IRMA revisited continued

Then came the field work, the component that I was awaiting most eagerly for. I guess after the pressure of first term almost everyone was eagerly waiting to home. I was among the minority who always prefered the comforts of my hostel room to my house, something which I will talk about in my future posts. Anyways fieldwork in Bihar again turned to be less than intresting event. Actually the accomodation and other comforts were better than most of our friends. Even my partner was cool but doing nothing all day long was not a very exiciting affair. Thats the irony of life, when I was in campus and had loads of work at hand Iwas sulking and this sulking continued even when I had nothing to do. Man it does seem is never satisfied with life has to offer and always yearns for more. Of course this wisdom has not in anyway made me more content and I still continue to sulk when I have all the time in the world at home (old habits die hard). Of course there were certain things that we used to do on a daily basis, it mainly consisted of talking, eating and loads of sleeping. Sleeping as early as 9 and getting up at around 8. I chatted almost endlessly with my field partner and when that got montonous it was the villagers. But after some time even that got boring, the same old questions and same replies. It was not that there was nothing to do, some of my collegues had even finsihed writing thier reports. But I prefered procrastination to some solid work, something which I have actually becoming adept at after spending couple of years in IRMA. Infact I concur with view of many of my collegues who say that work done at last moment consumes least time and is also of the best quality. One can probably marginally improve the quality of work if you start early but I guess I was never that particular about such improvements prefering to spend my time watching movies and chatting with friends.
Anyways thats how the fieldwork component finally ended and I was glad at the time of leaving. Of course I too had made my share of friends but IRMA even with its hectic schedule was a better option than an idle village.

IRMA revisited

The journey has almost come to an end. Infact my entire college life is almost done now and I am restepping into the corporate world, a world I had temporarily left when I had decided to join IRMA.

But even in college life it was journey of IRMA that would be most by far the most memorable one. I remember my last day at graduation and I was not at all nostalgic. For me and for that matter for most of us atleast in my group it was just another day. I suppose hostel life which I experienced for the first time here in IRMA has its own charms and bonding you develop here are stronger than the ones you develop when you are just a day scholar. Apart from that all of us knew that our student life had still not come to an end as we all were planning to do MBA at some point of time.

These days are really strange, the entire campus is empty, I have all the time in the world with no assignments to complete and a superb collection of movies at my disposal. But I am unable to devour these movies, thinking about the good old times. The same times which seem like hell to me just a few months back now seem like best days of my life.

I remember the first term by far the most dreaded term. I remember having been warned by one acquaintance who also happened to be an alumnus of the same institute to study hard or be prepared to come back to Mumbai. Having already tasted failure in graduation I took his warning seriously and worried like hell during the entire term. I never studied though as harder I tried to concentrate farther my mind drifted into fantasies. Ultimately I did manage to pass somehow and realized finally that studies were just not my cup of tea. I was always under the illusion that studies was a piece of cake and it all required was some concentrated effort, something which I can always put in if I wished to do so. It is only in IRMA that my illusion was broken and I realized that concentrated and consistent efforts were not my cup of tea. (to be continued)

CPs and their classifications

In order to encourage participation from students many B schools have a separate components called Class Participation where specific marks are allocated just for asking questions and bringing up relevant points in the class. I personally have never been a very participative student but this topic of CP has always been a topic of discussion among my circle of friends. Having spent few months studying management, I couldnot help myself classifying the different kinds of CPs.

CP classification:

1. Constructive CP: This is the ideal version of CP. This being the purpose for which it was introduced. It normally galvanises the entire class’s thought process (Why didn’t I think of that). The professor too thinks of the point and sometimes discusses about it even in the next class (it happened with me once, was not very pleasant). Such CP rarely occurs.

2. Prolonged CP: This CP is like Amaron Bunny. It goes on and on. In short its verbose. Of course some people have become an expert in this and have even earned accolades for it. The pattern normally is something like this, the participant repeats the same question or the point, gives his point of view normally a very clichéd one justifies it with an example and then repeats his point again. It normally evokes stares from the class and if its at brink of the break then a few not so pleasant words also from the class mates.

