mess food .... this place ... or just that I have been away from home for too long!!! Home reminds me that ... day after I have to travel .... n m feeling better alrdy at the thot of it.

Lots of things have happened .... some exciting some not so exciting .... good n bad ... happy n sad ..... m planning to start a flashback series ..... n recapture the past 4 mnths of my bschool life ... so lets c ... hopeflly I'll be mre active here from now on ...

Amen!!

PS: Done with mid sem exams of term 2 today! sleepwalked thru most of it due to bad health. :)

Academic Rigour in a b-school!! :)

Over 2 months in a b-school and I was still wondering wat is the so called "academic rigour in a b-school" ?

But then I thought that maybe I have faced the music in the real world i.e. The Great Indian IT Industry for almost 4 years ... so rigour is an inconsequential word for me now .... It must be a relevant word for the "freshers"!! :)

So I observed the freshers for some time to find it !! ..... still couldnt coz I could attribute all the sypmtoms of the so called "academic rigour" like: sleepless nights, overworked look on the faces, people scurrying around for academic matters of importance (read: prereads, assignments, presentations, group meetings etc) etc ... to some or the other trivialities of life.

People going for walks on the campus with some pleasant company (read: opposite sex) at odd hours in the night would obviously lead to sleepless nights. ;)) :P

The remainder of the nights being spent in discussing extremely important but non-academics matters like "b-school X is not as good as/is better than ours", "there is no value add in MBA" etc ..or playing TT at 3 AM (which was oficially stopped in our college for some days to artificially induce "academic rigour" ;) :P ) or spent on watching movies which you have seen zillion times already ...

so finally at say 5 in the morning when you manage to pick up a book in your hand its bound to result in this: :))

.. then you somehow manage to get up 5 minutes before the class time and still make it to class ..... with your overworked and underslept look intact when you enter the class ;) .... you sit like a zombie in the class initially trying to make some sense out of your surroundings .... but soon realise that its a futile exercise ... then you peacefully sleep thru the remainder of the class :D ....... which means you also miss out on "matters of academic importance" ..... ..... so no wonder you will end up scurrying around trying to figure out what assignment to complete, what presentation to make etc etc .....

so I finally concluded that the so called "academic rigour in a b-school" is an overstated phenomenon which an average b-schoolers uses to brag in front of lesser mortals who are not blessed enough to be in a b-school :))

but then when I see a mail listing the following "academic" activities to be done in the week ahead over and above the mundane and routine i.e. daily classes, walks on campus, movies/TT at night, discussions on worldly matters etc etc :))

1. Accounts
- Report in hard copy to be submitted tomorrow in Prof. XYZs pigeon hole in the scholars block
- Presentations to begin from Thursdays class

2. Marketing
- Final report containing all 3 sections + executive summary + corrections of first three reviews to be submitted in hard copy to Prof. ABC tomorrow day end/Tuesdays class
- Presentations on the reports to start from Tuesdays lecture
- Group assignment related to analysis of positioning of 3 products of one product type to be submitted on or before next Monday i.e. 17th Sept

3. LAB
- Quiz on companies act tomorrow
- The Lab group assignment has to be submitted by next Mondays class. Please confirm the same with Prof. PQR tomorrow.

4. MicroEco
- Groups 3,4 and 5 to be ready with their presentation on UnderCover Economist for tomorrows extra class from 10:15 AM
- The MicroEco group project has to be submitted right after the end term exams. Kindly reconfirm this in the class tomorrow

5. Stats
- Quiz expected tomorrow

6. HBO
- The HBO project report to be submitted next week I suppose. We will reconfirm this in Tuesdays class
- Harvard case study had been kept in the pigeon holes. Group Presentations on the same from Thursday.

.... I feel maybe this is what they call "Academic Rigour of a b-school" !!! :) :)

PS: by writing such a long post given the above schedule I am also inviting "academic rigour" so I better close it here .... :)) ;)

Early days in a b-school !!!

Its been quite a long time since I updated my blog .... have been tryng to update it regularly but the so called "academic rigour" of a b-school (most of which is self-inflicted ;) ) and most times the general sense of indiscpline that has crept into my life has prevented me from adding nethng even thgh there r thousand things floatng in my head!!

So have completed over a month in a b-school now .... and if anyone asks me a AajTak reporter types ques "Aapko kaisa lag raha hai ????" .....i wont be able to give any definite answer !!

Why ???

coz in general I m too confsed abt my feelings n emotions rght now .... they have ranged from extreme happiness at the time of induction for just being there .... to the general enthu about gettng heavy duty readng material in hand .... to the pain of reading them befre each class and attending classes of 90 mintes ..... to the high of fighting an election of ne sort for the first time and winning it .... to the lows of missing yr family n friends ... to the insecurities about the next lectre that you havent preread for ... or next quiz i havent prepared for ..... etc.

Now all these fall in the personal domain that is they are emotions where I am both the source and the target .... theres anther set of emotions ... of which the sources are the people and the environment around you ...... and the target is poor "YOU"!!

its quite an experience stayng so far away from your family .... with so many people whom you knw nothing abt ... who come from diverese places, cultures, backgrounds ....... and you coexost with them in an environment ... where theres no family/parental figure around you, no real frens u ve made over the years ..... you are pretty much on your own ...

each person reacts to the people n environment arnd him ....in his/her own unique way ...... .... some are using this independence well .... some are outrageously abusing it ...... some are not too happy with it ..... some want even more of it ..... and in this you are trying to still figure out your take on the independence that the b-school life offers !!

As for the people around u .... u can see some are "MY TYPE" people ... some are outrightly "NOT MY TYPE" people .... and then there are people about whom you are as confused as you are confused abt yourself and perhaps they are cnfsed abt themselves ..... and then you goto an OB class and learn concepts of "Stereotyping", "Anchoring Bias", "Halo Error", "Self Serving Bias", "Bounded Rationality", "Personality Types" etc etc ..... which further add to the confusion prevailing in your life !!! :)

and then there are b-school parties to alleviate this whole confusion for some and to further complicate the matters for some like me ... but mre abt them later as I feel they deserve their own space on this blog!!

PS: written by an utterly confused mind trying to figure out whether to read Business Laws or Microeconomics or Statistics!! :)