PGSEM Qtr 2 - MBA#1/5

Welcome back! If you came here multiple times just to see if I have posted anything for Quarter 2 then definitely you would have been disappointed. Even I was. And this is my 7th attempt at writing the blog post. I started on same schedule as I followed in Qtr 1 and each time the only line which I wrote was the post header. But I am morally obliged to write an account of my quarter 2 ordeal, so here I am, again!

While I am writing this post, I am finished with all my quarter 2 exams and assigned projects. Completely chilling at my place. Just to be fair to me and give some breathing space I dint even collect the Quarter 3 books. Yeah! Mail was there for book collection even before I wrote my last paper for quarter two. As if it was telling me, don't worry about passing this quarter buddy, 3rd quarter books are already there so you are definitely going to quarter 3. What grade I will get that time will tell, but for me it was the toughest time both because of work pressure at office and subject content at college.

Whenever I think I can relax a bit and breath easy, the PGSEM rope comes around and tightens its noose. Quarter 2 was like that, and I doubt coming quarters will be any different. I have thought many a times in quarter 2, what was in my mind when I started thinking about management or what was my expectation from management? I think I have failed measurably on all accounts as everything has hit me unplanned. It is not the case that I am demotivated by the grades or abysmal performance on own scale, because performance is a relative term. And nothing can teach the magic of relative misery better than the relative grading. You may think from your scale that you are doing bad but relative scale makes you look good. Before you start running horses - I was bad/average on both parts :P

Quarter 2 had 3 subjects - Macroeconomics, Quantitative Methods - 1 and Managing Organization

Macroeconomics - Learning has its own pleasure and it clarifies many of the self beliefs (read biased beliefs). Macroeconomics was one of such subjects. It cleared my doubt that I can never be a economic adviser to prime minister of India, so I will never get the dilemma between job opportunity between economics adviser and something else. ;) Macroeconomics talked about GDP, GNP, Consumption, Govt Expenditure Investment impact on GDP. And why the GDP fluctuates and goes in cyclical mode of boom and recession. It was interesting concept to read but was tough concept to remember. This being a closed book exam and cumulative syllabus made the task more difficult. I have survived the brunt of economics somehow so far but definitely won't be taking anything in economics. It was never meant for me because of its theoretical weight.

Quantitative Method - I - Well, what can I say about this subject. This subject also cleared all misbelief on my number ability. I always thought I am good with numbers and QM-1 helped me to get rid of that 'fantasy'. Suffix 'I' is just to remind me that torture is not yet over (torture abhi baaki hai mere dost). QM showed an interesting expect of simulation, probabilistic and statistical modelling, decision tree, confidence interval and hypothesis testing and most importantly the mean and standard deviation. Prof teaching style was awesomely fantastic and terrorizing. May be I didn't pick up much in beginning as I ignored and was terrified with the load but at later part of quarter when things slowly started sinking in, I became fan of the prof and the subject. He seemed more of a techno-crazy and open source addict who has too much of energy and wanted to pass the knowledge to the students. He actually made us look at R programming as an alternate for excel and if that was not enough Libre office (open source tool) as an alternative of excel. It is the other story that I ended with excel. Regarding grades he fairly quoted - "Relax, breathe easy. It's only a stat exam. What's the worst that can happen? You might start to think everything is random" And often quoted - "If you think what you predict comes true then lets head to LasVegas". I will make sure that I will follow his advice when things start looking in my favor. Most interesting - "if you ever make a fraud make sure that you look good as a statistician". I am completely awed by the magic and awesomeness of statistics. There are lot many interesting quotes which he came up with during class discussion, and I feel bad about not keeping them with me.

Managing Organization - Managing organization was one subject which carries huge relevance to what I intend to do in coming time and sadly I didn't look at it properly during initial class discussion. Thanks to my awesomely bad grade in mid-term I had to actually go back and read entire book for the end term. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. Organic and mechanistic organization, organization life cycle, organizational behavior, hierarchical structure and its benefits. There is lot to ManOrg and Organizational Behavior and I hope I will be interested to take some electives in OB in coming quarters. The prof somehow knew that we may not be catching the concept, so he made us do a book review for book based on any living organization to understand the intricacies of the process. "Only The Paranoid Survive" was what my project group picked and I thoroughly enjoyed the reading and presentation. In-fact now I like Andrew Grove, the then CEO of Intel.

