Term 1 Coming to an end

Yes, believe it or not its one term into our path to attain an MBA degree...our two years league yet to be established and fulfilled. Its like yesterday I had been waiting to join XIM and was running about collecting and arranging my documents for the joining formalities to be fulfilled and its already one term coming to an end. With quite a few learnings that have been driven home here we poor mortals wait for the wrath of end-terms to befall us. With the freshers fresh out of college driving us to worry about grades more than we are currently doing and the work ex people driving us to the learning mode and making us focussed more on what you are looking for in the course...and between both these your lone self trying to surpass all this and run away into the glory of your world of njoyment to njoy a peaceful nap...as Eco ma’am would put it in her words “the opportunity cost” that you seem to realize now ...which you had paid by giving up those days of lazing about and sleeping on the weekends and not being on your toes all the time with the endless series of classes, quizzes, assignments and projects hovering above your head all the time.

With the term 1 coming to a close a lot of things seem to have got clearer as to what could have been a better way to manage your term..where exactly you goofed up and why...what you need to target on in the next term which you have missed doing in this term...and all your areas of improvement. Among all the things that term 1 had taught us the biggest thing had been time management I guess....although its still a long way to go before you can declare yourself to have expertised on it...but then it atleast taught you how to manage a whole working day with classes till 9 P.M in the night the next day with a heap of work load of assignments and presentations to go when you had just got around 2 hrs of sleep in the last 24 Hrs and still try to keep ur brain alive and in working condition. A lot others have picked up on networking skills too...its nice to see them having mingled with the batch so easily...a trait that needs conscious effort from your end if you belong to the same kind of specimen as me...but a trait that is indeed a talent and a strength if excelled at.But in all this learning there is something that people have unlearnt here too....could be termed as seriousness..could be termed as honesty. Seriousness because you know if one person in your group is serious about the submission of the assignment within the deadline then the rest of the group seems to relax and sit laid back....and honesty because if one person in the class has studied and come then the rest of the class can party that night since all have acquired the talent of scoring the same marks as the person who had studied the next day.

So, probably somewhere the balance has struck between learning and unlearning resulting in null again.....has it or has it not???..... probably it will get discovered in the days to come!!

Simply Awesome!!

I love that feeling when I walk down the road leading to my hostel from the insti all alone in the darkness of the night ...past midnight...with a cup of coffee in one hand and a packet of chips in other...listening to the silence of the darkness around me...humming a song to myself as the light drizzle of the rain keeps sprinkling over me like holy water being sprayed down from the sky. I love listening to the eerie noise of the insects as I walk down finishing my coffee on the way and sit with my companion ...songs and laptop in my room and spend time with myself...typing down a mail without thinking...just typing down whatever comes to my mind, going thru the blogs of others and peeking a little into each one’s life relating it to mine...sitting idle and just refreshing the past memories and smiling to myself while the melody of the songs keep playing in my ear...looking at the snaps of near and dear ones and feeling them far but still close...painting up new dreams on the canvas of my imaginations and then finally feeling the sleep engulf me and overpower me till I give up on my contentment and get carried away with it.

Hapazard...

Amidst all the hustle bustle ....Amidst all the noise I feel the silence and the vacuum of the distance move stealthily and engulf the passing time.

Time which seems to go at a lightning speed yet slow enough to creep till that moment much waited for seems to be endlessly away .....fading away quickly from sight

Thoughts seem to be lingering far away in that subconscious mind ...deep down somewhere there...just peeking now and then signifying its presence

And I just close my eyes and say just take me away....deep into that land where distance, time and thoughts just seem to fade away

Where is the time??

After another hectic week of quizzes, assignments and presentations finally there is some time today to just sit back and relax a bit. So, here goes my new post ....Its like one of those times when you just feel like typing away on the keyboard not having anything specific to type. You have a whole lot of thots lingering on the top of ur mind yet nothing that you can think of penning down...but still you want to write ...write something down. Doesn’t it happen at times that you just feel like letting urself out....you are so overwhelmed with thots that you just feel like blurting them out somewhere and when you actually find that all your near and dear ones are far away and the only option you have is to sit and pen ur thots down on a paper you just keep holding the pen and nothing seems to surface...

