Just another day..

I woke up at 7 in the morning. Tea here is really good but seldom we get up in time to catch hold of that hot cuppa of morning tea. Today, courtesy Shiladitya, I had enough time to read newspaper also. But, then over the cup of the tea, I realized that I am still to do the group assignment. Now, there was the tradeoff, either a proper bath and a good breakfast or an hour at laptop doing some database stuff. Being a management student, you must be aware of your core competencies. Which means, you should be knowing it well that what are you good at and what are the things that you just can't do. Well, I finally settled the tradeoff in the favour of my peace of mind and that was another cup of tea, a 15 minute shower and a decent breakfast. 3:30 hours of lecture can grill you from inside. Economics was my favorite subject during my higher secondary and initially I felt very much comfortable with the concepts but now, I am slowly realizing that there is some difference in an elementary course in micro economics and a 3 credit course in the same as a part of your MBA.

Lunch is like a formality here. I eat it, because I have to. There is no other way out. You can't just eat out during weekdays as the one hour lunch break do not give you liberty enough to be choosy about lunch. It's like, during that half an
hour, my taste buds become insensitive. I can't even properly diffrentiate between South Indian and North Indian taste.

MBA curriculum definitely has an edge over other courses as it has a great tendency to keep you busy even without work. It emphasizes to a great extent on group learning but during the initial days you realize that groups are not always the best way to do things. Rather, sometimes it's more or less drives inefficiency in certain section of the group. Also, due to the competition creeping up into the system, interaction across groups reduces largely to a very formal level. Well, it's almost midnight and I guess tonight I am feeling a loss of sleep. Have studied all the way till 11:30 except an hour break for dinner but it seems that still there is a lot many things which demands my attention.

Most important of them is my people's skills. I guess, I am most often in contradiction with my own views. I get upset very easily, argue without reasons with closest of friends, becoming more and more self-centred day by day, things like me, mine and myself is corrupting my thoughts. I keep telling myself that things are under control and I am cool but the fact is I am becomoing more and more consious about the environment around me. Since the last few days, I am trying to find justification about this change in behaviour of mine, but the best explanation I can associate with it is that I am not different from others. But then, another question haunts me, Why do I need to be like others.. See, again I am confronting myself.. better I should sleep. I guess I am pretty normal, and it's nothing but a little loss of sleep and too much studying Organizational Behaviour. I am about to crash.. Good night..

Let Hope Take Wings..

Let hope take wings
Let love blossoms
Lets make a difference
Lets show we care.

I couldn't resist myself thinking about that time which I spent with those children where I realized that what actually it takes to follow your instincts. The equation of life is really strange. Sometimes, you need to be selfish to serve your self and then at some other times, you have to be selfless to achieve self-fulfillement. Anyways, without dwelling much into philosophy I wanted to highlight this fact that contribution of small organizations like Pankhudi can go a long way but they lack is man power and finance. The main problem is of finance. The nuisance of corporate life do not give enough freedom to their employees to devote their time towards the support work but then we need to channelize whatever help we are getting from the general public towards creating awareness about social responsibility. I was surprised to see persons from HCL, WIPRO, COVANSYS and INFOSYS doing their share of work in putting up smiles on the faces of those children which probably know just one way to live. I know that Corporate social responsibility is a vague term and I personally believe that it's existence is based on the amount of tax benefit a corporation is getting. But, then Individual Social Responsibilty is nothing but our own consciousness.

I think that everyone should atleast be a part of one such activity in two months. It's nothing for us but then it will surely justify the mission of Pankhudi. But my opinion is "Lets make a difference" won't be justified until and unless we become a creator of the change..

New Life...

....

Don't get confused by the title. I am not going to talk about my life here and no MBA stuff. But yeah, I might try to explore another side of the life here. New life is a small charitable organization started by a working couple and which is now engaged in helping old age people and children who are underprivileged. I was really moved to see that how far a person can go when they want to do someone and how unequitable the life is. It's normal human tendency to compare yourself with someone who is privileged then you, you crave for all those beautiful things in your life which you don't have. This give rise to a complaining tendency. We complain to our parents, we even complain to god that why you made us like this. Well, I also had my fair share of complains in my life. Now, it's like we never look at those who are worse off than us. We tend to ignore the hardships of life and always try to look on the brighter and better face of it. So I personally feel that individuals like me need to stay close to the kind of work that the New life people are doing in the remote villages.