While I hope for most of the thing and hope that things will turn to better but I still wonder if Red was right when he quoted - "Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane" or Andy Dufresne was right when he quoted - "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies". This was an overdo - I like Shawshank Redemption. :P

BTW before I miss it here comes the flaunting part - http://www.iimb.ernet.in/pgsem/student-committees you can find me here. Anonymity is what I want on my blog but little clues here and there won't hurt.. :P

P.S. - I am plainly getting into lazy mode and losing motivation for writing anything so I doubt if I will be writing even intermittently here. So come back to my blog after 2-3 years or don't blame me offline for not writing.

P.P.S - Time is running out quite fast and before I realized 2 quarters are already gone. Nonetheless, its fun being here and if you are not at IIM B you are missing the fun big time. ;)

P.P.P.S - I am writing this after getting complains that there are too many spelling and grammatical mistakes in my post. Well, I am too lazy to work on them. So I won't be proofreading my posts, please read them in way which is making sense to you.

PGSEM Qtr 1 (5/5) # MBA (1/10)

I am again late in writing the final post for Quarter 1, blame it on the hectic work schedule at office, 3 college projects and all this sucked out all the energy out from me. And right now when I am preparing for the vicious circle of Office, Class, Quiz, Project, Mid-term, End-Term again I thought of closing what was the needed. Did I miss anything? Oh Yeah! my personal time!  But this time I have planned to change the rules of game. I just hope that I will be able to do that. :(

I have once written my encounter with Murphy's law which states 'Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong'. I guess that encounter was nothing compared to what I faced during ending time of quarter 1. I just hope that this doesn't get repeated ever.

I had a inkling that my office project beta deployment may coincide with my end-term/college project submission. I was also worried about the new requirement coming to me in office at the last moment, worried that I may have to work late night in office during my end-term, worried that my college project will be a mess altogether because of all the above mentioned priorities. BOOM! As if I was wishing for everything, and wish granter was happy with my deeds, everything turned true including things which I was not even expecting. Wish granter must be really pissed off with me.. hahaha

I some time wonder why I am pushing myself to write this, I don't love writing anymore, neither do I write for friends nor do I get money for writing this. May be I am still a confused being or may be I want to remember this till eternity what phase I have passed through.. haha..  Whatever, Quarter summary - 

Microeconomics - I always thought that I have understood the subject pretty well and not even that my day-to-day activities were having element of microeconomics principles. But somehow the theory  wasn't getting reflected in terms of performance in marks. Not that I care about it, but when you have relative marking and you join the league of Farhan and Raju of 3 idiots then you gotta be caring about it. As Virus said in movie - I  will be very very worried Mr. Raju Rastogi. I was feeling ME professor may like to tell me the same after correcting my ME answer-sheets. :( 

Financial Accounting - There is ME and there is FA, both are class apart. In ME were I was in bottom side with clear concepts and open book exam, FA was the subject were I was on the top side with shaky concepts and closed book exam. I somehow fail to understand it how and why it happened.  Not that I scored good in end-term, but I had scored so much in mid-term that even if I would have had skipped end-term I would have passed overall. Best part was, for whole quarter I was taking off from office on Friday and never worked late night in office for any other week day during my tenure at company, but then exactly on day before exam I ended in office. And when you come to exam from your office instead of your home then there is a serious problem! I guess my marks will show that problem. OK! at this very line I realized why I am writing this. This is to remind me as well as fellow/future PGSEM'ers that things can go worse, very worse, so challenge is to be prepared all the time along with your office work. :-)

Strategy Management - This was one subject where not only me none of my classmates had any idea, what could be the pattern of paper. 4 hour test  with one 25 page case reading and question based on that, was too little of time. But paper was important because this paper dint had any mid-term so pressure was high. but unfortunately I had no time to prepare for the test. Fate yet to be decided.

ME/FA/SM Projects - This was hell of a task and given the limited time to work on it along with late-night stay in office because of last minute requirement sucked out all the energy from me. But now when its over, I am enjoying one week of peace till the cycle begins! And seriously I don't want to write anything more about it, as I don't want to remember it anymore.

Now when the Quarter 1 has ended, I feel good about the time I had. Have got new friends, had opportunity to listen and interact with profs who are best in their fields. In corporate people talk about Work-Life balance, but now equation has changed for me. Work-Studies balance is the new mantra. Life you ask? well as my engineering friends have started quoting, "I have no more Life left". I will award myself a gold medal on completing this course! So my own gold medal here I come.

Whatever, MBA 1/10 is over. 9/10 more to go!!!