To be continued

Bored of boredom

I am in the midst of fifth term by far the most exciting term for any B school. After all placements are done, it is a known fact that you will pass irrespective of your performance. All these give ample of time and opportunities to enjoy yourselves. But after some time you exhaust all your sources of enjoyment and boredom creeps in. The situation is in stark contrast with the first term where you are hard pressed for time (atleast that’s what you think at that time) and you are worried about your continued existence in IRMA. We never seem to be satisfied no matter what the life has to offer. When I was outside IRMA, it was the place I wanted to be in. When I got here, I was thinking about the field work segment and predictably when I reached there I was again thinking of IRMA. When I would start work I am sure it would be IRMA that would occupy my thoughts most of the times. In hindsight this has been the pattern throughout my life and I believe that holds true for most of us. But my knowledge of this predictability has not in anyway helped reducing the boredom.

Lull after the storm

The placement season has come to an end and I find myself being placed in the organisation of my dreams. Actually I always found myself attracted towards the banking sector and IRMA I felt gave me a perfect opportunity to fulfil my wish. But fate had something else in store for me. ICICI group the biggest recruiter of IRMA for the last five years failed to show up twice in a row. Even Bank of Baroda did not show up this time. Given the situation, I felt that my current organisation gave me a fair chance of fulfilling my desire of joining the banking sector in the future.

The picture though doesnot seem as rosy as I thought a few months back. It happens all the time with all of us. We work hard for few things in life (atleast think about it continuously) and sometimes even achieve them, but after achieving them you just don’t feel the happiness that you would normally expect. In my experience of 15 months with an organisation I never did anything that an ordinary twelfth pass guy would not be able to do. I also believe the same about my current job and for most of the jobs offered to my colleagues. I might be a little presentable and speak fluent English but that’s where differentiation ends. Sometimes I really wonder why do the corporates hire people like us and make us do monotonous things which any person of average intelligence can do, many times better than me. I believe the same holds true for jobs requiring some mathematical aptitude, the brainy people make the mathematical models used by companies but other guys including those from IIMs and IITs just operate these models which have a set of standard operating procedures.

Anyways I only hope that I would be able to do what I am expected to do and maintain some expected standards for a reasonable time(Stick with the organisation for atleast 2 years). It might happen that someday I might open my open an enterprise and actually put into practise some of my beliefs.

Secrets of a successful power point presentation

I do not consider myself to be a very good presenter, but over eighteen months I have observed closely some of my illustrious colleagues making some presentations and would forward share some of my observations.

You may not have mastered the contents of the presentation, but that is no cause for worry. You just need look at the bullet points; you may not even remember them, just look at the screen and parrot it out. The secret lies in making gestures and reading the bullet points with some emotions. Imagine yourself to be Shahrukh Khan and the bullet points to be the dialogues, once in a while also turn back and face the audience.

There can be some miscreants who might imitate you and make efforts to distract you. But you need worry if you have specks. Just remove them and chances are their actions would be so blurred that you won’t be able to make out of much. In this way you can create an illusion of making eye contact, one of the pre-requisites of good presentations and mitigate chances of distraction.

Numbers are always attractive, make efforts to include them. It doesnot matter whether they are essential or not, you need to include them as chances are that evaluator/ your boss would definitely like them.

When it comes to queries, you need to be confident. It doesnot matter whether you know the answer, even if you are unaware of the answer say something. If the person who asked the question doesnot seem satisfied, say the same thing albeit different words, chances are he will either act as he understood (no one would say out rightly that you are wrong) or will ask the same question again. If he does ask the question again repeat the same answer again as if it was obvious. This time he is bound to keep quite.

Whenever you get a query that seems difficult to answer, act as if you did not get the question. Repeating the question gives you some extra seconds to think over your response. If you still don’t have a convincing answer you can always say that you too had the same doubt and have been thinking over it since long (act as if you mean it, one of my friends did it very convincingly in of his presentations).

Make gestures while you speak, people look at you and standing stationary increases chances of them eloping to their dream land. Every good speaker has his customary gestures, you too need to develop some trademark movements.

Memoirs of childhood (continued)

Another favourite time pass of mine was visiting movie theatre. At that time multiplexes were unheard and prices though were still substantial, limiting my excursions. The cheapest shows were the morning shows but they attracted a different set of patrons, I too very much interested in having a peek but alas age was the main barrier.

I got my first desktop in 1996, which was a HCL 486 model. There was nothing much you could do with it accept play some card games, I even learnt Dbase programme at that time (I was an obedient son and did as my father told me). My first visit to cybercafé was in 1999, it was at that time that I created my first email account on hotmail. I wanted to carry on many more experiments but again company of my father acted as the main deterrent. Of course I visited the café many times later and did tinker with the net to my full satisfaction.

I guess I can go on and on as there are many others marked out incidences but I would end the post here.