Our batch size (only 27) do not allow us to have a large group of volunteers for social service initiatives. And given that most of us are not comfortable with the Tamil language, it makes this task even more complex. Anyways, initially when my friend proposed me the idea of going to this village Eraiyur, located in Sriperumbudur about 50 kilometers from my place in Chennai, I reacted that I can go but what's the point in going to a place to talk to people when you can't speak their language. He also was having this thing in mind but then we decided that we should go atleast to see how the place is. Now, after spending some 6 hours with those 100 lovely people I can really say that smile is an universal language. They ask you something, just smile. the message immediately gets conveyed that this someone is your friend. For children there is no language like Tamil or English. They can read your faces, they can even look into your eyes and can see through your heart. It's simple, you smile and if they smile back, communication is complete. Now you both are on the same wavelength as you are talking the same language. For old age people it's enough that you talk to them. It's right that they need food and care but the one thing that they all crave for is personal attention. They just want somebody to play audience, somebody who can patiently listen to their small stories is their best friend. I can remember that carpenter father who worked hard to buy the best education possible for his two sons but after 30 years of love and affection, the return he got from his sons was an old age home. I can still see the tears in his eyes when he was like looking into our eyes and talking to us (he didn't knew that we had language problem and one of our friends had actually to translate the whole story).

That was the lesson for the day. Smile has got immense power. It is the way through someone's heart. Now, another experience was to meet this couple Mr. A.A. Swamy, (President) & Mrs. G.Lalitha, (Founder Trustee) and heard the whole story behind New life society. Warren buffet donated most of his wealth towards charity and I believe that it will go a long way in improving the living conditions of the millions of people around the globe. But, that kind of thing is like you read in news, discuss about it and then forget it. People like Mrs. Lalitha and Swamy are no lesser mortals than those who donate millions of dollar in charity. They started this society on their ancestral land which is now a shelter for 110 people.

The question which is now troubling me most is that what was their moral fiber? How can they think about providing selfless service to those people whom they never have met, not even they are related to them in anysense? How come a person who is seen as a liability by his own family is accepted here and treated as a part of the extended family? What kind of mindset these people have when they adopt children who have lost their parents and pledge to make them a responsible citizen? I kept thinking about these questions for most of the time when I was there with those energetic kids.

For me, it's more or less two years of education and then taking up some respectable job, have a family, have kids and life goes on. I Will think about donating only when I make enough for me and my family. That's it. Simple man with simple dreams. I guess it's the same for majority of us. But yeah person like Lalitha and Swamy makes you think that there is another side of life, which is more human and less mechanical. There is this side of life where you not only think about you and yours but also about others and theirs. Where the whole meaning of life lies in putting up a smile on faces of those who are little underprivilged than you. I salute to this human spirit. God surely exist and it exists in the mortal form itself...

One Sunday Morning..

My eyes were full of sleep when my alarm went off at 6 am. I still remember that I slept at around 3:40 last night. As usual, I put it to snooze and went back to my dream (don't ask what B schoolers dream about). Suddenly, I felt that someone entered my room and is looking for something. I woke up to see what time it is, but wasn't able to locate my cell phone. So picked up my roomies mobile and dialled my number, the call is connected but I can't hear any ring tone. My mind was too slow to process that my phone is in silent mode. Now, I recall that to avoid bulk good morning SMS (which actually disturb your sleep) I usually put it to silent mode. So I started with the hunt and found it beneath the towel in five minutes. The time is 7 am. Well, breakfast is served at 9. So I have still two hours which i can spend sipping hot tea/coffee and watching TV (which airs all kind of Tamil songs which is beyond the comprehension of my mind and news which you don't want to comprehend actually) and i decided in the favor of the tea.

The tea was okay but the news was not. I thought about calling home and surprising everybody that I am up early and I did that. But well, it is always like this. We hate talking about academics and parents just love talking about them. Anyways, after a 10 minute call I now decide to make a list of "To DO THINGS" and put it on the wall. This actually looks like:

1) Read chapters 5 and 6 from Management Accounting book. (3 hrs)

2) Practice the exercises from 5 and 6. (3 hrs)

3) If doubts, read from slides (30 mins).

4) Work out stats problem and prepare for the quiz tommorrow. (2 hrs)

5) Solve the micro economics assignment questions. (1 hr)

6) read Microeconomics for the expected quiz tommorrow (1 hr).

7) Do the laundry (1 hrs).