This reminds me of this class presentation of ours which had happened a few days ago. The topic was “Effect of Technology on Communication”. As usual we , a lot of busy bees , started off our preparation for presentation at 2 ‘o clock in the night...working in a group of ten people. Each one of us putting forth numerous ideas and creativity in place and working hard to make it big enough for the class not to doze off and gain atleast a percent of entertainment from it if not wisdom. We worked almost the entire night searching for videos , information, brainstorming on various role plays and finally came up with the final presentation....which only ended up with the projector not working in the class and we trying to manage inspite of it. Now the irony of the situation is that ten of us worked hard to make the presentation and the slides but none of us actually sat down to take out time and communicate on a lighter note among ourselves in person...we were all busy trying to get done with the work and catch some sleep considering that sleep is a very rare commodity in a B-school. And after the presentation one comment given by our instructor brought a second’s stroke of thot passing each and everyone’s face in the class....when she said “ We say technology has improved and world has become a smaller place...we can easily contact our near and dear ones within seconds thru mobiles, e-mails etc but don’t you think the smaller the world is becoming in terms of technology getting us closer the larger are the distances becoming in terms of emotional distances” ...the statement is so true...distances definitely do make a difference. No matter how much you try to maintain contact thru the technology the gap is always there. There is no substitute for you meeting in person...feeling their touch...seeing them smile...their expressions..their concern when you sit close to them and speak face to face. And more than that I guess the compromise that we do with our relationships blaming the busy schedule is what again a matter to brood on.

Like, I just cut down on my calls to home bcoz I thot I was running short of time bcoz of my schedule. My friend stopped coming online because she was not finding time out of her office tasks. So technology making world a smaller place where does it come into picture...if we can compromise on tedious tasks of letter writing and e-mailing and go for chatting and voice conferencing in keeping in touch we can also compromise on relations by looking for more shorter ways of communicating by saying that we are short of time. So, even if the physical distance is cut down upon with technology in place in order to make use of the same to bring down the emotional distances as well is to spare some time....and I guess there cannot be any technology here which can be sought for in order to find a shortcut. So when I sit here and think I wish there was someone here I could just talk out to the answer I wud get in return wud be the same as I wud have given “Where is the time?”

Settling with the unsettlement

Yes, so now we the PGDM batch of 2008 are beginning to settle down I guess what... with the first outing trip of the batch in the midst of the hectic schedule and with two tests to go off tomm...if you are getting me wrong here..then let me correct you. No, it doesn’t mean we have mastered as to how to manage time and as to how to deal with the seven courses on hand this trimester. Its just that we have stopped complaining...we have accepted that a few words like a peaceful sleep, sitting down to relish some food, lazing about in those early hrs of the morning, day-dreaming (for that matter dreaming in the nights also), a nice long walk, listening to a nice lovely song over and over again have all become those unattainable and unheard dreams. Yes, we have finished our mid-terms that brings us to exactly half way of the first term and we have I guess successfully learnt now to settle with the unsettlement..a deal struck there...and signed.
Talking about the courses, seven courses to be mastered over in this trimester.... Can’t really talk about all in this post ....starting with Financial Accounting...favourite course of the batch. Although its that number crunching and ultra confusing course where you don’t know which side of the balancing equation does your financial item find a place and the balancing of the equations reminds you of those chemistry equations which we were cribbing to balance in our childhood. Somehow the accounting equations take me back to the suburbs of fourth – fifth standard where a balanced eq was the next biggest achievement nxt to that of Einstien’s.
Coming to the next course which is on of my fav....Economics.Now why do I like that course...well, its as good as giving an answer to the question as to why do I like chocolates.Probably I like the simplicity the course has about it. Simplicity as in what the course teaches you is everything that you have always known but you never knew the logic behind how the things took place. Its like rediscovering everything all over again....understanding the logic behind the whole lot of things.So, these are the two courses which have so far won me over and I have fallen for. Other courses include communication which is the only class where you can manage to yawn, sleep, njoy and do everything that you have always wanted to do when a heavy class is going on. Its another of our favourite classes because not only the course is light but the way ma’am handles it actually helps you to relax and put up a smile and listen to the class. And four other courses added to the term HRM,MC,QM and OB....adding stars to the already hectic schedule. And the binary digit marks acquired now and then are the added flavours to the schedule. But the best part of doing an MBA apart from the challenging courses are the group assignments and other group activities where in you get to do a lot of learning from the other people in your batch...the networking ability that you develop....something that every MBAite tries to add to their pool of talents.And what with the unending series of tests,quizzes, assignments and presentations.....the only thing that can be said...the higher the unsettlement the more the fun and the more the settlement with the same J.

And I said...

Will you let me hold your hand...

And all that he did was just smile and say...

Let me hold on to yours....