Now, i calculate the total time required and still feel comfortable but suddenly I realize that there is a convocation function for the senior batch and attendance is mandatory. I calculate in my mind, 4 hours wasted. Lunch, dinner, coffee and magazine discussion session, another 2 hrs. Group discussion of probability and stats quiz will take up one hour and I still have to complete my MIS assignment. I do the calculation, about 20 hours of work. 24 hours in a day. When will I get the time to sleep?

But, then I see my roommate, who is happily sleeping. Probably I even know what he is dreaming about. Not only he, I can honestly tell that most of us dream about getting more than 24 hours in a day. i suddenly make a note of something. What will I do with my newly acquired DVDs from the burma bazaar? I also promised one of school time friends to take her to beach. Man! where is the time? It's already 9, I havent' even brushed my teeth, Also have to search for movie tickets for my friend.. Oh shit, I missed calling one of my friends on his birthday. What should i do now? I hear this internal voice.. sleep for some more time. It's sunday morning idiot. And guess what? I exactly gonna do that.

Three weeks, Three different emotions.

I am blogging after a long long time not because I get too little time to do this but, just because I have really started enjoying my life here. Now this is normally what happens when you get into a B school. Initially you find so many variables in your lives changing at the same time. The nature of the change during the starting days is really radical. You stay all night up but not for chatting and movies but rather for working on some assignments. You never wish to bunk any of the lectures and if you do that it's purely unintentional and just because of an upset tummy or lack of sleep. You start taking your assignments seriously and all those surprise quizzes really start making sense. Well, this is what is happening to most of us. You can call this some sort of crisis where you really find hard to cope up with the change in you. I mean when you want everything to remain up to your comfort level but subconsciously you just keep on changing. This whole transition phase can be characterised by the complaining period. You complain about the crazy schedule, quizzes and teaching methodologies and sometime even about the kind of food that they serve you in the canteen.

MBA is considered to be a great value addition in India. The common perception is that your salaries will more or less get doubled after two years of time. But, the moment you enter into a B School campus, it seems that the assumption is not at all wrong. There indeed is a great value addition but that comes with the hardwork, determination and a high level of motivation. We know that there is a value attatched in the 'change' but then you just don't want to get out of that mould that you have constructed for yourself during your undergraduation life. So you find yourself in some conflict sort of things where a part of you feels that "do this and do that" and another part asks that "why this and why that"? But yeah, this is the justification phase. You try to justify your decision about joining a B School. You try hard to enjoy things, you desperately push harder to play an active part in the group assignments. You wish you could score well in all the quizzes and more importantly you want to grab attention.

The thing which I have started feeling now, is the third phase. Now, I have started enjoying the environment. I now have made truce with the pace of change. Now, this usually happens when that feeling of "MBA as something special' sinks deep down into your heart and you just stop feeling excited about your prospects after two years. You suddenly realize that two years is really a hell lot of time and only way you can prepare for tomorrow is by learning the concepts being taught today. You suddenly realize that food is okay and it no more bothers you. Putitng up all night for an assignment or a quiz or even for a presentation do not drives you crazy and you are quite comfortable even if you are sleeping for like 3-4 hours in a day.

Suddenly, the whole point of getting a MBA starts making sense. It's all about changing. The jargon is "Unlearning and Relearning".

Life @ MAC 1

Well for the lesser mortals like me who need to do a Google search on what does this word MAC means, I am telling you that MAC does not always mean a unit to measure speed of sound. For B Schoolers like us, and who are unlucky enough to make the transition from a career in engineering to a post graduation in business administration I must tell you that “MAC 1” means a first course in Management Accounting. When half the population of the class is from commerce background (one CFA also), you know it from the very beginning that you are out of the top 50% (too much to worry when you have relative grading system in place). So, what’s the solution then?

I was recently complaining to one of my class mates (I recently discovered that he has scored 100% in his undergrad paper of accounts) that this MAC thing is taking the hell out of me. Most of the time I am finding myself lost among the various accounting jargons. He replied that the course is the superset of all that they learnt during three years of undergraduate and the advanced management accounts. And guess what? We are supposed to do all that in three months. This is not enough, the instructor just recently made an announcement that he intends to finish the whole course before august end and that effectively means, two months only. Now, the pedagogy is something like we have to follow a book and then we have slides for revision and then loads of assignments and case studies to follow. And that is just one subject. We have five others too. And it has one of the craziest evaluation systems in place. You don’t get any marks for completing your assignments but you will get a -10 (minus 10) for not completing them in time.

Hey, it just occurred to me that we have a quiz coming up on Monday and well, my life has to really start moving @ MAC 1.

In comfort Zone.

Here I am, sitting on the sofa near the hostel reception desk and watching news on TV. I am really delighted with this surprise news break that we have no classes for the second half of the day. Though I am still dressed in my formals and reluctant to walk three flight of stairs to my room, I know that I am in my comfort zone.

I remember that back in undergrad days, the very thought of a presentation or a seminar was well enough to give us sleepless nights. But here, if I go on behaving like the same, it'd be more like I won't be able to sleep for months. Last night was just one of those nights which was completely wasted on presentation. But, slowly my body and mind is becoming accustomed to it, I no more wish to sleep for 10 hrs a day. Just yesterdy after a nap in the evening I felt like mild fever running down my body.

After the crazy first and second week of the course, I am feeling that the third week is kinda easy but no, the thing is that third week is more hectic and as per the experience of the seniors, all the subsequent weeks will be more and more hectic. But once you accept this fact that life is really crazy here, it all becomes simple and you enter into a phase of learning. In a sense, you reinvent yourself, start getting accustomed to the new situations and then one fine day.. stop complaining.

Well, so the complaing part for me is over now. I am into third week here and I have realized that the only way to survive here is by actually surviving it. The only way to put my misery to an end is by actually cutting down on my sleep schedule and start enjoying my studies. I can summarise my learning from the first two week as MBA is all about attitude and emphasizing the fact that there are no right and wrong answers for a question. It's not about how much you learn? Rather, its all about whether you can learn or not? And yeah, the most important part of it is the definition of your comfort zone. Well as long as you are in a B School, your comfort zone will be your cozy little comfortable bed. Guess what? I am already half asleep. after all, no classes in the afternoon.

In the middle of a crazy week..

Its only the second week here and it feels like I have rushed through an year of my engineering life. Honestly speaking, I never pulled an all nighter for the purpose of completing assignments or making presentations in the entire of my engineering life. Being more honest I can accept that I haven't studied for like 50 hours total in the entire of my last semester of engineering course. But yeah, B schools teaches you a lot. It teaches you how to become innovative (Just make one sure of one thing that no body knows about what you are doing into your room), it teaches you how to be competitive (just hold the important information with you and you will be there at the top). You learn your first few lessons of your professional life here.

I am unable to understand that where my time is flying by? I have no idea how much productive work I am doing and how much I needed to do in the recent future. But, I guess I am fitting in well here. Was really feeling a bit depressed about the banning of blogspot and blog sites in India, so thought to check this all out.

Have to hurry, or I might miss my lunch (and I cant afford it as I have already skipped my breakfast courtesy an Organizational Behaviour Presentation. Well, that is a different story. But I am all set to make this blogspace of mine as my B School's diary. My only worry? Do I have time? Huh.. all B schoolers might want to answer this..

Wanna Do MBA? Think, Think.

I am lucky that I have survived the first week of my MBA program but the rigours of the course is making me ponder over the reasons why I chose to go for a M of Business Administration. I remember that I was always good in economics and if I could have resisted my father's insistance on me to chose engineering as a career option, then perhaps, I might have completed my masters in economics by this time. The whole idea is that, my like for economics grew into a desire and the engineering way of thinking that I developed during my engineering course added a twist to it and I started thinking that, a career in Business Administration will be the safest (*Jargaon is Value Addition) and the best option for me. So, my perception about MBA was that if I can relate myself well with the jargaons in economics then perhaps it's all going to be easy for me. But, well, "It Depends".

The beauty of the phrase "It depends": On the very first day of the program, we learned just one thing and that is about being diplomatic. One plus One is obviously two, after all, we have cleared CAT, got good percentiles and posesses good mathematical skills. We must know this thing. One plus one must be two or the fundamentals of counting won't exist. But well, we have learned to say that 1+1 can be 2 or cannot be 2. It depends. A plain question asked, Are you good with maths? The answers could be either Yes (egoistic will be the HR officer's perception about this person) or a No (Humble but a person who is low on confidence). We all know our potentials. But well ask this question to a MBA student and you will get the answer "It Depends". Price is rising, clearly the demand should fall, now a question is asked, should the demands for a good go down? well, the same good answer, "It Depends"

Ubiuqitously you will find this phrase "It depends" in the dictionaries of all the MBAs. Well, are they really trying to be diplomatic or behaving like a smart ass who believes he knows all the other aspects of the question? Well, again my answer will be "It Depends". Yeah, it really depends on the origin and orientation of the question. Like 1+1 could be somewhat like adding the efficiencies of two persons together as a team. Now, this could be exactly twice their individual efficiency but again it depends on how they go along together. The chances are that if they really click together, they might add up to 2+anything. But then, a conflict in interests/ambitions might depletes their combined theoretical strength. So the safest answer is "It depends".

For the mathematic question, again it depends on what kind of mathematics skills you posess. A ninth grader will also say that yeah I am good in Mathematics but then he is good only with mathematics till grade 9. So again it depends.

I picked up this jargaon really fast because I know I am going to use it all the time. It's really a beautiful word. Anyways, I really thought that MBA is all about economics, accounting and philosophy. But then I realised that again it depends. Management accounting is condensed into MAC and believe me, it really zooms past you like a fighter plane flying on the same speed (MAC is like the speed of sound, if I am correct, which is used to represent the speed of fighter airplanes). Organizational behaviour alone is a combination of more than 5 mainstream subjects of education. Even computer engineers (I am not talking about computer engineers like me who obviously find everything difficult and are constantly complaining about the deadlines and all) find it difficult to cope up with the nuissances of Management Information System. And if this is not enough, a first course in statistics will blow the hell out of your mind. Wait, these are only four subjects, two more in a trimester. Surprise quizzes which are announced only half an hour earlier, assignments (forgot those good old engineering days of mass copying) and yeah you won't get any marks for completing them in time but you will loose marks if you miss the deadline, Presentations (that's really a scary word for the MBA students) can very well make you go crazy.

Well, this is just a picture of how things can change from graudation to post graduation. But well, again the same golden rule applies here. "It depends, It always depends".

What’s the first day in B school like?

To start with, it could be like anything. It could be like a two hour interactive session with one of the senior faculty members where you were explained about the do’s and don’ts of the institute followed by the lunch break and then continued with some ice-breaker sessions so that you could easily intermingle with your course mates. It could also be like an intimidating experience where in a span of two hours, all your misconceptions (read your dreams about the life in B-Schools) will be washed out by the free flowing language of an expert in his own field, who puts it down in very simple words that even chartered accountants can fail in their first term course of accounting. It’s scary to know that the attendance requirement is almost 100% (I am wondering I have no any plan 'B' to cope up with that because for all my life I have faced this attendance problem. Yeah, for all my life, right from grade 1) well, this is not all, you have to clear all your papers in one attempt. You come to know that there is a strict grading system and the moment you cross the lifeline of two D’s, it can very well shatter your MBA dream. You slowly realize that as the course will progress, it will unveil many more surprises for you (though they will be termed as “Challenges”) and if there is something to learn from the experience of the seniors, it’s like you would soon start wishing that why there are only 24 hours in a Day?

Lastly, there is one more side to this first day in B-school. It’s the time to continue from where you left your preparatory days. We all must have worked hard during our preparatory days (remember those days when we were like writing one examination every other week) and it’s the time to take charge of our lives. All those passage which we have read for the sake of clearing cutoffs now increases in length and become case studies. You have to read them in record time. All the vocabulary you have learnt by heart will now be used to impress your instructor. Quant questions will be replaced by quantitative methods in the first term and DI with statistical reasoning thing. Night outs will take a new dimension and you might wish to carry your laptop with you also (I have heard that some B-Schoolers even take it to Disocs also).

But yeah, things change for good. You can see happy faces around, some anxious ones and even some calm ones (We just discovered that we had only one calm person among us). People are happy as they see this thing as a partial fulfillment of their cherished dreams, people are anxious as they are still to come to terms with the nuisances of a B-school life and people are calm because perhaps that’s the only way they live. I represented those who were having mixed feelings as I am still to feel the rigours of the course. The seniors have helped us calm down a bit by showing their indifference towards interfering in our lives during the early days (that’s really good thing about this place that you have some really cool seniors).

Anyways, have to attend a 9’o clock class and me and my roomie are still to use the bathroom, have to iron my clothes (well, have to iron clothes of one of my friends’ too, that’s the price I have to pay for living in hostels). I guess, I’ll be late for breakfast, or for the lecture, man! Crazy times ahead. Well who cares? I am a B-Schooler now.